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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."
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...
"A truly wise man realizes he knows nothing."
Go to Best Buy, Circuit City, Wal-Mart, or Target (or a similar store). You'll be able to fine one without a problem.
"Moderate drinking can help prevent amputated limbs" -- Abigail Zuger, NYTimes, 12/31/02
Probably doesn't matter. We've all been through Sony launches before, we know the drill. They promise fewer units than people demand, they deliver fewer than they promise, stores weave gloom and doom about it taking months to restock and then two weeks later, we're all playing happily at home waiting until the inevitable disk read error or stuck button pops up to remind us why we told ourselves not to buy the next Sony system for at least three months after launch.
If there were no pre-orders the fanboys would just wait outside at opening and you'd have a half hour of chaos before they were all gone. Pre-orders actually allow the casual gamer to get a particular item they may happen to be looking forward to but not be able to line up pre-dawn like a Dead-head to get one. They're a good thing.
Games are still a somewhat risky business.
If you live in a town of a modest size, unless it's a HUGE title (ie a Halo, FF, Zelda, etc.), stores aren't going to stock dozens of copies on the launch day. Even guessing how many copies a "big" game will sell is risky business. Just ask any local game store how many CASES of Crystal Chronicles they still have in stock.
PSP shipments are going to be light at first, and if a store takes preorders, those are taken away from walk-ins on launch. So your choices are to either preorder, or try your luck at a store that doesn't take orders, and hope you get one.
If you don't like it, shop elsewhere. But don't be surprised when your local WalMart only has 15 PSPs on launch, half of them sold before the street date, and the other half snapped up by someone to put on Ebay.
I'm fucking tired of hearing my friends whine about how they have to wait a week to get game "X" simply because they were too lazy to pony up $5. You'd think people would've learned their lesson from the PS2 launch...
Video games only seem to sell out at video game stores on launch day. I've gotten those 3 titles on launch day (WoW CE even), a Nintendo DS, and various other games/system dating back a good 9 or so years without preordering, ever.
I remember the first time I encountered the idea of preordering. I went to my local EB to pick up a copy of Fighter Maker for the PS (yes, crapfest, I know). They had several copies in the case behind the counter, but wouldnt sell one to me because I didn't preorder. It was rather late in the day, clearly those copies were going to sit there all night, but their only response was to come back tomorrow and buy it. How they could pass up an easy sale on a non-so-hot game suprised me, but they wouldn't budge. In the end, I walked 3 stores down and purchased a copy at a KB Toystore, no preordering, no coming back tomorrow.
My advice to everyone is do yourselves a favor and use EB, Gamestop, and the like for older/used games only. Your local Wal-mart or other retail chain will probably meet all your release day needs, whithout you lining their pockets with your hard-earned money before you can even get what you want.
What does this woman want?
1. An item is in HUGE demand
2. People pay extra to secure an item without having to queue from 3am
3. Game retailer makes more money and provides a service gladly taken advantage of by the customer
4. Customer can look forward to a happy day
It works
If you want something hard to get, you have to play the game. So to speak.
Wait a few months. There are many, many good titles out there that you've never played and that you can pick up cheaply at EB or GameStop.
Enjoy those for a while. Eventually, your title will either fall in price (Beyond Good and Evil, most PC titles) or will be rereleased as a Greatest Hit / "value" title (most of the bigger console titles).
Trust me...it works well. Especially on the slight chance that you recognize this screen name from one of the other sites that I frequent. ;)
Goo goo g'joob.
I hear there's plenty of N-Gage's available right now, and you don't even have to pre-order. Hurry for supply and demand!
Guess what folks? Reserves exist for two reasons:
1) To help the company. In scenarios like Halo 2 they really don't - a lot of stores still have literally hundreds of Halo 2 reserves not picked up, from years before the release. But many stores had almost all their GTAs or their Splinter Cells go the first day. Stocking games - and game systems - is fucking EXPENSIVE. This is why UPS and FedEx are such a big deal now - it's cheaper to hold things in one place and send them where they need to go when they're needed.
2) Yes, to help the customer. You know those HUGE 300+ person lines you see someone posting for every fucking game in Japan? This is because reserving is a relatively new thing there. Reserving DOES make your life easier.
Now, some people do things the wrong way - I've never held back a game from a customer or anything like that, and I'm in a management position in one of the US's two big game specialty stores. In fact I've never known of anyone being told to do this - it would probably be considered "padding your numbers" and get someone fired.
It could be worse - we could be selling you a credit card or something.
--Moo.
I've always liked the way Gamestop handles pre-orders (or at least the Gamestop I usually go to, not sure if they all have the same policy). Basically, although you have to put money down to pre-order a game, you are welcome to put down as much or as little as you want, and whatever you put down is taken off the price when you pick up the game. If for some reason they are unable to get enough copies of the game to fill all the pre-orders, then people who put down the most on the game get theirs first. ,$foo, in-stock, you can pick it up starting tomorrow at 10 am. Usually I'm up-to-date on release dates, but occasionally it's a nice suprise, since I've already paid for the game I can go pick it up without worrying about my current financial situation.
What I like about this system is that when I hear about a new game that I'm really excited about, I can go and pay for the entire thing, and then forget about it, and the day before the game is released I get a call saying "we have your game,
Whenever there is a thread about pre-orders, people always mention just waiting until there are more copies and the price drop, but I generally like to get a game soon after it's release just because (except during the holidays) the good games worth playing are spaced out so that generally by the time one comes out, I've finished the last great game and probably played through a couple of mediocre bargin-bin titles.
Famous Last Words: "hmm...wikipedia says it's edible"
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.
(From the Laws of Japanese Animation) Law of Inherent Combustibility -- Everything explodes. Everything.