Wednesday, October 18, 2006

Pre-sale Sellouts

The PS3 and the Wii have been available for pre-sale for about a week now and of course, they are selling out almost everywhere. We can't very well gage these sales as an indicator of how the systems will do however, because 1: They are new systems that haven't actually been released, and 2: The numbers are limited. On the PS3 side, VERY limited.

Gamestop and EB Games have sold out of pretty much all of their PS3 pre-order units. This isn't surprising considering almost all of their retail locations throughout the US were only allotted 8 PS3 units per store with two of these 8 being purchased by store employees. This leaves only 6 PS3 units per store that are available for purchase by the customer and these have already been bought by customers utilizing presale orders. So, virtually nobody in the US will be getting a PS3 this year. Did they really want one anyway?

On the Wii side of things, excitement of Nintendo's new system have caused many gamers to rush to their local retailer and pre-order their Wii little hearts out. Some locations are reporting sell-outs, but there is still quite an abundance of the system available due to the substantial quantity produced by Nintendo allowing a more legitimate release. So, if you still want a Wii this year, there is still hope. There is a lot of buzz surrounding the Wii this year, but now that the novelty and excitement of the unit has dissipated, hardcore gamers are questioning whether this new way of playing games will be worth the risk Nintendo has taken in the long run. Yes, it seems fun to wave your hand around and emulate slashing a sword, but how far can this go? Will controller motions like this always translate into great game play? Or will we start to feel like were just swinging around a gimmicky toy a year or two from now? Anyway, that's what gamers are talking about. I'm quite skeptical myself.

On the Concept of Pre-sale:

Personally, I never pre-order anything. The whole idea of partially paying for something that isn't out yet or in stock baffles me. If you check the details of any pre-order or pre-sale clause, you are NOT guaranteed the item. There are several outs for the retailer that do not bind them to the deal. All it does is help them gauge their potential sales for the item and saves them money on accurately predicting inventory needs. Also, they are making money off of you right away.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home