slop101

EB & Gamestop sold out of the 2 copies they got. ToysRUs & Target never heard of it.

The Gamestop guys told me I should have pre-ordered it - how the f--k am I gonna do that when I hadn't even heard of the game before yesterday? Shouldn't it be your job to have something you're supposed to sell in stock and up for sale - maybe you just don't know your business when you're only getting 2 copies of a brand new game that people want? What a bunch of a--holes - telling me I should pre-order something just so they don't have to do their jobs.

Ugh.

If the grocery store were run by Gamestop people:
"Oh you want milk and eggs? You should have preordered, because we only got enough to fill the preorders and won't get anymore 'till next week."

PixyJunket

Gamestop and EB are evil, one should only go there to look and possibly buy used games for olders systems.

vhgong

I preordered mine at EBWorld. Great game except the voice of the princess is kinda annoying.

Kicker_of_Elves

They had about 6 copies at the local wally world last night. Might want to try them.

Groucho

Kicker_of_Elves

Adam Tyner

I find EB pretty useful to pick up high-profile titles at the same price and a couple of days before the usual mass-merchandise retailers. They otherwise aren't my first choice...

squidget

Ok
Uhm
What game is this?
from all the hoopla and the crazy title it sounds interesting

vhgong

Its kinda like Devil May Cry but in the fantasy world of Japanese Mythology.

Groucho

There's a demo in last month's OXM. Pretty cool game.

Not A N00b

I work at a Gamestop and the company ships quantities of games to stores based on how many reservations the store had for the title. My store had one reservation for Otogi. We got a total of 3, one to cover the res and 2 extra. If we had like 20 reservations for it we would have recieved enough to cover the reservations and a bunch more because then the store seems like a good place for sell through on Otogi. The game will probably sell just like Ikaruga, sell out the first 1 or 2 shipments, then nothing until its discontinued and we stop carrying it.

So don't get your panties in a bunch. Its not really that hard to reserve something, and you can get your $5 measly bucks back if you dont want it.

tenaciousdave

Hmmmm, so how many people have heard about this game, 1 or 2? There was no huge demand for it. How about we order 50 copies per of Furious Karting on release day? No one's ever heard of it. Store's don't order a ton of copies of a game because no store want's to get stuck with 50 copies of Barbie's Race and Ride. I think it would be better to stay more informed then demand retailers stock tons of every no name game. BTW, I reserved mine and it's awesome.

menaz

Devil May Cry type? Hmm, been hoping for one like that.

I never heard of it either, seems logical retailers wont have a bunch.

Consider the people of this forum are fairly informed about new releases and it seems a lot of us never heard of it.

Shimmer35

Exactly. Gamestop or EB associates do not order product for their store, it is sent automatically by the computer. So therefore telling you about pre-ordering games is doing their job. That way they provide you with a service that will have your copy set aside for you so you don't have to go about searching all over for a game. So, saying that they aren't doing their job only makes you look like an ass. It's not their fault, think before you speak.

BTW, this is only constructive criticism. Don't get pissed at me

Gizmo

Here's another person who does not understand how pre-ordering not only helps themselves, but the store.

So if my store gets no pre-orders for Otogi, would my distribution center send me 10 copies? Heck no. They will send me 2 and see how they sell. If I pre-order 5 titles, they see it may be possible and send me an additional 5-6 copies. So by pre-ordering you not only guarantee yourself a copy, but help others out as well.

Don't go into every store expecting to find a game and getting pissed off when they ask you if you pre-ordered.

RyoHazuki

The demo was pretty nifty I thought. Its probably because Im a sucker for games where you can destroy buildings and such.

slop101

I'm just saying how the hell am I supposed to pre-order a game when I don't know about it unit AFTER it has already been released?

There's no need to pre-order popular games, because there will be plenty of those come release day (there were STACKS of SC when it came out last week) - But less popular games, like Otogi, need to be pre-ordered - but it's so under the radar that the customer doen't know enough about it to pre-order - that is the inherent problem with preordering.

FlashStash

You mean it is too much to expect a game STORE to actually have games for sale?

Reservations are a sham...they take reservations months in advance, and they get to earn interest off your $5 for all of those months (multiply that $5 by the total nmber of reservations and you'll see it adds up to quite a chunk of change). I shouldn't be the one that's supposed to 'help out my fellow gamers'....that's the store's responsibility.

Go over to Penny Arcade to see their rant on this very topic.

FS

Gizmo

So you expect us to have 50 copies of Otogi? If knowone pre-ordered or, meaning knowone showed intrest in it, our distribution center will only send us a few. Why should they send us 10 copies, and then have us only sell 2 and the other 8 sit there till they are marked down to nothing. Sorry, that dosn't make to much sense to me. But I guess who really gives a ****** as long as any person can go into any store and buy it.

