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The Almighty Buck Entertainment Games

Whither the Impulse Shopper? 83

Posted by Zonk from the woo-games! dept.
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."
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Whither the Impulse Shopper? More

Whither the Impulse Shopper?

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  • Haha, impuse, (Score:1, Redundant)

    by kryogen1x ( 838672 )
    I'm curious, which store is the author trying to buy the PSP from?
    • I'm sure Walmart will have a few, and they don't do preorders... Have fun fighting people for one though ;)

    • Re:Haha, impuse, (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Ayaress ( 662020 ) on Sunday March 20, 2005 @07:58PM (#11994168) Journal
      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.
      • "stores weave gloom and doom about it taking months to restock and then two weeks later, we're all playing happily at home..."

        Guess you wern't around this Christmas when the Slim PS2's were launched.

  • Preorder or nothing! (Score:5, Informative)

    by ZephyrXero ( 750822 ) <zephyrxero@nOsPAM.yahoo.com> on Sunday March 20, 2005 @07:52PM (#11994131) Homepage Journal
    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...
    • So basically... 1) Only get games people pre-order 2) ????? 3) Profit! Sounds like a winning plan to me.
    • Of course they are shooting themselves in the foot.

      The only reason we have game stores is because there is a sizable impulse buy market. Otherswise publishers would cut retailers out and get more profit.

      Maybe they think they can get people to impulsivly buy pre-orders, but that seems a stupid bet to make.

      If there is a specific game I want I will usually just order online, and I am sure I am not the only one.
    • So basically EB is expecting customers to do for them what Managers traditionally did in the past. Know their customer base and order accordingly.

      Personally, if I dont' get it on release day, so fucking what? I'm not paid by EB, and I"m not going to do their market research for them.

      That's what you get when you aspire to hire High School dropouts to manage your stores. (no offense to the parent poster, I'm commenting on the general practices of chains like EB, rather than his specific situation. Guy could

  • Nah.. (Score:5, Informative)

    by RaboKrabekian ( 461040 ) on Sunday March 20, 2005 @07:57PM (#11994161) Journal
    Go to Best Buy, Circuit City, Wal-Mart, or Target (or a similar store). You'll be able to fine one without a problem.

    • Re:Nah.. (Score:3, Interesting)

      by nicksthings ( 678040 )
      I was told that one company in particular (not any of the ones you mentioned) had "cornered" the market on them, taking so many reserves, and pretty much telling Sony "Hey, we need more of these fuckers," and got their way. According to one Best Buy ad I saw, it claimed they'd only be getting 20 PSP systems at launch. And if Sony's previous efforts are any indication (including the recent slim PS2 systems), then finding one of these things isn't going to be as easy as walking into Circuit City and asking f

      • Re:Nah.. (Score:4, Insightful)

        by superpulpsicle ( 533373 ) on Sunday March 20, 2005 @10:05PM (#11995053)
        If you read the sunday flyers, BestBuy is opening their store extra early on Thursday. This whole create-demand by cutting supply concept is getting played out. Stores are so afraid to have even 1 extra inventory nowadays it's scary.

    • that is my game plan if I decide to take the plunge and buy one
  • 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.

  • How about we flip this? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    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 a

  • What more does she want?! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by SimplePaul ( 807846 ) on Sunday March 20, 2005 @09:02PM (#11994563)
    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.

  • Why preorder OR buy right after release? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Gothic_Walrus ( 692125 ) on Sunday March 20, 2005 @09:16PM (#11994674) Journal
    So what if it's hard to find a game right after release?

    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. ;)

  • 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!

  • Stocking is expensive. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by silentbobdp ( 157345 ) on Sunday March 20, 2005 @09:28PM (#11994766) Homepage
    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.

    • Re:Stocking is expensive. (Score:4, Interesting)

      by n0wak ( 631202 ) on Sunday March 20, 2005 @10:15PM (#11995108) Homepage Journal
      It only helps the big triple-A release companies.

      This dependence on preorders HURTS the smaller games and prevents them from getting into gamer's hands. Take Katamari Damacy, for example. This game got a LOT of word-of-mouth buzz after release. BUT, well, you see, the geniuses at EB and other game retailers decided that this was a game that only warranted three/four copies per store. And, just like that, there was a massive shortage of the game AT NO FAULT OF THE PUBLISHER.

      I also had a store sell my preordered copy of a game to someone other than me this week, and since everyone ordered only one copy of this game, I can't fucking get it now.

