Street Dates are just pointless nowadays

[mysterd]

First, we had Borderlands get attention for its street date being broken.

Then, we had MW2.

Next up, Assassin's Creed 2 and Left 4 Dead 2 being released early in Jersey by some GameStops.

[Elliot Kane]

Gamestop clearly believes it's big enough to ignore release dates. I can't help thinking a lot of games companies - not to mention other shops - will not be thrilled with this development, though. After all, the deadline they think they are working towards becomes more of a guideline and that's never good - especially for things like MMOs and other games with a huge online component.

[mysterd]

I also see the fact that I'm betting GameStop and other stores don't want copies of their games laying around in storage when people are clamoring for them - and want them NOW. Especially when I'm sure they've got tons of more games and other things constantly coming in. I mean, we can't give these publishers TOO much power, can we?

I mean, many stores had Borderlands PC sitting around FOR TWO WEEKS b/c it shipped the same day w/ the console version - even though the console version had a release date of "one week" ahead (so that Gearbox could have more time to optimize the game and get a patch out - but, they didn't finish a patch in time for certification process; it's in the process of "Cert" right now).

Street dates are stupid. If my retailer has a copy of some product - even if it's functions (especially if there's an online component) are NOT fully implemented yet - I should be able to have it. Of course, the box should clearly be labeled if I will NOT be able to unlock my game until date X.

[Elliot Kane]

Hard to argue with that. Especially in a recession. Every little helps there for any retailer...

[mysterd]

Nov 15, 2009 23:27:19 GMT Elliot Kane said:

Hard to argue with that. Especially in a recession. Every little helps there for any retailer...

Steam allows for pre-loads, where if I pre-order a game before street date - well, digital date, if you want to be technical, since this is Steam - I can pre-load most of the game files to my PC a few days early before the game drops. I just have to wait until the "Street date" drops and then Steam will DL the rest of the files and the game can then be booted.

Why can't a retailer sell me a game, I can just go install it, and wait until it's all set digitally date-wise or its servers are online to be able to unlock the files needed to boot the game?

[SPS]

I agree.

One thing that I've noticed of late is that even DS games get their street dates broken (illegally mind you), sometimes the Rom is out a few days before the game is even released as was the case with the latest pokemon games that were released in Japan a couple months ago.

[Alrik]

We also have Gamestop here. Its homepage is niithing but s weak shadow of the international company.

www.gamestop.de

That's just typical German, I tend to say cynically. It is a well-known German proverb of "Germany, the SErvice Desert" or the "Desert of Service", because services - I mean within companies, or companies acting like they are actually serving the customer - are as rare as water in a desert. That's almost traditional, and the worst thing about German economy. And everyone knows that.

In a computing magazine there is a series of showing companies failing to serve customers - initially depicting customers who have been *severely* screwed.
This name has the title : "Look out ! Customer !" I think this fits it best, as a translation.
The original title means "Attention : Customer !", but it has a subtle underlying message of what we know as an almost similar proverb of "the business goes well; it is only the customer who disturbs [it]".

So much about German business culture. ;D

The Gamestop shops appear fairly normal, only that they just don't take and sell used PC games. Only console games (used & unused) and new (unused) PC games.

Edit : I just wrote "failry normal" ...