Splinter Cell: Conviction CE USB drives "defective"

Wow. That's terrible support. Especially after the Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey soundtrack cd's being busted and Atlus getting behind that quicker than I would get behind
opted not to choose a specific man/woman/thing
and got new cds burned and shipped out to consumers.

Also, how do you fuck up a USB drive? :lol
 
It's too late to switch out the drives on a product that hits April 13. Not to mention even a couple of weeks ago would be too late in general. Special/Ltd editions like that are usually a hand-pack job, which adds considerable lead time to get them all finished compared to disk.

the only other option would be to delay the special edition, which is not possible for obvious reasons.



Costanza said:
they're not even offering to replace it? wow
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that'd be a quick way to lose a lot of money on a low margin product anyway.
 
arne said:
It's too late to switch out the drives on a product that hits April 13. Not to mention even a couple of weeks ago would be too late in general. Special/Ltd editions like that are usually a hand-pack job, which adds considerable lead time to get them all finished compared to disk.

the only other option would be to delay the special edition, which is not possible for obvious reasons.
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so why not tell retailers to give customers a phone number to call if their drive is defective? instead they're knowingly going to sell a defective product and just lower the price to cover it? bullshit.
 
Costanza said:
so why not tell retailers to give customers a phone number to call if their drive is defective? instead they're knowingly going to sell a defective product and just lower the price to cover it? bullshit.
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The rest of the product is not defective. The consequentialist in me figures that you can judge the product based on its current parts and its current price, and ignore the fact that it might have contained a $10 USB key in some alternate dimension.
 
Costanza said:
so why not tell retailers to give customers a phone number to call if their drive is defective? instead they're knowingly going to sell a defective product and just lower the price to cover it? bullshit.
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it would easily cost more than the $10 less revenue per unit to setup a customer service and fulfillment pipeline to service and replace the (assumed high) percentage of defective drives. not to mention they've have lost whatever bulk purchase discount they got on those things to begin with.

I mean, special editions aren't a massive volume based proposition so they're not going to get any scale to fulfill replacement.

it's just basic business.

however, i don't see why they couldn't offer up the content on the USB to everyone for example.
 
arne said:
however, i don't see why they couldn't offer up the content on the USB to everyone for example.
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It sounds like they will (at least for customers that purchase the CE):
The somewhat better news: Details on how to receive the bonus content included on defective USB drives in the Splinter Cell: Conviction collector's editions will be available on the game's official Web site on Thursday, April 15.
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It'd be nice of Ubisoft to do what 2K did for the Bioshock Big Daddy figurines, but yeah, more money to lose I think. I have the standard edition ordered from Amazon so I'm missing out on the CE goodies anyway.
 
How hard is it to get functional USB drives? They have bins of them for $4 at Microcenter.

WTF Ubi?

Actually, WTF kam for expecting anything more out of the new Ubisoft.
 
Gribbix said:
It sounds like they will (at least for customers that purchase the CE):
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Ah, I missed that. There you go. I think this ends up being a swell way to work it out then.


Gooster said:
It'd be nice of Ubisoft to do what 2K did for the Bioshock Big Daddy figurines, but yeah, more money to lose I think. I have the standard edition ordered from Amazon so I'm missing out on the CE goodies anyway.
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yeah that's a different circumstance -- between clearly a collectible and a way to provide you with some digital content they can give you a different way.
 
BrassMonkey1010 said:
you can buy a flash drive of a bigger capacity with the $10 your saving.
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This is true. So I guess we should be thanking them?
 
Guevara said:
Unbelievable. I can't think of a parallel in any other industry.
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i can't think of many other industries that created limited run, high margin collectible versions of their products that they pack a USB stick into.


i didn't mean to come in here all defending Ubi. I thought maybe I'd shed some light on the business considerations of these things. but holy moly do you all have crazy expectations.

that $10 they saved you? go buy a 2gb usb drive instead (likely bigger than the pack-in version) and then put the digital content on there when they release it.
 
In other news, Atlus provides strategy guide replacements for Demon's Souls because the cover art ink fades, and replacements for SMT Strange Journey's soundtrack because of a manufacturing error...all for free
 
Wario64 said:
In other news, Atlus provides strategy guide replacements for Demon's Souls because the cover art ink fades, and replacements for SMT Strange Journey's soundtrack because of a manufacturing error...all for free
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To compare Atlus with Ubisoft is a crime. Let's not do that again.
 
arne said:
i can't think of many other industries that created limited run, high margin collectible versions of their products that they pack a USB stick into.


i didn't mean to come in here all defending Ubi. I thought maybe I'd shed some light on the business considerations of these things. but holy moly do you all have crazy expectations.

that $10 they saved you? go buy a 2gb usb drive instead (likely bigger than the pack-in version) and then put the digital content on there when they release it.
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I meant I couldn't think of a situation where a company knowingly shipped a defective component and dropped the price rather that fixing the problem. It would be like Nike, shipping out new Jordans with defective shoelaces, saying "Buy shoelaces with the $10 savings".
 
Well - just cancelled my CE order. I picked up the regular edition yesterday anyhow so looks like I'm just out an art book and a special case.

The game kicks ass by the way. This shouldn't deter anyone from picking up the CE if they can get it at a good price.
 
Guevara said:
I meant I couldn't think of a situation where a company knowingly shipped a defective component and dropped the price rather that fixing the problem. It would be like Nike, shipping out new Jordans with defective shoelaces, saying "Buy shoelaces with the $10 savings".
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well it's not a critical component like say shoelaces would be in a shoe. again, the damage done to delay special edition shipments to fix this so late in the process would be far more than offering $10 off the purchase.
 
arne said:
well it's not a critical component like say shoelaces would be in a shoe. again, the damage done to delay special edition shipments to fix this so late in the process would be far more than offering $10 off the purchase.
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Of course, it's a great business decision... not unlike...

ttoyota_recall_docu_FINAL.jpg
 
duckroll said:
Of course, it's a great business decision... not unlike...

http://i2.cdn.turner.com/money/2010/02/21/autos/toyota_document/ttoyota_recall_docu_FINAL.jpg]
Click to expand...


you're seriously not trying to compare a non-essential, practically throwaway bonus pack-in item to a major life-threatening safety issue?


not to mention that Ubi is disclosing this before the product ships.

given the three options:
1. delay special edition product and get irate customers / lose sales of sp. edition
2. setup replacement + fulfillment that likely costs significantly more than $10 off each sp. edition, not to mention they would be hard pressed to set it up in time in a way that doesn't mess things up more
3. give you $10 off for the *potentially* but highly likely non-working USB stick and offer up the digital content in a different way

#3 seems like a pretty responsible choice
 
Not sure why everyone's whining. You can get bigger flash drives for free by walking around job fairs and community events and shit.

You save $10 bucks and still get the other LE stuff. Seems like a much better deal to me.
 
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