Presell or face certain doom...what?

[CrazedClerkthe2nd]

I am calling complete and utter bullshit on this one. The number of times I've decided I had the money for a game on release day, then walked into the store only to be told, "We only got enough to cover pre-orders" would fill a dozen sets of fingers and toes. I've gone to amazon for 90% of my gaming needs, and either BB or used movie/CD/DVD/games stores for emergancy hardware needs. I'm done with the preorder or you won't get it mentality.

But they are right about one thing. I did walk.

It's really scummy, but some stores will tell you that even if they HAVE extra copies. The idea is to make you feel guilty about not doing a presell so you'll remember how you got "burned" this time and do a presell next time to get your game.

At the store I work at, we had plenty of copies of the following games for
non-presell customers on launch day:

Madden 2010
Halo: ODST
Modern Warfare 2
Left 4 Dead 2
Assassins Creed 2
Battlefield Bad Company 2
God of War III
Final Fantasy XIII

Of course these are some of the biggest games of the past year and thus we got plenty of presells on them, but that's beside the point. The point is that even if we had only a few presells, it's pretty obvious that anything called "Madden" or "Final Fantasy" or "Call of Duty" or "Halo" is going to sell a boatload of copies anyway, so we're going to have stock regardless.

It's getting the point they want us to borderline badger people to get presells up. I saw a female CW do it to a customer last week. The exchange went something like this:

CW: (after the customer asked about UFC 2010) So you have $xx.xx in trade credit, did you want to preorder it? you only have to put $5 down.
C: No, I never preorder stuff.
CW: You never preorder stuff? Why not? Do you like waiting in lines only to find out we don't the game you wanted? Just $5 down and you won't have that problem.
C: It's ok, I just don't bother with preorders.
CW: Well if you want to make things harder for yourself go ahead, all I'm saying is you can guarantee yourself a copy of UFC for just a few dollars down.
C: Ok, ok, I'll do it.

So my CW did get the sale, but I imagine the customer may well not come in to pick up the game after the way he was treated. Also, whoever said my company is sitting on $1000s of unclaimed presell credits is right.

Also one more thing. If you do a presell, you always have the option to cancel it and get your money back, BUT we are trained to lay a guilt trip on you if you do and try really hard to get you to either not cancel or switch the presell to a different game. The reason is a cancelled presell (in which you get your money back) causes a negative impact to our numbers. Therefore its in our best interests to try and STOP you from getting your money back. I do not really agree with the system, I'm just explaining how it works.

[Rapscallion]

Interesting, CrazedClerkthe2nd. Two things strike me from your post.

The first is that you're actually trained in selling techniques. I've read so many tales on here of people who were told to sell without being told how.

The second is that proper sales is not harassment. The goal is to talk to the customer and get them the right product for them, and then leave them feeling good about the purchase. It can take years to become good at it. I'm not more than a couple of steps down that path, but I can see the trail. What I can see from the text here (not necessarily the ground floor situation) is a company desperate for every sale in the short term, yet killing its trade in the long term.

I don't like to see that.

Rapscallion

[Geek King]

Like I said, I've already taken my gaming dollar elsewhere.

It's a shame really, too. A lot of the folks working in the store are decent folk. I just can't abide the way the company's run anymore. The employees started taking on a desperate tone at times, and hinted to me that even good employees were in danger if they couldn't push pre-orders and magazines. Even if I did have a pre-order, many times I wouldn't get a call when it came in, so I had to pay attention to release dates, just in case. They stopped ordering games from two of my favorite companies (NIS & Atlus) unless they were pre-ordered.

Just too many irritations for me to support them anymore. I do feel bad for folks working there. The videogame market was only 54% sales through traditional storefronts last year. I don't think they'll hold up much longer with more hassle-free options out there.

[CrazedClerkthe2nd]

Like I said, I've already taken my gaming dollar elsewhere.

It's a shame really, too. A lot of the folks working in the store are decent folk. I just can't abide the way the company's run anymore. The employees started taking on a desperate tone at times, and hinted to me that even good employees were in danger if they couldn't push pre-orders and magazines. Even if I did have a pre-order, many times I wouldn't get a call when it came in, so I had to pay attention to release dates, just in case. They stopped ordering games from two of my favorite companies (NIS & Atlus) unless they were pre-ordered.

