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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!"
Why would anyone pay $265 for Halo 2? 1. It's on the Internet if you want it now. 2. If you're that much of a Halo fanatic, you've got Halo 2 preordered. Which means you're garunteed a copy in 4 days at 1/5th of that price. Is there something I'm missing here?
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.
The game has already gone gold. MS and Bungie will still get money from the sales. Some rubes on eBay will be out some more $$$ just for bragging rights. All that will happen is that some PR prick will feel as though their spectacular launch day has been violated.
But tomorrow, the sun will still rise and Halo 2 will remain just a game.
The bees, on the other hand... the bees will soon control the world.
-EvilMagnus
/me creating a new auction for Halo ][ on eBay.
(please note that the auction ends on November 10)
--
Repeat after me. "It's just a game".
Sheesh
-S
--- What parts of "shall make no law", "shall not be infringed", and "shall not be violated" don't you understand?
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.
view them while they're valid
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
Halo 2 has been spotted! I'm peeing my panties! This is almost as good as the Cabbage Patch kids hype.
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.
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. They're compete directly with Wal-Mart and Target. So if Microsoft/Bungie decides to stop giving Meijer their software/hardware to sell, I think Meijer would just say 'boo-hoo'... they've still got hundreds of aisles of clothing, food, other companies' software, and housewares to make a profit from.
Will it come to a lawsuit? Maybe. Would it be worth Microsoft's time? Probably not, but that is a question left up for debate.
-Rob
Marriage doesn't have to suck!
Yeah, there is something you're missing: the fact that most people are idiots. Remember when the PS2 came out, and was sold out everywhere? And it was selling for triple or quadruple what it was worth on eBay? And this was despite the fact that the PS2 didn't have a single decent launch game. Some people just have to have the latest thing now now NOW, even when it flies in the face of logic.
So yeah, I'm not surprised that people are paying ridiculous amounts just to have it a few days early. People can be really stupid sometimes.
--
These aren't the droids you're looking for.
$265 to play a video game a few days early.
Surely an undersexed geek can think of a better way to blow $265????
Wouldn't this be a violation of the terms?
Maybe so, but it shouldn't be.
A covenant without a sword is but words among men. The problem with retail dates in the video game industry is that of enforcement. Sure the publishers, distrobution companies could sue the retail stores, but that would result in a bitter fight, and a lot of animosity. Stores compete with eachother locally to strenghthen their customer base, and one way that keeps coming up is this breaking of release dates as a method of getting customers to flock to a store in order to buy a copy of the latest game early.
Policy should be to just put the games on the shelf when they arrive in the stores, because timed releases are just foolish on a number of levels. If copies are just collecting dust waiting for a retail date, the store is losing money and the customers are losing patience. Some stores will follow retail dates and others will ignore them, at whatever the cost may be.
If video game companies just don't apply retail dates, stores can bid with the games companies to get early shipments at a slightly higher price, and the customer wins in the end because they can buy a copy earlier for a little more money. If they hold off and wait, they should get a discount on the games in proportion to the delay. Yes, there is an opportunity for some capitolist exploits if retail dates are a thing of the past, but supply and demand should not be controlled by anyone, IMHO, and supply and demand will still apply to a release model that does not support retail dates or try to enforce them.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
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!
Well actually, Meijer is a fairly big chain in these parts, so they'll probably just get a slap on the wrist, if that. This assumes that this wasn't some prearranged test marketing scheme.
To the making of books there is no end, so let's get started
I wonder if Microsoft has the XBox Live servers for Halo2 up and running yet? If not, its hardly worth the hassle of searching for an early copy.
Meijer's should have known better. They'll pay big for this. That will teach them. Next time, they'll give away free cracked copies of "Halo 3" or whatever. Anything is better than actually selling properly-licensed packaged software to customers for the proper price.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
When I use to work for a retailer.. if a major release was sold before the date we could be fined as much as $10,000 per copy that was sold. If Halo 2 is that drastic Meijer would be looking at a fairly hefty penalty.
"Imagination is more important than knowledge" -- Albert Einstein
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
J'avais joué le Halo 2 pendant deux semaines, et appris à parler français, aussi!
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
I remember the $150 version of the Matrix DVD being sold at Amazon a couple of months before the "normal priced" edition, and people spending that much just to have the movie early. Marketing at its best.
Meijer, for those unfamiliar is a BIG BOX store chain which probably moves a significant portion of video games.
The chain started, ages ago in the Holland/Grand Rapids area as Meijer Thrifty Acres, with a dutchboy in wooden shoes and pageboy haircut nicknamed Thrifty, as the mascot. It's like pairing Safeway and Target stores, food and general merchandise.
