Walk-Ins Get 360 In April?

IGN has a piece talking to retail stores across the country about the upcoming 360 launch, and it doesn't look good. From the article: "According to retailers in San Francisco, Chicago, New York, Miami and Houston, there will be mass shortage of Xbox 360 units on the targeted launch date of November 22. IGN contacted dozens of stores around the country, including Gamestop, EB Games, Electronics Boutique, Target and Walmart. One short-tempered clerk at a Gamestop in New York estimated that Xbox 360 units will not be available for walk-in customers until April. That's right, April."

Comments

Re:"Real" shortage?

[shawb]

There's another reason to not believe game store employees: in the past, they have been instructed to lie to the customers about availability. I have friends who worked at various video game stores, and when a hot new item finally hit the market, they were supposed to tell the customer that there's only one or two left even if there was a whole pallete of PS2s, Wavebirds or whatever left. They almost never ran out of stock on release day or even the first week on highly anticipated releases.

The obvious benefits to the store for doing this are 1)it prevents the customer for shopping around. Not so much that prices are different, but many game stores have required bundles on release and it is the bundle where they really make their overhead. 2)Customers are more likely to pre-order in the future if they think the video game manufacturors don't really supply the full demand at launch.

Now it is possible that this is simply a regional thing. I live in the Midwest, so I can see how in other markets they do actually sell out. The larger markets wouldn't have a reason to lie about availability if they honestly do sell every unit they get. It is also possible that these friends of mine were lying, spreading a myth similar to cow tipping, but I would find it odd that people who were employed by all the major video game stores would have the same story. It is also possible that lying to the customer is now forbidden rather than encouraged (I always heard the lying was ordered from on high) but I don't really see this happening as that means their main competition is now Wal-Mart.