Just too many irritations for me to support them anymore. I do feel bad for folks working there. The videogame market was only 54% sales through traditional storefronts last year. I don't think they'll hold up much longer with more hassle-free options out there.

The ironic thing about that is the only people the company considers "good employees" are the ones who can push massive amounts of presells and magazines.

I've done the desperation thing several times myself and I've heard other co-workers telling customers they really need the sale to keep their job. Sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn't.

I wish they'd give us some kind of commission or incentive to sell this stuff, other than "you will be fired if you don't".

My other concern with the massive focus and negative reinforcement attitude on this stuff is that its EXACTLY the kind of thing which encourages employees to commit fraud (which can include lying to or misleading customers) or otherwise game the system to either get their numbers up or keep their numbers up.

[Polenicus]

This is just part of the trend that Game Stores started developing before Steam really took off, so online sales can't really be blamed for it.

You see, some bright soul in corporate discovered that buying a used game for $5, then selling it for $25, as opposed to the new price of $35, resulted in huge profits. So, more and more space was dedicated to used games. Also, new games tended to detract from the sales of used games, so presales have been used as a way of minimizing in-store stock.

The idea is, the presales get the sale from the early adopters, those who want the game first. These will be the hardcore gamers, who will play the game, finish it, then trade it in to help fund their next purchase. Then those who are interested, but don't want to pick it up right away will drift in, preferably about when the presales start coming back in. These people will tend to prefer new, but will take used, and since $20 of that $25 sale price is pure profit, the store wants to sell the used ones. Then, eventually, a portion of those copies will trickle back in for one final selloff in the discount bin. Depending on the popularity of the game, you might get two or three more cycles out of it.

On paper, it sounds good, but in practice it turns the B&M stores into videogame pawn shops.

It's also tremendously suicidal. You're using presales as a way for gamers to lock in something that's a scarce commodity. However, with something like Steam, the hardcore first adopters can get the game the instant it goes Gold (In some cases they can even download it beforehand, and it 'activates' on release day), often for better prices even assuming they do trade ins. With no physical copy, they have nothing to trade in to you, robbing you of your used copies to sell, which damages your entire downstream business model. The more casual buyers are quickly being snapped up by places like Wal Mart. A portion of them will come in to trade, but they won't like the store credit policy, and their games will tend to be older, obsolete, and in far poorer condition.

What happens when the Console market starts to get in on the whole Steam concept? It's only a matter of time.

[Geek King]

What happens when the Console market starts to get in on the whole Steam concept? It's only a matter of time.

It's already started to trend that way. All of the three major consoles have a download store to one degree or another, and one of the handhelds offer downloadable games. I think the only thing really holding it back is the download speed available to most gamers is too slow. People just aren't willing to wait for a 4-6 hour download, when they can play now for a quick run to the store.

Once we hit that next step on high-speed networking, and get it rolled out to a good portion of the population, you'll probably see a console with no physical software copies, just a hard drive.

[CrazedClerkthe2nd]

It's already started to trend that way. All of the three major consoles have a download store to one degree or another, and one of the handhelds offer downloadable games. I think the only thing really holding it back is the download speed available to most gamers is too slow. People just aren't willing to wait for a 4-6 hour download, when they can play now for a quick run to the store.

Once we hit that next step on high-speed networking, and get it rolled out to a good portion of the population, you'll probably see a console with no physical software copies, just a hard drive.

We've already had that, it's called the PSP GO and it bombed big time. Did you know we were even told to discourage customers from buying one?

[sevendaysky]

I'm gonna chime in here on the mention of the PSP GO. I thought about it, but then I veered off. It's a nice idea, but has too many limitations. Wireless connection for one, download speed for two, and for three: I couldn't figure out a way to back up the stuff. If your drive gets wiped or corrupted for any reason, what recourse do you have? At least with the "oldfangled" stuff, you have physical media and memory cards, what not. I like my oldfangled stubbornness, mmk?

Now if you could re-download games that you had already paid for (as long as it was on the same machine, or provision was made to "move" that data to a new machine if the old one dies) I could get more on board with that idea.