When they built one of these in my former home town of Midland, MI, it nearly killed all the other grocery stores in the city.
Don't kid yourself that Meijer would suffer some injuction. They're simply so big the left hand and right hand don't quite reach each other.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Please, if you don't know a thing about the video game industry perhaps you should not be making definitive statements that you're sure MS is going to sue over this. This is not ground-breaking news nor is it unusual for some store to break a release date. I've gotten quite a few games before the release date simply because some store is trying to get a leg up on the competition.
THIS ACCOUNT IS OFFICIALLY RETIRED/RETARDED.
How do you think Microsoft is gonna respond? With a court case of course.
Actually, back in the day I worked at blockbuster video and we were bound to release dates too. One day a couple movies were put on the shelves like 2 days early and corporate freaked. Turns out what the movie industry does (or did) was, IMO, far more sinister than a lawsuit. If the studios found that we put out one of their movies early they postponed their shipments by 90 days for a period of time (the period, i forget) but can you imagine a store (or franchise) being denied shipments of games for 90 days? Gives everyone else a bit of a competitive edge and completely screws the people who screwed up.. I think this is far more effective, and a better deturant than a lawsuit.
Personally my favorite part is -- That shows that not everybody solves everything in a court, and I love it.
-matt
I've lived in Michigan all my life, not far from Greenville where the first Meijer store was founded. I have to say, Meijer rocks. They do so much for the community.
One thing I just think is awesome, is that the Meijer family paid for the casting of a Leonardo da Vinci sculpture. The sculpture was to be a 22 foot tall bronze horse for the Duke of Milan. However, before Da Vinci could finish, the French invaded and used the horse as target practics. The Meijer family had two cast, one is now in Milan, the other sits in Fredrick Meijer Gardens in Grand Rapids.
Bugs are just features that have been fixed.
Halo ][
Since when does Apple make Halo?
The coolest voice ever.
Sadly, something tells me the two hours this youth spent in line to vote is about the same thing he's going to encounter Monday night.
Are there 'release dates' for white goods?
Of course not, they are practically commodities. People only shop for them when they move into a house or the old one dies, and no-one cares about being the first to get the latest kenmore.
But video game and movie consumers really do want to get the game/movie as soon as they can. The producers encourage this, but the demand would exist even without their encouragement. They are not controlling demand by having a first day of sale - it is logically impossible not to have a first day that a product is available.
If they did do what you said and allowed stores to sell as soon as they got it, that would artificially limit supply on the first days, allowing lucky retailers to gouge people that were willing to buy it, and hurting the sales of unlucky stores whose shipment arrived a day latter.
Given there is demand for a popular game, and that there has to be a first time that it is available, the most fair thing to do - for the retailers and the customers - is to make it available for all the retailers to sell on the same day.
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&cate gory=62053&item=8143942614&rd=1
And "Halo 2: Limited Collector's Edition Xbox" doesn't mean it comes with an xbox, the game itself is the limited collector's edition.
HL2 is great and all, but don't feed the sharks guys!
How do you know HL2 is great?
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
...so excited over a Microsoft software release.
The answers to that are:
A: Because they can
B: It is their core competency
C: Bill was picked on as a kid
D: Developers! Developers! Developers!
E: All of the above
Instead the interesting question is "Why does the user choose to be punished by Microsoft?"
=tkk
PS For everyone that missed it I was posting at least _a little_ tongue in cheek. Except the part about the dog - that really happened to a friend of a friend of mine. Really. Completely shaved.
Bill Gates - Creationist?!?
Yeah but I really hate those Covenant guys with the swords, especially the invisible ones.
--Won't that be grand? Computers and the programs will start thinking and the people will stop. - Dr. Walter Gibbs
Those of us who have used "Windows ME" asked that many times.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
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.
That is the problem. Meijer workers are forced to join unions, which really are nothing more than political organizations. They force members to contribute money to political causes that go against their interests, and really have nothing to do with whether or not you can do the job or how well you can do it. Like such an organization? Fine, your choice. But Meijer employees have no choice in membership. Wal-Mart employees, in contrast, are not forced to belong or give $$$$ to such organizations.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Meijer has a reputation for selling things inadvertently before the "drop" date. I've bought a few CDs there as much as two weeks before they were supposed to go on sale. I have a friend that works at one and I worked at one for a while. I got Madden 2k5 for the PS2 this way, also. I've heard that many stores' cash registers won't allow products to be scanned until the date.
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.
A covenant without a sword is but words among men.
A Covenant without a Sword is a lot easier to kill.
Next thing you know, CPU and video card manufacturers will start introducing new products at jacked-up prices and then tapering them down as they run out of deep-pockets customers.
rj