$5 gaining intrest? Oh yeah, im sure we make TONS of intrest off of that. I'll be sure to tell my distribution center how much Muppet Party Cruise will sell and for them to ship us 50 copies, no wait, 500 copies! Yes, that makes sense...

Gizmo

Wow! Now this is what I will start doing to teach these customers a lesson!

" My manager was literally cringing when we got about 60 extra copies of Soul Calibur 2 after the reserved copies were held. I, along with the other employees, were instructed to tell people that if they didn't reserve it, we MIGHT have one or two copies left, and that they had lucked out this time, so they'd better reserve games in the future. "

Bingo!

FlashStash

If a store operates under the assumption that the customers 'need to be taught a lesson'...they will soon cease to be a store.

Any company with any kind of business knowledge should be able to estimate demand. And for the people who don't like pre-ordering, do what I do when they offer a freebie with a pre-order. Take the freebie for the pre-order, then when the game is released, get your $5 refunded and go buy the game at Best Buy.

Gizmo, any idea how many unnecessary pre-orders there were for Soul Calibur? Take that x5 and you have a nice interest-free loan to Gamestop/EB...I don't think they're as flip as you about the pre-order money they collect.

FS

Groucho

I saw this on the shelf yesterday at CompUSA.

zero

I wortk for a game store much like Gizmo (in fact its the same companyI dont "get" this interest theory of yours, so Im not going to pretend I do by trying to prove you wrong. However I will say this. On a daily basis Gizmo and I deal with people like slop, who ask for a game that we dont have. WE tell them the release date is about X ammount of months away, and if they would like to pre-order. They mostly reply "Nah man its ok I'll get it later." X ammount of months later the customer rolls into our store asking "so did my game come in?" To which we reply "What game?" They tell us the title and to which we have to reply "No we sold out" or "No we didnt even get that as a title." If the customer gets pissed it's litteraly not my fault or Gizmo's fault. Case in point...Ikaruga was about a month away. I didnt feel like buying at another store, and my boss told me that any game we may not get...pre-order it especially if its something youre looking forward to, and maybe other customers will want it too. I pre-orderd it and I was the only one. So they sent us two copies. Mean me and some other guy are enjoying the game now.

I dont care if my company makes interest off youyr hard earned or begged $5, all I care about is that my customers leave with the games they want, and to please not bitch me out when we dont have the games they want. I;ve learned in a not so direct way that customers can make or break a store. If they arent pre-ordering a title they "cant live without" then I guess that dont want it that badly now do they?

FlashStash

Wrong...Slop didn't ask for the game before release. He didn't hear about the game until AFTER it's release and then came in looking for it.

I can go in Best Buy right now and pick up just about any DVD that came out in the past year...no need to pre-order, they're right there on the shelf. How many customers COULD you have sold games towho came into the store looking for it and left without seeing it there? Which would be the better solution?

A. Berate the customer for not pre-ordering, which does nothing but lock in a future purchase for the store, when for 90% of release games the customer would have been better off getting it cheaper at Best Buy?

-or-

B. Having the game in-stock so the customer can purchase they game they want?

Game stores already lose out on price to sales at CC/BB...they should be pushing service and breadth of title selection, not telling people "you should have pre-ordered!". Forecasting demand is not that hard to do, and pre-ordering is not a replacement for that.

FS

Gizmo

Being Otogi JUST came out a few days ago, it would be sold out at most places. It wasn't a huge release title (Infact, I just heard of the game 2 weeks ago) at all. Now sure, you may be able to go into Best Buy and find it for $47.99, but what happens when, *GASP*, you don't like the game! Best Buy will NOT return it, PERIOD. You go into a videogame store (Most don't have this policy anymore, but always make exceptions), buy the game, hate it, and you could be allowed to return it for another one. So the extra $3 saved at Best Buy and your STUCK with a crapp game, or an extra $3 and you have a good chance of switching it out for a good game.

Flash, have you ever worked for a videogame store? We don't decide how many copies of a certain title we receive, the distribution center sends them to us. When they see not one person has pre-ordered the title, they won't send us many. When we get a few pre-orders, they see other's may infact want it. The people that work in the distribution center's do NOT work inside videogame stores, so they do not know what kind of demand a game may be (infact many don't even own videogame systems nor can tell one apart from another).

But I see we must be punished because someone went looking for a game that was not a big title (a pretty small one infact) on the day or day after it comes out. Oh well. I will get to smile alot today when people come in asking for Fever 2004 and I simply ask them "Did you Pre-order? Remember you raved about how much you wanted this game, and you refused to put the measly $5 down? Were sold out. Feel free to go to the nearest Best Buy or Target, where it may be in stock (Not always on the release date) for the SAME price ".

EYE TOY FOREVER!