chrominance
Member
Haha everything you're saying only makes sense for a physical location, not a website.
There are probably two answers to this:
1) Stores may have to give distributors purchase numbers in advance. I know in the book industry the practice used to (maybe still is) that large stores in particular signal to distributors and publishers the number they expect to order for a first run well in advance, and that sets the expectation for how big that print run is. I don't think Best Buy and Future Shop have nearly that level of control (unless the release is bilingual and there's a separate US version) but the same practices might be going on here.
2) The true facts reason: BB/FS don't want you to buy out all their pre-orders at ten bucks off because reasons.
I have no idea if either of those answers are true, but they would at least be reasons that apply to online as well as in-store.
Just ordered Tomodochi Life, since Amazon isn't price-matching that one. The 3DS and Vita selection is kind of slim, and everything else is too expensive (omg Last of Us Remastered for US MSRP? my goodness, what an amazing price drop). If the best I can do is five bucks off US MSRP for something like a Wii U game, I'd rather wait and not spend the money now.