http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/blogArt.cfm?artid=16169
You want to know what should be a rare occurrence? Walking into a game retailer and finding that they can't sell you a new game (less than a week old) because they accidentally ran out. However, it's not a rare occurrence at all. In fact, if the game isn't Halo 3 and you didn't pre-order, there's an extremely good chance that this will happen. Why?
The first problem is that not all publishers offer price protection. You may be wondering, "What is price protection and why is it important anyway?" It means that if a retailer orders ten copies of Super Mario Galaxy and only sells five before Nintendo drops the price, Nintendo will credit the retailer money to account for the price cut. This is a good strategy because it encourages the retailer to stock a lot of copies so that customers can actually buy them. However, it is something of a risk to Nintendo because it means that they are responsible for every copy of Super Mario Galaxy on shelves rather than letting the game retailers be responsible. Of course, to minimize this risk, Nintendo only offers this protection to big chains (Wal-Mart, EB Games and so on). Further minimizing this risk is the fact that physical copies of games cost relatively little to manufacture (the money is mostly in the development time and marketing).
The really sad thing is that even with that protection in place, retailers still run out of a game quite easily. Even worse, that protection isn't always available since small publishers can't always afford it. But do game retailers really need this kind of protection? I mean, can't they shoulder a bit of the risk themselves to ensure that they actually have product to sell? And does it always have to be a risk? You would think that it would be pretty easy to predict that a minimal supply of the latest Castlevania game on the DS isn't going to cut it. Yet I recall having to drive quite far to pick-up Dawn of Sorrow when it was released (I'm lazy about pre-orders especially when I think they shouldn't be necessary). It's understandable for a retailer to unexpectedly run out of a game because it came from out of nowhere and earned a lot of incredible reviews, but it's completely unacceptable when the game has a numeral in its title.
Ah, but why do I worry so much? The game industry has a solution to this problem. They simply make us go into their stores twice for each game we want and make us pay for part of the game ahead of time. And we happily oblige them. Meanwhile a fan of books or movies can walk into their respective stores and buy their new releases with no fear of the store running out of copies and without placing a pre-order. In short, I've seen the faces of the morons running the game industry, and they look a lot like us. Want to do your part to end this stupidity? Stop pre-ordering games, and if GameStore runs out of their initial shipment before you get a copy, make a point to pick the game up from somewhere else. That'll show'em.
Why do I get the feeling that no one else is going to think this is a good idea?
Topic: The Game Industry is Run by MoronsThe Game Industry is Run by Morons (Read 18502 times)