[Andara Bledin]

What happens when the Console market starts to get in on the whole Steam concept? It's only a matter of time.

Oh, we're already there. Several of the last major games we bought for our 360 were purely digital. Our only local game shop is GameStop, and I dislike their policies enough to refuse to shop there, and delivery costs more and takes longer. I just wait for a sale on what I want, and download it overnight.

We've already had that, it's called the PSP GO and it bombed big time. Did you know we were even told to discourage customers from buying one?

The GO bombed because it was executed poorly, and after they told everybody they'd be able to transfer their games that they had already bought, they pulled the plug on that, so you'd have had to re-purchase all of your games, which is utterly unacceptable.

^-.-^

[Hyndis]

Hardcore gamers don't trade their games in.

The core gamers, the people who buy lots of games, buy them and then keep them.

I still have a shelf full of DOS and Windows 3.1 games. I even have my games for my Commodore 64!



The entire business model they're running is flawed from the very start. Its doomed to failure, and because of that, desperation is sinking in.

Steam will kill these "game stores" which are really just pawn shops. Why?

Steam is cheaper. Steam doesn't sell used games. Steam is more convenient. Steam is on demand/impulse buy friendly. Steam never runs out of stock.

[Polenicus]

The GO bombed because it was executed poorly, and after they told everybody they'd be able to transfer their games that they had already bought, they pulled the plug on that, so you'd have had to re-purchase all of your games, which is utterly unacceptable.

^-.-^

A Sony Game Console? Poorly executed? NO!!

Next you'll be telling me their last two main consoles have been criminally underproduced at launch.

Or that they've tended towards advertising campaigns that are outright insulting to their target market (Like, say, a falsified viral advertising campaign)

Or that when they DO introduce innovative hardware, they then treat their user base like criminals, heaping so many restrictions and software protections on it that it becomes not worth the trouble to use, then declare the technology a failure.

I predict Sony's next advertising campaign to be along the lines of "Buy our products, we promise not to kick you quite so hard in the balls this time."

[Andara Bledin]

Hardcore gamers don't trade their games in.

Pretty much every comment that talks about "hardcore gamers" makes me laugh my ass off. I don't think anyone really knows what makes a "hardcore gamer."

However, your comments about Steam are mostly right-on.

I predict Sony's next advertising campaign to be along the lines of "Buy our products, we promise not to kick you quite so hard in the balls this time."

Their most recent "fun" is that they advertised the ability to install an alternate OS on the PS3 as a major selling point, and they recently updated that capability out of the system. If I'd bought one based on that capability, I'd be pissed.

^-.-^

[Geek King]

The GO bombed because it was executed poorly, and after they told everybody they'd be able to transfer their games that they had already bought, they pulled the plug on that, so you'd have had to re-purchase all of your games, which is utterly unacceptable.

This, right here. 100% on the nose as to why I didn't replace my first gen PSP.

However, if a next-gen handheld system were to go all download from the start, I think it might have a decent chance. Maybe design download kiosks to sit in stores so download speed isn't so much an issue, and would draw people into the store. Meanwhile, also make it an option to download over the internet for people with a good connection. Store gets a cut of the kiosk take, so we have something for them besides taking up floorspace. Hell, it's not too far from Best Buy having a whole endcap full of online gaming prepays.

[Fire_on_High]

Steam will kill these "game stores" which are really just pawn shops. Why?

Steam is cheaper. Steam doesn't sell used games. Steam is more convenient. Steam is on demand/impulse buy friendly. Steam never runs out of stock.

Steam will let you redownload anything that becomes hopelessly corrupted, accidentally deleted, or just flat out lost for whatever reason...as many times as you need, without question or hassle. That alone makes it well worth the download time.

[protege]

I still have a shelf full of DOS and Windows 3.1 games. I even have my games for my Commodore 64!

Damn, I thought *I* was bad with old software At home, just about every game I've ever bought...is neatly stacked on one of my shelves--Wolfenstein 3D, Doom (I and II), most of the Simcity series, Quake II, several versions of Civilization, GTA, etc. All of those games are well past their sell-by date, yet they're still enjoyable. There's nothing like having a bad day at work, coming home and firing up a version of GTA, and then blowing lots of shit up