Preorders/Reserves

[Brisco Bold]

Gabe from Penny Arcade rants about Preorders (and some other shit):

Here is an excerpt from a letter I got from a game store employee. I chose this letter because it covers many of the same issues I got from other employees.

...The store manager is the only one who cares about you reserving games. If the other employees care, it's only because the manager found some way to make them care. Otherwise we really don't give a crap. But managers often care a LOT, because almost their entire performance reviews by the district managers are based on their reservation percentage and their subscription percentage (that Game Informer 10% off card I'm sure you're bombarded with if you ever buy a used game from GameStop). I've seen several managers get fired because their numbers were too low, since their numbers reflect the numbers of the district manager, who's in charge of hiring and firing store managers.

Since reservation numbers are based on the percentage of sales, the store manager probably does not even WANT you to buy a game if you haven't reserved it. It gets worse. Sometimes managers will instruct their employees not to sell a game that the person didn't reserve in order to "teach the customer a lesson" about reserving games. What I'm saying here is that it's very possible that there was a small stack of Otogi copies behind the counter that no one would sell you because they want you to reserve your games in the future. I've personally witnessed this happen numerous times with two different managers. They don't care that the company misses a $50 sale, they only care about getting their customers to reserve games in order to make their own numbers look good. This is very common policy.

Another problem is that sometimes NO extra copies are ordered beyond those that were reserved. At my store, four people reserved Disgaea, and we got four copies in. Apparently the company doesn't realize that when four people reserve something, at least ten more are going to ask for it the day it's out without having reserved it, and that's exactly what happened.

Managers absolutely hate it when we get in enough copies for everyone beyond those who reserved it. My manager was literally cringing when we got about 60 extra copies of Soul Calibur 2 after the reserved copies were held. I, along with the other employees, were instructed to tell people that if they didn't reserve it, we MIGHT have one or two copies left, and that they had lucked out this time, so they'd better reserve games in the future. Imagine my embarrassment when I had to say this after quite visibly going through a stack of 20 extra games.

I got tons of mail regarding pre-orders, lots of it from game store employees. One thing they almost all told me is that nine times out of ten they actually have the game you want but if you didn’t pre order it they are told not to sell it to you. Lots of them even used the same terminology, that is to say “teaching the customer a lesson”. Which makes me think this is an extremely common practice.

I worked at circuit shitty long enough to understand the various relationships between employees, store managers and district managers. That is why I have no animosity towards the clerks or even the managers at these stores. I know they are just doing what they are told to do. I had to do some pretty messed up shit to people at circuit city in order to sell them extended service plans. I remember one old man who told a friend of mine that he didn’t need the extended service plan because he wouldn’t live that much longer. Whenever you couldn’t get an extended service plan yourself you were often told to call a “closer”, usually a manager who would come over and make an ass of themselves. In this particular case the “closer” was the store manager and when the old man repeated that he would in fact not live long enough to use the extended warranty the manager said “Ahh, but that is the beauty of the circuit city extended service plan, it stays with the product. So after you pass away whoever you leave your TV with will still be able to benefit from it.” It’s hard to believe that one human being could say that to another human being but I swear it’s true. That’s why I don’t blame these guys that work in these stores. I know the kind of inhuman fucking monsters they work for.

I've personally never experienced anything analogous to the letter's author, but I'm concerned by Gabe's insistence that this is a common occurance based on the sum of simliar letters he's received.

Thoughts?

[Shin Johnpv]

personally even before i worked at a game store 9 times out of 10 if a game was coming i wanted i reserved it

but thats me so i dont totally get the whole thing about not wanting to pre-order

way i see it is im gonna spend the money on the game anyway, some times i get something free with it, sometimes i get the game early for it, the game gets held for me im guranted it so it works well for me

our DM doesnt push the whole have to get subs and reserves thing too much

but the company specially with smaller releases theyre not sure are going to sell, really does only send enough for reserves which is something i try to tell people, like Disgaea before the game came out i had a ton of people asking about it, i tried to tell them its gonna be a small release reserve it, long story short we had 3 reserves (including mine) we got 4 copies of the game

now i get to listen to all the people i told to reserve it to bitch because we dont have it and they cant find it anywhere and some how its my fault


i see this all the time with the none hyped releases, Otogi is another good example 2 reserves got 3 in

i could go on all day with more examples


alot of companies are really putting all their resources into stocking the big releases (Madden, SCII) so if something else smaller is coming out around the same time you can bet a store is only going to get enough for reserves on it because the company would rather have 40 extra maddens sitting on the shelf then 1 extra copy of a smaller release game

[sggg]

I hate preordering and reserving. I refuse to do it. I'd rather just wait until the game is on the shelves than get jerked around by some store. I didn't have any particular incident that makes me feel this way, I just prefer to keep my options open and I am not terribly impatient about needing to play a certain game as soon as possible (I don't usually buy games on the release date anyway - only my most wanted ones).

