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Halo 2 Retail Date Broken in Midwest
Thanks to c0nrad, who alerted us to a Gamespot article stating that Halo 2's launch date has been broken by a Midwestern store. From the article: "Several reports on the Gaming Age forums--which included photos of the limited edition of the game--said that several individual Meijer stores, a self-described grocery and general merchandise retailer that operates in Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, and Kentucky, were selling the game early. However, calls made by GameSpot to several Meijer outlets made it sound like the franchise was sticking to the deadline." The reader continues: "Despite that, Ebay auctions have already gone up, with one having already reached $265!"
most these ebay "sales" wont ever pay up. They bid on several of the games and then will pay for the lowest one they won, if at all. A lot of the people bidding are deliberatly waisting the sellers time "to make it fair" so no one gets the game early. Yes I know it's a jackass thing to do but thats what at least one guy said he was doing.
wow, some people really can't wait. 260 bucks for a couple days early release? Probably not when you factor in shipping time/auction closure/ et all.
Sig goes here.
At the EBgames I work at we have around 10 or so big boxes with Halo 2 and the strategy guides.....so it's no surprise people are selling it early. It's tempting as hell to take one home.
Each of the shrink-wrapped game cases has a sticker....under the shrink-wrap, that says "DO NOT SELL UNTIL 11/9/04." I've never seen a game this hyped or this heavily protected. Hope you all pre-ordered.
http://www.commaecho.com
Why not let stores sell it when they have it? It kind of makes software industry whines about piracy losses ring hollow when the product is sitting there in the stores and the software company is prohibiting stores from selling it. There is also the message of "want to buy it? Forget about it: we're sitting on the boxes for now. You'll have to scan Kazaa for a cracked copy."
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Most likely, and probably there will be consequences for the store. What scores me though, is that if sufficient hype is generated and/or enough keeners actually bought the early release for such heavily inflated prices, we might start seeing a trend. If game manufacturers or stores get the idea that they can sell pre-releases at 3x-4x the street value, we'll probably see them trying this as part of business in the future.
HL2 is great and all, but don't feed the sharks guys!
This happens all the time. I myself got the Tron Collector's DVD at Walmart 2 days before (wasn't realy looking for it, but I saw it and realized it was early and picked it up anyway...). Usually the way it goes is EBGames, or Meijer or some other retailer will have some low wage guy accidently pop it in the case and start selling it. It wasn't his fault. Then people will see it, think it's out, and go to thier favorite store and ask them about it. Most managers of these stores figures well if one store is selling it, then I sure as hell am going to make a sale as well. Then it just goes by local gamer grapevine and the day before the release date, everyone has it out for sale. I honestly don't understand why they do things like this. If it's not supposed to come out til X date, why ship it so it's sitting in the store room for 3 days? I doubt Meijer will have anything happen to them. They sell too many Xboxes and game for Microsoft for Microsoft to even care. For all we know, it may be a stunt being pulled by Microsoft....i mean the game was advertised by ilovebees.
Gorkman
Reminds me of how I got my Playstation 2. This happened about three days before they were officially released.
A friend of mine is general manager of an unnamed software retail store, and he owed me for money I loaned him to get his car fixed. He called and told me to come by the store. He handed me a PS2, the most recent version of Madden, a hockey game and a couple of others. It sucked because you could not buy the extra dual shock controller yet, so he popped open another box and gave me the one from there.
Just because a store has a release date in mind, does not mean people's agendas change.
M
"look at it this way, they are paying you 200$ to buy a copy for them."
It might not be so easy to get a copy of this very hyped item in a store during the Christmas season.
Don't make a committment you might not be able to keep!
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
It would be a pretty simple case to win, as the contract is very clear. The punishment is like $10,000 in fines and loss of the privilage of having new release merchandise.
I'd say the store manager or district manager for that store/region is in trouble.
Meijer, for those who don't know (and since they're a regional store, I suppose there would be many that don't), is the name of a chain of stores that are individually frickin' huge.
No kidding. The one that opened up in a town I used to live in had everything. A-frames for houses to phones and clothes. Imagine a Home Depot + Super WalMart + a mall food court. And they seemed to treat their workers alright.
It's not the size of your stack that matters, it's how you push and pop
I want to know if it does the Star Wars battlefront dashboard upgrade. If your Xbox is soft modded will it reset the HD partition and reload the dashboard.
So you are saying that the customer is responsible to know the details of a contract between the Microsoft and the retailer? Because MS has a magazine ad that says something will be released on a certain day has absolutely nothing to do with the contract between two companies. I suppose you are also saying that the customer is responsible to listen to all commericails and advertisements and should just know what a certain release date is? The last time you bought a candy bar from the grocery store, did you have any idea about the contracts and release dates for that product? How about when you last bought gas, did you know the parent company had a contract with your local gas station to sell it for $2/gal but they were actually selling it for $1.95. Are you liable for that contract discrepency between them? Why should you be obligated to know about a release date of a piece of software. You are not a party to the contract. Dealing in stolen goods is a crime, a "do not sale before this date" is a contract violation, two completely different things.
Your agruement makes no legal sense if you step back and look at it BIG PICTURE.
San Andreas started selling at 7:00PM the night before the official release date at my local mall. I picked one up. I have NO idea what their contract states and I did nothing wrong by buying it then.
Bad boys rape our young girls but Violet gives willingly.
The reason BlockBuster pays more for the DVDs is to because they rent them out. A copy of a DVD you buy at $20 isn't a rental copy, and its prohibited for you to rent that out (I'm not sure what the consequences would be if you did, but anyway). Blockbuster pays something along the lines of $100+ per copy of the DVD, but they get the additional benefit of that being a license, so they can get extra copies of the actual movie in case the old one is scratched without having to pay the $100. They are allowed to sell their rental copies, but they sell it without the rental license, and at therefore at a regular price.
And if you can't trust Microsoft, who can you trust?
Apple, I guess?