Will they prevent a second Blaze Attack on the servers?
After the first attempt went poorly, Nintendo of America is taking another crack at opening preorders for the Xenoblade Chronicles 3 special edition.
A specific time was not communicated in Nintendo's Twitter post announcing the sale, just that it would occur "on 6/30". The preorders will be limited to one per account for this round, after being capped at two in the round on June 8.
The first attempt was marred by a severe overload of the North American store's servers, even after the implementation of a queue for access to the site. Other territories had the presale for the limited edition contents occur without incident.
Pre-purchase for the #XenobladeChronicles3 Special Edition will be available on the My Nintendo Store on 6/30.
— Nintendo of America (@NintendoAmerica) June 29, 2022
Please note that you may be placed in a waiting room as pre-order requests are processed, and the purchase limit has been set at 1 per account. pic.twitter.com/g6bOJqcGwy
After posting that and waiting I did get through. Everything seemed to be working and logged in my account information and entered all the shipping and payment info and then got a message that the item was out of stock. Went back to the site and now there is no waiting room and it just shows the item out of stock. Wonder if I just missed out on one of the final copies since it wasn't saying I was out of stock until after I tried to make the payment.
Well, I wonder if that will be that or if there will be special editions made available after the game releases...
I was able to get my order through for this "stupid edition" and now I feel relived that I have secured the $30+ art book for my collection.
Since the Special Edition stuff won't be shipped until way later in the year, I do wonder why this stuff isn't made to order, as suggested above. Or maybe why there isn't an email-based invite system, similar to how Steam Deck reservations are handled. I get that logistics are hard and there's an expectation for immediate availability and delivery of goods. But these are collectors editions for (ideally) fans. I have never understood why there isn't a made-to-order queue (especially since Nintendo went with a direct-sale route) or some staggered batches of invitations to purchase.
These day-one sale frenzies and multi-hour virtual queue times just feel like a net-negative. The only conclusion I can think of is that some management at a high level truly believes that the noise from pre-order frustrations travels farther and faster than any Nintendo ad dollar and is a net-positive in getting the name of the product on the minds of many and sometimes unlikely people.
I don't know how even Nintendo could think that associating a new game with frustration and arbitrary tedium was a good marketing move.You're overthinking this if you believe this is part of some elaborate scheme. It's far simpler than that. Nintendo doesn't like excess. Full stop. It makes a set amount of a thing for an exact amount of profit then it moves on. Occasionally, it'll throw us a bone like that extra batch of NES Classic Editions. At the end of the day, Nintendo doesn't want to be left holding the bag.
Sooner or later, Nintendo's love of using scalpers to artificially increase demand for their games is going to backfire on them.Nintendo isn't doing this either. The audience for special editions is small. There's nothing to backfire. This special edition is what, $30 USD more than the standard version. With economies of scale, like $25 of that is profit. Cool, profit achievement unlocked. Nintendo will keep doing this because it isn't as if people will stop buying its special editions. Not defending this, just trying to be pragmatic. When there are no consequences, there's no reason to change.