I prefer buying games at Futureshop (big electronics store) and I don't think they even do preorders. Their prices are better and I loathe EB, so, I don't mind waiting until I see something on the shelf there rather than go through the preorder charade at EB.

When there is a niche game I want that FS may not get (such as Disgaea or Winning Eleven) I have to deal with EB. What I usually do is call the day a game is supposed to be out and ask if they got it in. The local EB sucks, and chances are they never get it in on time anyway, but when they do I ask them to hold me a copy til I get there, and that usually does the trick.

Oddly enough, when I got .hack I did that and they said they'd hold a game for me, but when we got to the store they could not find it, so they gave me someone else's pre-order! I feel sorry for that guy, but serves him right for preordering at that EB. I am sure he half expected it if he is a regular customer.

[Jeremy]

I used to pre-order a lot of my games, then just stopped as it became a bit of a hassle to scrounge around to find my pre-order slip.

[NoFace]

Whether you hate the system or not, I feel it's necessary to say that Gabe is wrong in what he's saying.

If it were up to Gabe, he'd have every publisher print tons and tons of every game, so each store would receive more than two of say, Otogi. He fails to see that if a company (in this case, Sega) doesn't think it can sell that many copies of a game it's best not to print tons of extras. I remember seeing Gungrave come out last year... that's pretty niche if you ask me, and there were tons and tons of copies... I think only one sold that first day at the particular store I was working at (and now you can pick up the game for $10-$20 in plenty of places due to the amount of overstock). Having a preorder system benefits both retailers and publishers, so they can better gauge interest in a title. And it can benefit the customer as well, if they go about things the right way.

[Segatron314]

I am pretty tight with the managers at the stores I go to, if I thought they tried this stuff, I would probably find another store, (they REALLY don't want me to do that, maybe that changes things, heh...)

Trouble is, These managers are peopl who often read the market pretty well, far better than the hups (higher ups) who would not give them 15 copies of Virtua Tennis, or keep the Neo Geo Pocket Color shelf stocked. The only way to get something I wanted before the single copy sold out was to plunk a fiver on titles I did not plan to wait for. It is probably why I got to play Phantasy Star Collection during the slower parts of last thanksgiving.

As for Circuit City, I seem to remember that they were the ones trying to push Divx DVD players well past the one week that they seemed like a good idea.

[Brisco Bold]

I used to pre-order a lot of my games, then just stopped as it became a bit of a hassle to scrounge around to find my pre-order slip.

Phone number and ID. That's all you need.

[James]

Solution- Reserves benefit publishers and retailers.

Problem- Why would a customer care?

Book stores are a good analogy for this- I've never gotten wailed on in a book store to reserve Title X, ever. You get the odd Harry Potter now and then that might make it a good idea, but other than that book stores manage quite fine without shoving reserves down people's throats. I can go into a book store and find the book I want, buy it, go home, read. Hell, comparing cost of materials it probably costs more to make a $25 hardcover than it does a $50 game!

Tangent- Though I game more than I read, reading > gaming. -end tangent

I know that book stores have their own rivers of crap to run through that game stores don't, but no analogy is perfect. The point is that there's a business model out there that gets decent product levels out to most stores an amazingly high percentage of the time for a similar type of product. Why are they (mostly) free of the preorder race while game stores are almost slaves to it?

Personal opinion- I'll preorder now and then and I don't hate doing it, but I don't really like it either. If there's a preorder goodie I just have to have then no problem, otherwise I'll get it when it hits one way or another.

James

[NoFace]

Book stores are a good analogy for this- I've never gotten wailed on in a book store to reserve Title X, ever. You get the odd Harry Potter now and then that might make it a good idea, but other than that book stores manage quite fine without shoving reserves down people's throats. I can go into a book store and find the book I want, buy it, go home, read. Hell, comparing cost of materials it probably costs more to make a $25 hardcover than it does a $50 game!

Cost of materials is one thing, cost of actually producing the goods is another. Development costs are significantly higher for producing just about any game than an author sitting at home hammering away their next novel. I'm sure you know that but it's worth mentioning at least.

$50 is probably a stretch in a lot of cases, but that's another issue.

Also, when comparing buying books versus buying games, I think the demand for new game titles is usually a lot greater than most of the books that are released. Also, far more books are published weekly than games, which probably helps to lessen the demand for all but the biggest books (like your Harry Potters). I think the markets are similar in some regards but too different to compare when talking about whether pre-order systems are effective or not.

[Tones]

I often preorder games, and then forget that I did. As stupid as this sounds, I preordered Super Monkey Ball 2 and Super Mario Sunshine last year, and Gamestop called me June or so to inform me that I had store credit for those two titles.

Also, there are oftentimes situations where circumstances change, such as me wanting something else at the time that I should pick up a game or I just don't have the money. I think that from now on, I'll only preorder limited-stock games, such as Steel Batallion was.