      I'm so sick of game retailers and their bullshit (like the new game "warranty" scam that EB has going) that I'm pretty much going to try to rely on the bigger brand electronics retailers for my game purchases (Best Buy and Futureshop).
    • Reserving new to Japan? No. I have either lived or visited Tokyo for the last 10 years, and I have been reserving stuff the whole time. Why the lines? Marketing, sales, advertisement. It looks great in the newspaper to see a huge line of people getting your product. Some are reserved, others are left for opening. Great for biz.
    • You don't actually have to stay in them -- thats just shops in Tokyo's Akihabara district, where some sort of nerdon particles emantating from the dense collection of electronics draws geeks like moths to a flame. Its like lining up for Star Wars -- standing in the line is a chance to hang out with your buddies, meet people, and generally express your geekhood. Japan is king of the "rediculous redundancy in distribution" game, which means rather than going to one of the big super-stores you can travel to
  • I don't know about anyone else, but whenever I pre-order something its usually at most 3 days before the item's launch. Always seems to work for me.

  • Gamestop (Score:4, Interesting)

    by miyako ( 632510 ) <[moc.liamg] [ta] [okayim]> on Monday March 21, 2005 @12:13AM (#11995693) Homepage Journal
    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.
    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, ,$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.
    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.
  • Gee, do you think choking off supply translates into lost sales somehow ? The funniest/saddest thing is, artifical scarcity actually does seem to influence some peoples' perceptions of a product.
    • You think it does? I don't know, Sony has been doing it for years. With a hyped enough product, not only does it not hurt sales, it helps them in the long run. When people are fighting in stores or bidding $500 on ebay for something that was launched three days ago for $200, then it's a sure bet that every shipment you send out will get sold out very quickly for a good while. That means you can get away with selling at the top price longer before you drop it, and the attention also benefits related merchand
  • I've always had terrible luck with pre-orders. Back when I worked at Gamestop, it seemed like everytime I pre-ordered a game, we wouldn't get enough copies in, and the policy was that employees couldn't get their games unless there were enough for all the customers that preordered. Usually, the reason we wouldn't get enough copies is because we'ld take preorders the night before the game was supposed to arrive. No one else could figure out that the preorders had probably already been shipped so you can't
    • You can always back out a reserve and get your money back or put it towards something else. No one forced you to buy Enter The Matrix - and if you reserved and picked it up, you probably would've bought it anyway.
      • Yeah, you can back out on reserves, but that's just more hassle. Like when Gamestop decided to sell that last Zelda gameboy game for $35 instead of $30 like everywhere else, I had to go there and bitch for my money back, and then go to a different store (where I had no problems getting it without a reservation). I would have been much easier if I'ld never preordered it in the first place. The point of preordering is to make life simpler, not harder.

        As for Enter the Matrix, yeah, no one forced me to bu
  • She's bitching that there won't be enough PSPs for everyone. Congratulations. We've known this since NOVEMBER! They delayed the European launch just to have more here.
    And don't harp on the 48 hour limit like it's the end of the world. They still have your money when you finally do get it. That isn't going anywhere.
    Face the facts, girly, the only reason a PSP won't be available for pickup at the store that day for you is because enough people saw fit to show they want one more than you do. If you can't handl
  • 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
  • Supply and demand. We have known for months that:

    1. Sony would not ship anywhere near the numbers they said they would, and even if they did, 1 Million wouldn't be enough.

    2. The only way to get one guarenteed is to pre order it, back before feb 24, in my particular area - the day the preordeers filled at all the shops I usually visit.

    And last of all, 3. If you want to face the screaming masses at Wal-Mart, Be my guest. PSP's will be extorted on ebay Thurs Afternoon, and 100% profit is enough to bring

  • Sell people what they want to buy. It's funny how it works out. When GT4 came out a few weeks ago I stopped by my local Gamespot, only to be told, that they had "none at all", with a smirk, even though I could see dozens in a box behind the counter. Well, OK, I said. Went to EB Games, asked if they had any, the salesperson asked if I preordered - "Nope." - funny, he still gave me a game. So he obviously wasn't worried about some irate customer coming in and not getting the game they preordered - this must
  • ... whose authors are not all women.

    Sanford May, the person who wrote the entry linked in this story, is a MAN.

    I humbly suggest you all stop calling him a bitch and comparing him to your annoying girlfriend. Thanks.

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