Whither the Impulse Shopper?

An essay discussing the frustrations of the pre-order graces the pages of GameGirl Advance today. From the article: "I have had explained to me this morning, very pleasantly by an earnest young man, how there will be no PSPs available for drop-in customers on Thursday, and how, because of this, if I haven't pre-ordered, I won't be getting one for months, windfall tax refund or not."

Comments

Preorder or nothing!

[ZephyrXero]

I worked at EB for a few years and this is the way their business model is setup. Someone decides/predicts how well a game or product will sell and order a certain number of them for each store. If a game does not have alot of buzz around it, then they'll usually only order 1 or 2 copies for each store, if that many... The preorder system works somewhat independant of this, and any games preordered are guarenteed to come in...blah,blah,blahh... I'm sure you've heard the shpeel before. Anyway, if a great game comes out yet no one pre-orders it and there's not a whole lot of buzz for it, they'll only bring in one copy usually, and because of this it sells poorly and it's a downward spiral/vicious cycle from there. As for extremely popular stuff, because there are limited quantities they require a pre-order so the stores that have more customers wanting one will get one, which actually makes sense...but most shoppers are unaware of this system and get screwed like the guy who submitted this article...

Nah..

[RaboKrabekian]

Go to Best Buy, Circuit City, Wal-Mart, or Target (or a similar store). You'll be able to fine one without a problem.

My 2 Cents on Preorders

[Da Rabid Duckie]

I manage an video game store, and for one I believe that the preorder system is necessary. It does need some work, but it IS necessary. As it stands right now, the presell system is set up as a bargaining chip to use with vendors for product allocation. It's like the stock market, either you invest in it and the industry flourishes, or you ignore it and it crashes.

When talking preorders, systems are a bit of an anomaly. There's hardly enough supply to cover the demand, and I'm already presold halfway into my second shipment of PSP systems. With systems, you not only need presells on the systems but on the games themselves. In the case of the PSP, Sony communicates this policy to our buyers: The more systems we sell that also contain first-party accessories/games, the more allocation our company is guaranteed when it comes time to purchasing more systems. I don't get it (or much of it) if no one preorders it, so if I'm not selling any copies of Ridge Racer with those PSPs I'm pretty much guaranteeing a shortage in my area, because Sony will sell the systems I could have had to another company.

See, I have no control whatsoever on what comes into my store aside from whatever I can muster from preorders, or from store transfers AFTER the product releases (the latter which cuts into my bottom dollar from shipping costs). Preorders affect product allocation, and if I can't get any preorders I'm probably getting one or two... sometimes none. I didn't get a single copy of Alien Hominid or Painkiller: Battle out of Hell because no one preordered it. However, I had a few reserves for MVP Baseball 2005, so I got my reserves plus a few extra because the company saw that there was demand for it at my store. Because those people preordered it, I had a few to sell to walk-ins. I've learned something since then, and it's that a smart manager will have three or four $5 presells which will float around towards presells on various obscure but sure-to-be-popular titles (Katamari Damacy, any Nippon Ichi title, etc) just to get at least one in the store. I guarantee that it's something I do now, and it works. In short, preordering doesn't only help yourself, it helps out impulse shoppers as well because stores get extras if they get a lot of reserves.