FF:Enhanced_Reality
Member
I'm a pretty big collector of games and have been for a long time. But a sizeable problem with the market in the UK at least, is the lack of game retailers. Sure, the super markets do stock select titles and you have a plethora of online shops to choose from, but that doesn't really matter when a certain retailer, for those outside the UK this is a company called literally, GAME, get all the collectors editions in the UK as exclusives. Thus when they run out of stock, you can't get them anywhere else anyway.
This never used to be a problem and I don't know what's changed as much because the rules haven't changed. The day pre-orders go live, gamers got a fair chance at ordering their desired edition or item and they still had regular stock for a reasonable time period. Now? Not so much. Now the item sells out in less than 5 minutes and if you're extremely lucky, you get one.
It's gradually been getting worse over the years, I'd probably say much more since about 2018 that I personally noticed it with Yakuza 6 and God of War (2018) where it sold out in less than an hour. In fact, it got that bad that I went into my local branch of GAME for 10:20am for the Death Stranding edition and it had gone. My local branch was allocated 5 copies. And staff members had ordered 3 of them. Luckily, the store manager who knew I was a long time customer actually gave me his order as he was only going to give his away as a present for his brother who loved Kojima games if he didn't like the game.
So God of War Ragnarok pre-orders went live today right? 10:00am was the advertised time. Except, I logged on and was ready for 10:00am and GAME had already made the game go live. So I put the Jotnar edition in my basket and went to pay. It shows the price on the website but doesn't allow me to complete the order. At 10:03am, the Jotnar edition was sold out.
Okay, bad luck I guess? Pretty big title in terms of expectation right? So I try to collectors edition. At 10:10am (because this was the quickest I could get to it with the website being so slow) the collectors edition was sold out.
So I went across the road at work to go and pre-order the Jotnar edition and they told me that they weren't getting the collectors or Jotnar edition for pre-order in store.
I can't pin exactly how early they went live, but some users say 9:56am and some say they got an order in at 9:48am. Either way, they didn't go live at 10:00am and they gave scalpers plenty of change to do their thing. For those, who care, check out the prices on eBay people are listing their orders for. Jotnar Edition is £600 and Collectors edition is £400.
But the truth is far more simple than this. The truth, I believe is that Sony and GAME don't give a shit. GAME is a failing company that had it's market share eaten away by supermarkets and online retailers because they failed to adapt to the shift to online shopping quick enough. The change to digital games has hurt them even more and in attempt to survive this, they're moving all their branches into Sports Direct (so no additional housing costs) and they've started selling merchandise, toys, collectible card games and Warhammer etc. For Sony, they obviously want to sell these items but at the same time digital games makes them more money. I get it. So why care right? So far it seems like Sony have left it to the companies to regulate themselves, but this can't be trusted. GAME have repeatedly stated they will do their best to deter scalping but in reality they've done fuck all. Please don't think too badly of me, but I work for a local Cash Converters store and over the past year we've seen customers with up to 40 PS5 and XBOX Series X consoles trying to sell them for a profit that they bought from GAME via their website or other retailers when the limit imposed by Sony was one per customer. So for GAME, it's a guaranteed sale. Brilliant.
For me, it's disappointment and despair yet again. GAME have made no solid effort to deter this. Everyone involved in the chain are going to make profit so they don't give a fuck and I'm sat here thinking what's the point.
Now I just want Sony to take complete control over the situation and allow me to only order directly from them. I suppose that's the best way to deter this shit from being a continuous problem.
This never used to be a problem and I don't know what's changed as much because the rules haven't changed. The day pre-orders go live, gamers got a fair chance at ordering their desired edition or item and they still had regular stock for a reasonable time period. Now? Not so much. Now the item sells out in less than 5 minutes and if you're extremely lucky, you get one.
It's gradually been getting worse over the years, I'd probably say much more since about 2018 that I personally noticed it with Yakuza 6 and God of War (2018) where it sold out in less than an hour. In fact, it got that bad that I went into my local branch of GAME for 10:20am for the Death Stranding edition and it had gone. My local branch was allocated 5 copies. And staff members had ordered 3 of them. Luckily, the store manager who knew I was a long time customer actually gave me his order as he was only going to give his away as a present for his brother who loved Kojima games if he didn't like the game.
So God of War Ragnarok pre-orders went live today right? 10:00am was the advertised time. Except, I logged on and was ready for 10:00am and GAME had already made the game go live. So I put the Jotnar edition in my basket and went to pay. It shows the price on the website but doesn't allow me to complete the order. At 10:03am, the Jotnar edition was sold out.
Okay, bad luck I guess? Pretty big title in terms of expectation right? So I try to collectors edition. At 10:10am (because this was the quickest I could get to it with the website being so slow) the collectors edition was sold out.
So I went across the road at work to go and pre-order the Jotnar edition and they told me that they weren't getting the collectors or Jotnar edition for pre-order in store.
I can't pin exactly how early they went live, but some users say 9:56am and some say they got an order in at 9:48am. Either way, they didn't go live at 10:00am and they gave scalpers plenty of change to do their thing. For those, who care, check out the prices on eBay people are listing their orders for. Jotnar Edition is £600 and Collectors edition is £400.
But the truth is far more simple than this. The truth, I believe is that Sony and GAME don't give a shit. GAME is a failing company that had it's market share eaten away by supermarkets and online retailers because they failed to adapt to the shift to online shopping quick enough. The change to digital games has hurt them even more and in attempt to survive this, they're moving all their branches into Sports Direct (so no additional housing costs) and they've started selling merchandise, toys, collectible card games and Warhammer etc. For Sony, they obviously want to sell these items but at the same time digital games makes them more money. I get it. So why care right? So far it seems like Sony have left it to the companies to regulate themselves, but this can't be trusted. GAME have repeatedly stated they will do their best to deter scalping but in reality they've done fuck all. Please don't think too badly of me, but I work for a local Cash Converters store and over the past year we've seen customers with up to 40 PS5 and XBOX Series X consoles trying to sell them for a profit that they bought from GAME via their website or other retailers when the limit imposed by Sony was one per customer. So for GAME, it's a guaranteed sale. Brilliant.
For me, it's disappointment and despair yet again. GAME have made no solid effort to deter this. Everyone involved in the chain are going to make profit so they don't give a fuck and I'm sat here thinking what's the point.
Now I just want Sony to take complete control over the situation and allow me to only order directly from them. I suppose that's the best way to deter this shit from being a continuous problem.
