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EB-Gamestop wants your Halo 3 money -- now!
EB-Gamestop has launched an aggressive campaign to secure your Halo 3 pre-order, today -- well, technically, yesterday. Chances are if you're on file, the company spammed you yesterday, via phone, to let you know that pre-orders for three different Halo 3 editions are now being accepted.First, the details (or lack thereof): EB-Gamestop is collecting $5 for the standard edition, $10 for a collector's edition, and $25 for Legendary Edition (a.k.a. Master Chief's bust). The company cannot confirm the final retail price for any of these items*, nor does it know when it will stop accepting your free money. "We stop taking pre-orders the day they call and tell us to," a Gamestop employee in the New York area told us today.Certainly there's a pre-order cap, but what is it? Collectively, retailers sold more than 1.5 million Halo 2 pre-orders. Let's assume each of those pre-orders cost $5 -- knowing that many were sold for more. That's $7,500,000. Say, EB-Gamestop secured 30% of those pre-orders; then the company alone pulled in $2.25 million, plus interest.Accepting Halo 3 pre-orders now is taking advantage of us, the consumers. The game isn't due until at least next year, but for fear of pre-orders suddenly ceasing, for fear of not owning Halo 3 on day one, we go out there and hand over our security deposits; and the retailers sit on it, making money off of our money -- the money that bought us nothing more than a promise.It's fine to offer pre-orders a few months in advance. In fact, it's a good idea -- but only once the release date is known; the retail prices confirmed; and shipment numbers allocated. But asking for our Halo 3 money now? Today? C'mon, you really gonna play us like that?*Legendary Edition is rumored to be priced at $100.[Thanks to everyone that sent this in!]
BC:CE back online at Gamestop and EB
A couple readers have noted that the Burning Crusade Collector's Edition is back up for preorder online at Gamestop and EB Games (both sites are run by the same company). Which looks like I was exactly right about it coming back up soon.Why this is happening, we're not sure. Most likely it's that Gamestop's buyers keep getting extra or different information, either from people at Vivendi or Blizzard. As far as we know, Blizzard hasn't released actual numbers on how many copies they're planning to sell of either the CE or the regular edition (although common sense says there'll be a lot more of the regular edition to go around). From my own experience (via a year and a half as a Gamestop store manager), I know that the company does send out notices to stop and start selling preorders based on demand. But I also know that the website is usually run by a completely different distributor than the stores, and that when release time comes, preorders are only as good as the copies that show up-- usually things go OK, but due to shipping or estimate errors, a preorder might not guarantee you a game on time.Long story short, if you want the CE, I'd say get it while it's hot. There may be, as we were originally told, plenty to go around. But than again, this might be your last chance to pick up that special TCG stuff and the Netherwhelp pet. I got mine-- Outland, here I come![ Thanks to everyone who sent this in! ]
TCG items will come with Burning Crusade Collector's Edition
WorldofWar.net has a pointer to an article on the new Escapist, in which they talk about all the extra trinkets and junk that comes with Collectors Editions of games. I still have one of those old full color cloth maps of Britannia laying around somewhere, and working at a game store a few years ago got me a few of those Jedi Knight 2 keychains.But even more interesting, WorldofWar also points out "a comment from Upper Deck" that says what'll be in the box with the Burning Crusade Collector's Edition. If you can get your hands on one of those (and don't worry-- there's supposed to be plenty to go around), Blizz will hook you up with "2 starter decks, a full-size color rulebook and 3 foil promo cards." Pretty nice, even if you're not a TCG fan.And considering how much Blizzard pimped out the original WoW Collector's Edition-- that's where the MiniDiablo, Zergling, and Panda non-combat pets all came from-- it's not too much of a stretch to think those cards (or something else in the Collector's Edition) will end up conveying some pretty cool stuff in-game. If you're planning to buy the expansion anyway and don't mind shelling out for the extra cash, Blizzard might have some neat stuff in store for collectors.
