GameStop, Wal-Mart breaking Wii street dates
Friday, November 14th, 2008 at 7:57am by Derek
Santa Claus is filling his bag with major holiday Wii titles a little early this year, but there’s a problem.
He’s not allowed to have them yet.
Rayman Raving Rabbids: TV Party and Animal Crossing: City Folk are hitting the streets early at select GameStop and Wal-Mart stores.
Beneficiaries of these early sales are showing proof of their purchases across the Web. GoNintendo and Wii Fanboy are running photos of opened cases, discs and manuals.
Major retailers have been breaking street dates for years. This year alone, blockbuster titles such as Rock Band 2 and Fallout 3 have slipped by cash registers prior to their scheduled release dates.
Though pleasing to lucky customers, publishers can levy penalties for broken street dates. Retail chain K-Mart was fined $10,000 in October for selling copies of Fable II in Australia prior to its release date.
A more serious financial wrist-slap, K-Mart was also prohibited from selling Gears of War 2 for the first two weeks of its availability.
Ubisoft’s third Rayman Raving Rabbids minigame installment, TV Party is scheduled to release Tuesday. Nintendo’s City Folk, the latest in its popular Animal Crossing simulation series, is due out Sunday.
November 14th, 2008 at 9:26 am
I wondered… I’m pretty positive I saw my local Gamestop selling a copy of Animal Crossing, and I was confused because I hadn’t thought it had come out yet. And sure enough, when I checked, it was on the shelf, and I didn’t see any sort of “Coming Soon” tag or anything… hm.
Either way, I decided not to buy it amidst my own confusion.
November 14th, 2008 at 12:05 pm
I think major retailers are beginning to break street date simply because they need the money right now. People aren’t buying, but they are still buying games.
November 14th, 2008 at 12:20 pm
Walmart, Target and Gamestop/EB Games will not be punished or penalized for breaking street dates. Without them, games wouldn’t sell the needed volume for the holidays and profit margins and stock value of Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo would fall hard.
November 14th, 2008 at 1:17 pm
@EdEN:
That may be true for some companies like UbiSoft, but Nintendo has a extremely strict agreement with companies stating they will be fined and/or punished if they break release date for any titles, including the inability to sell Nintendo products at their stores anymore.
I’ve even seen the agreement stores have to sign.