I don't know why I'm thinking of zavvi not getting enough for day 1 so pretneding to ship them in the guise they would get more in for estimated delivery timeframes to still work. It would explain the inconsistent delivery times (in general for that retailer) and why for some people they appear to be so quick to offer a refund to.
Of course there is no absolute evidence for any of that so I'll refrain from wearing the tin foil any longer.
Lord Ghirahim said:
Nintendo's handling of Xenoblade has been... interesting. In Japan, they released it on a dying system that the average RPG player wouldn't touch. I don't think those Watanabe commercials helped. The game underperformed as expected. 15 months later, NoA is acting like the game doesn't exist, and NoE has failed to ship adequate quantities. Some distributors won't be receiving more copies until mid-October.
Its a two pronged assault. There are mixed messages of retail not bothering to order it as "lol Wii 2011 & not Zelda, Zumba, Just Dance *, Wii * or Mario" and also retail not getting enough of what they did order (GAME overestimating how many CEs and posters they would get leading to some people having their CE orders cancelled out the blue and the posters had to be dropped entirely for online purchases...instore wasn't mcuh better with you being lucky to get one let alone the three promised*).
Apparently NOE don't allow for retailer returns which means retail has to get the initial order right and well, last year Metroid Other M being a flop doesn't instill confidence (boradly speaking Xenoblade is a similar niche looking broadly at it of core game for Wii). Yeah, I've dragged that thing here. Sorry everyone.
*-The real rage moment will be when they wind up on the Stars Catalogue...in 15 months time