RF Generation Message Board

Found this article on Kotaku a while ago. It's huge so I'll just post the link and a few snippets of it:

EXPOSED! The Ugly Truth of Pre-Ordering Pushing: Part One (http://www.thebbps.com/blog/2007/06/07/exposed-the-ugly-truth-of-pre-ordering-pushing-part-one/)


A very interesting article for many reasons. Most people don't realize that EB Canada is somewhat of a separate entity. Half the time buying games in Canada is by importing them from the states. Dozens of games I personally have had interest in every year either never got sold here, didn't receive pre-order bonus's or special editions, or only 1 copy for like a 300 mile radius.

Very strange because some items that I know Americans have had trouble finding are practically overflowing. We've never had a DS shortage here, in fact we had so many they were stacking them by the case. Even when the Lite came out you could walk in within a couple of days of it's release and find one. Even stranger you could still buy SNES, Genesis and Dreamcast games new up to a couple of years ago depending on the game. All because of this over-saturation of stock, not to mention half of the games I see on rarity lists are a dime a dozen.

The problem is whether your in the US or Canada, you can never fully predict what will be hard to find and what you can buy somewhere else cheaper. A game you expect to be high in demand may only get 2 copies per store i.e. GHII or such while sometimes an obscure franchise who's name you can't pronounce get's 20. Fifteen of which end up in the bargain bin within 2 weeks.

I mean really, what kind of retailer would think that nobody would buy the CE edition of Splinter Cell for the 360? or Star Trek for the DS/PSP? Well apparently EB Canada is one of them. With a population 10 times our size no wonder you have so many different retailers for video games in the US. You need that many to combine together so you can find what your looking for. Game shopping must be a multistage process whether your price-shopping or not. Like buying bread at one market and milk from another because one doesn't sell both.

I know retail space is a factor as well. With so many systems out there each square foot of the store has to be measured out according to what's selling and what isn't. I read somewhere that a new trend of "roaming stock" is popular these days. They keep the stock on trucks because it's cheaper than maintaining a warehouse. Of course that also means delays and limited space which no doubt lends a helping hand to their being choosier about what titles they decide to sell.

Gamestop/EB may be wary of digital distribution and how it threatens their bottom line but they sure aren't showing how the brick and mortar way is any bit more convenient, cheaper or have better variety. Ironic that games are a bigger industry now than ever and yet fewer retailers are around to sell them than there were 10 years ago.

I read that on Kotaku too, it was a pretty good read. I don't buy from Gamestop/EB anymore because I really don't like how they treat their customers. Best Buy is my store for new games.

http://preorderpushers.wordpress.com/

Great site about (mainly) Gamestop stupidity. Here are some of my favorite entires:

http://preorderpushers.wordpress.com/2007/06/07/you-simply-must-have-the-new-hd-dvd-add-on-its-devine/
http://preorderpushers.wordpress.com/2007/06/07/detroit-is-the-new-liberty-city/
http://preorderpushers.wordpress.com/2007/06/07/hillel-evator/
http://preorderpushers.wordpress.com/2007/06/07/its-insane-i-know-theyre-selling-it-at-a-200-loss/
http://preorderpushers.wordpress.com/2007/06/07/just-five-dollars-down-guarantees-you-a-copy-on-the-day-the-game-comes-out/
http://preorderpushers.wordpress.com/2007/06/07/evil-eb/
http://preorderpushers.wordpress.com/2007/06/06/i-didnt-know-girls-really-played-games/
http://preorderpushers.wordpress.com/2007/06/05/a-technicality/
http://preorderpushers.wordpress.com/2007/06/05/we-dont-carry-adventure-games-we-only-carry-big-name-games-like-halo-and-gta-and-madden-football/
http://preorderpushers.wordpress.com/2007/06/05/maniac-mansion-is-the-worst-game-ever-made/
http://preorderpushers.wordpress.com/2007/06/05/hes-seven-and-wants-a-fighting-game/
http://preorderpushers.wordpress.com/2007/06/05/ds-is-a-palm-pilot/

This whole site is genius, and it only start up two days ago.

I merged the topic. Tondog did not just go crazy with double posting  ;)

- Captain_N

Ha ha, Canada sucks.

thanks for the site, i've been checking out some stories.

nice site, stories about abunch a douchebags

[img width=700 height=313]http://www.duelinganalogs.com/comics/2007-04-30.png[/img]

[img width=428 height=379]http://duelinganalogs.com/uploads/gestapo.gif[/img]

http://www.zestuff.com/da/apparel/577/ If you wanna order the shirt.

lol, maybe i reserve the right to kick your ass.

Tan, pay no attention to Leon. As we all know, he's a hater of anything that's not Leon. 8)

Word!

What? He posted?  :slick:

Leon rocks!

But we don't have a rock throwing smiley.... This is the best I can do  :gunpistols:

I've never been to Canada, so I have no idea what goes on in Gamestop there. But the points in that article are pretty true of any video game retailer I've ever worked for, not just EB/Gamestop. Reservations are totally stupid on just about anything but hardware. I don't think I've seen a launch shortage of any popular game software in like ten years. Even when Vice City came out, almost all the stores had plenty on launch day.

They sold out of Gears of War here. I'm glad I reserved my copy. 8)

Frankly, I don't see how this roll-over business is news. It is pretty obvious the way they hype the shit out of a title until it comes out and then that same day or the day after change all the posters and cut-outs in the store to an upcoming title from the same genre.

Only game I've preordered is Elebits because it came with a cute little plushie and I'm a sucker for things like that!   :-\

you know when i worked for GS i thought reserves were useful if you had a definite intention of picking a game up or it was some lesser known title. what pissed me off was not all games were reservable. For example, when cooking mama came out we sold out within the first day and the demand for copies was insane (even though we pushed the shit out of it to people looking for ds games for their young girls). the company is stupid for making select titles reservable.

The only thing I see myself putting a reserve on in the future is Smash Bros. Brawl.

I think the last games I reserved was Steel Battalion for the Xbox.

Plus reservations are "part of their commission" which i know at least at gamecrazy was a lie.

They had stopped giving people commission for reserves but kept saying you would recieve them.

System/Game warranties, reserves, membership cards, disc buffs, are all supposed to give employees commission.

In all actuallity though the employee is tricked into pushing these things and the company makes almost a pure profit off of them while they see a minimal or no return for it.
Unless your a manager then you get a nice bonus at the end of the year for your store doing good.

I did a work around of bothering customers with preorders and would just preorder 20-100$s in stuff refund my cash and make me look good.

Doesn't look good for the store when their preorder/reserve turn around %age sucks but what did i care. I wasn't the manager :)

Part Two is up!

http://www.thebbps.com/blog/2007/06/08/exposed-the-ugly-truth-of-pre-order-pushing-part-two/

This is even better than the first one. I highly recommend reading the conclusion.

The most interesting part of this installment is how he mentions just how much money GameStop makes on forgotten pre-orders.

thanks for the 2nd part tondog great read