Gamestop Not Taking Wii/PS3 PreOrders Yet

Next Generation is reporting that Gamestop has declined to take preorders for the Wii and PS3, on the grounds that they don't know how many units will be available at launch. They're apparently trying to avoid a repeat of last year's problems with the 360's launch. From the article: "Analysts also inquired what would happen if PS3 launch quantities fell short of expectations. '[Last year,] the 360 in short supply had an effect of freezing the market,' said DeMatteo. 'But if you look at it, there wasn't anything new. I mean, there weren't any new platforms out there, so the 360 was the newest thing in the last four or five years. This year, there will be a Wii and there will be a 360, so I can't believe that it will have the same kind of impact that the 360 [shortages] had.'"

This is news?

[RyoShin]

I've known about this for about three months, during which time I've been trying to reserve not only a Wii, but change my Twilight Princess reservation to Wii. The only people who don't know this would be those who haven't tried to reserve a system yet, and even then they probably heard someone else complaining about it.

I talked to a GameStop employee about it one day and got some info. I don't think this guy was a manager, but he seemed to know his stuff, so you can take this with a grain of sale if you like.

First, according to the guy I talked to, they will start taking pre-orders, at soonest, after their next "manager meeting", which is taking place around the time of the Leipzig (sp?) thing where Nintendo will announce final pricing and release dates.

Second, they will be raising the reservation price. Instead of just chunking down $25 or $50, you will now put down a good portion of the price. (The guy said "something like $300", and was probably referring to the PS3. Wii will probably be about $100.) This is to discourage people who aren't going to pick up the thing on release to shy away.

One of the GameStops I visit normally had a "Registration Notification" thing you could fill out with your name and phone number, and they would call you once the systems go on reservation. Headquarters apparently put the kabash on that, stating that people might think they are actually reserving the system when they're just signing up for a notice when it's reservable.

Re:GameStupid

[twistedsymphony]

I've been burned too many times by pre-orders in the past I just stopped bothering... The very last pre-order I did was for the original Star wars Trilogy Box set. I was selling some used DVDs to EB and they had a promotion where if you give them X amount of DVDs they'd double their value towards a pre-order or something... I figured I'd put in for Star Wars because I was planning on buying it anyway and I was getting "such a great deal", with the DVDs I put in and the bonus the Box Set got paid for in full. Release day came I went to the store: "oh... we already gave out all our pre-orders, we don't have any more for sale"... this was aggravating because the store wasn't exactly anywhere near where I lived, quite out of the way in-fact, I browsed around the mall and felt pretty depressed that every other store that sold DVDs had them sitting on shelves yet I had already paid for it and somehow not yet had it in my hands. They called me the next week and told me that had it in, I showed up... they didn't have it... I WAS PISSED. Apparently some "new employee" sold it by accident. I demanded my money in CASH and they gave me the full value of the DVDs in cash so I could go across the hall and buy it at Best Buy (with cash to spare all said and done). I never bothered pre-ordering ANYTHING after that... the only thing a pre-order "guarantees" is that the store will get your money, it certainly doesn't guarantee that you'll actually get the product.

For the Xbox 360 I Went to Sam's Club, they opened at 7, I hopped in line around 5 and even when they opened their doors they only had about 15 people in line when they had 20 consoles...

I know where I'll be buying my Wii, Fsk Pre-orders.