An Open Letter to Nintendo, EA, and an Increasing Number of Other Parties
Dear Sirs:
I make a decent amount of money, and I spend a very healthy fraction of that money on frivolous electronic toys. That means I am, potentially, a pretty reliable and attractive customer for you.
The flip side of having a decent job, as it turns out, is that you have to actually show up and do some work so that your employer keeps giving you a paycheck every two weeks.
I only mention this because that constraint on my time means that I'm not going to spend the free time I do have trying to run an goddamn obstacle course in order to purchase your products.
I'm not going to camp out in front of Target at 7 AM on a Sunday morning just in case the new shipment of Wiis comes in. I'm not going to pre-order Rock Band 6 months in advance before I even know what songs are on the soundtrack. I am not going to read up on cunning strategy from the mouth-breathers at fatwallet.com in order to maybe, possibly, show up at the right place on the right day at the right time with the right series of planets in concurrent orbit in order to enjoy the distinct privilege and honor of giving you my money -- through an approved middleman, of course! -- for your product.
I am not going to do your market research or inventory management for you. If you want to sell a lot of product, then you need to fucking plan ahead in order to get enough components from your vendors and build enough products to satisfy demand. Since I'm not a moron, I certainly don't believe you'd artificially limit the supply of your product -- but now that I'm in business, I can certainly believe you're too fucking incompetent to do the job required on logistics and distribution management.
In order to properly incentive-ize you to improve on those marks, I'm going to go ahead and keep pissing away cash on XBox 360 games that I can walk into a store and purchase without having to do any work a priori other than deciding if I, you know, want the game.
Warmest regards,
Neill
7 Comments:
Yeah, this new announcement for rock band that there will only be one shipment (with all instruments) before the holidays? Is there a rolleyes big enough for that?
11:52 AM
And the bizarre thing is that I think I could actually pay $160 or whatever it is for the bundle -- I'd get that much mileage out of "Say it Ain't So" on its own.
1:19 PM
I was in a gamestop (the one on campus) the other day looking for Ace Combat to see how expensive it was. It wasn't there. Mind you, this is a game that has been out for weeks and there are no copies in a dedicated game store. Meanwhile they were literally laughing at someone who came in and was wondering if they had Call of Duty 4. One of the bigger games of the holiday season in case any of the non-gamer nerd observers are wondering. No exaggeration, they were like "Call of Duty 4, hahahaha, no way man, you HAD to preorder that." Then he goes on to tell him that he can't expect to get any game like that in a gamestop unless it is preordered and half berates him for being so silly. To which I wanted to go up and fucking shout "BEST BUY HAS 100,000 COPIES SITTING ON A TABLE AT THE FRONT YOU FUCKING ASSHOLES. If you go there you don't even have to walk to the game section to get a copy."
1:44 PM
That reminds me, I should go ahead and order that with the Amazon gift certificate I have.
But yeah, it's been said over and over before across half the internet, but I cannot understand how that chain stays in business with as large a footprint as they have. Are there really *that* many parents selling back their kids' games for a pittance?
1:55 PM
>clapclapclapclap<
And I don't really even buy video games anymore...
8:06 AM
You obviously need to buy an xbox 360.
10:29 AM
Nice post. Great read. Love the tone...
1:11 PM
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