
This is a sad song for 360 owners to hear, the wounds of 360 shortages still fresh for many of us. Shortages of the most anticipated 360 title thus far only add salt to those wounds. Who's to blame here?
- A marketing ploy by Ubisoft to get blogs and gaming sites all over the world to write paragraphs like the one that precedes this bullet point, where sycophantic fanboys gush nonsense like calling GR:AW "the most anticipated 360 title thus far"?
- An unfortunate underestimation by Ubisoft of what percentage of 360 owners would buy their title? It's unlikely they would knowingly not make enough, they're just discs!
- A coordinated effort on the part of specialty-game retailers to convince gamers to pre-order games when we all know there's no reason they should ever sell out.
[Thanks, todd--who was actually pretty composed]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
3-08-2006 @ 6:15PM
Malcolm said...
I would have rushed to the store to get mine, but my xbox 360 is getting repaired right now.
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3-08-2006 @ 6:16PM
J Money said...
I got mine at Gamestop today. Here in Albuquerque, NM, (the Zuni store for you locals). I did reserve it less than 24hrs ago and went over there on my lunch break to pick it up. There were a few dorks there in line picking up their copy too. I don't believe in the reservation systems but so happened to want to trade in some old DVD's yesterday and was told to put this on reserve since it was coming out in less than 24hrs. Gamestop is even running a special now, if you trade in 2 used Xbox 360 games you get GRAW free. Laterz Kameo and Madden!
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3-08-2006 @ 6:18PM
Weapon360 said...
Pre-ordered it here at an EB Games in San Diego. Got my copy and only played the tutorial level and a quick match offline so far (at work currently so online play will wait till I get home). So far, damn worth the wait. It really feels and looks like something the regular Xbox shouldn't have.
As for availability, the EB I went to only had pre-order copies while the GameStop on the opposite block had the same news. However, going down the street to Best Buy yielded plenty of copies, mostly because people don't expect places like Best Buy to get it until a day after the specialty stores.
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3-08-2006 @ 6:19PM
Conor said...
I live in the local philadelphia area (bryn Mawr) and i pre-ordered GRAW at the St. Davids eb games and they got it in today so i picked it up...no problems, however they didn't have any non "pre-ordered" copies in stock
ps: it kicks ass
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3-08-2006 @ 6:20PM
Matt said...
I got a copy today at Wal-Mart. That success came after going to Best Buy where they didn't have them and didn't know when they would arrive. After BB i went to EB games and they had them in-store but only enough for the pre-orderers. Finally I came away GRAW in hand from Wally World.
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3-08-2006 @ 6:27PM
Big Ice D said...
I just picked my copy up @ eb in Raleigh, NC. I did pre-order just b/c I went in to get it yesterday and he told me it missed the UPS truck and would be in tomorrow( today ). I will be putting it up on Ebay for $150 along with the collectors item of my reciept, to take advantage of this shortage ;)
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3-08-2006 @ 6:37PM
jc said...
Same thing with Fight Night Round 3. Took 8 phone calls, and a half hour drive to find a store near Seattle with one in stock. And this was a week after it was released.
Craziness!
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3-08-2006 @ 6:50PM
pennywise969 said...
I went into a local EB about 3pm today. They said they only got enough copies of the game to fufill preorders and for every person that came in, a store employee was losing their copy. The copy I got supposedly belonged to the manager on duty. They said that they have only been getting enough of each game to fufill how many preorders they have. They also used this as a chance to try to convince me to preorder other games coming out over the corse of the year. They had a list and such. I have a feeling this is a scheme to try to trick people into preordering games.
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3-08-2006 @ 6:51PM
MDBizzle said...
I was in Long Branch, NJ at Circuit City today and there were many copies of GRAW to be had. I picked myself up a copy. There were several copies of Fight Night and Burnout remaining as well. The only things they were short of of were Madden, NBA games, and a knowledgable staff.
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3-08-2006 @ 6:52PM
C. Grant said...
Yup, I called them Conor. Pre-orders only, thanks a lot!
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3-08-2006 @ 6:53PM
brett said...
Got both GRAW and Burnout today at Game Crazy in Portland, OR.. they did not have many copies of either.
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3-08-2006 @ 6:55PM
Conor said...
haha sorry...
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3-08-2006 @ 6:56PM
todd said...
Finally got one, took me hours of calling to about 20 different stores and picked one up. They had just received only 4 in the last 15 mins and I got number 3. Crazy stuff, I remember walking in to Target and remembering that Halo 2 came out and bought it the next day leaving about 40 copys there to sit until someone else got them. Just sucks that I had to do all this leg work, you'd think there would be plently of discs to go around.
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3-08-2006 @ 7:14PM
MGF said...
6. I went into a local EB about 3pm today. They said they only got enough copies of the game to fufill preorders and for every person that came in, a store employee was losing their copy. The copy I got supposedly belonged to the manager on duty. They said that they have only been getting enough of each game to fufill how many preorders they have. They also used this as a chance to try to convince me to preorder other games coming out over the corse of the year. They had a list and such. I have a feeling this is a scheme to try to trick people into preordering games.
Posted at 6:50PM on Mar 8th 2006 by pennywise969
WOW! The exact same thing happened to me. Right down to the guy @ the front counter handing me a sheet of release dates asking which ones I'd like to put 5.00 or more down on today. :O
However I did get my copy and will be online tonight.
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3-08-2006 @ 7:37PM
SquadXP said...
AMAZING!!!!
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3-08-2006 @ 7:42PM
todd said...
Ha, the guy was trying to sell me on preorders as well saying that with 360 games they are only going to fill with preorders and a little more for each store so they don't have copies sitting around. I told him I'd take my chances... did with the 360 and did with GRAW and with a bit of work I got both so.... screw preordering.
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3-08-2006 @ 7:46PM
M-ACE said...
Just picked mine up at Target in Boulder, CO.
Had 5 behind the case.
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3-08-2006 @ 8:12PM
WillGonz said...
Time to start hitting the stores that people don't think of. I picked my copy up at Compusa. My next stop would have been to FredMeyer a food store with electronics.
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3-08-2006 @ 8:17PM
sev4pri1 said...
this is utter madness. why wouldn't a store stock more than it had pre-orders for? Somthing is fishy...
going home to play GR:AW
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3-08-2006 @ 8:21PM
GL said...
I just picked mine up at Best Buy in Fort Wayne, they had probably 10-15 copies sitting there.
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