Confirmed: GAME to not stock Mass Effect 3 for launch

This cant be good.

How can they still be in business?

does this go for gamestation aswell? i have a lot of store credit for gamestation, whats going on ffs

IGN have a GAME Staff Memo concerning the situation

http://media.ign.com/games/image/article/121/1219655/game-will-not-be-stocking-mass-effect-3-20120229031449252.jpg

@2 – I think they’re circling the drain.

Well this doesn’t look good.

This is fucking outrageous. I had the N7 Collector’s Edition pre-ordered!!!

@6 – You can now order it from Amazon, Play, Zavvi and ShopTo.

I guess this (i.e. Game not stocking several significant new releases) hints at just how much money Game must make from second-hand sales; I don’t see how they can survive long if they keep failing to stock these big new releases.

Thanks Colin.

I just cancelled my order at Game and pre-ordered at Play for the same price. Couldn’t find it on Amazon or ShopTo and it was over £100 at Zavvi.

I find this a great shame, cos I was looking forward to earning the loyalty points and confident my order would arrive on time… now I’m not so sure

Eurogamer now saying Mario Party 9 won’t be stocked.

@10 Here’s the link to that: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-02-29-game-group-not-stocking-mario-party-9

^cheers

I feel bad for GAME’s employees. This must be a super shit position to be in.

Eurogamer have got pics of the internal memo
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-02-29-revealed-games-memo-to-staff-on-mass-effect-3-cancellation

Could Game downsize and rely more on second-hand sales?

I’m sure they’ll be stocking second hand versions of the game.

JM

I was in a GAME store the other weekend and the employee had a pretty bleak outlook for the future of the franchise.

He said along the lines they were receiving “little to no stock of new games” and that he has “no idea of what’s going to happen with the company”.

I know a lot of people have issues with GAME but I’ve always had a decent relationship with them and found I always got a pretty decent trade in with my consoles and games.

I would be sad to see my local store shut down as that would mean I have no stores locally that stock movies, music or games… considering HMV shut down too.

If Game goes it takes down gamestation with it. Gameplay.co.uk has already gone (true just like Game itself it was a shadow of what it used to be). I just do not see this as a positive in any way.

I remember when Game used to be packed with games, it was a massive library of titles for all the platforms. With this current generation its died on its arse.

GREED.

That is all.

Looks like I’ll go down to my local gamestation and use the remaining credit on point cards or something, mass effect 3 was the only game I intend on buying until Max Payne is released.

Just woke up to this. Really not good at all.

Well then , GAME over

This is trending on Twitter. Must be big news.

Not purchased anything from GAME for 2 years, I prefer CEX personally, so can’t really say anything good or bad about them. Hopefully EA, Nintendo and GAME can play nice and get along.

I think this will be the final nail in the coffin for GAME, all they need to do now is bury the remains.

GAME can’t survive in it’s current outfit. It’s like going to your local cinema and them not playing any new films or blockbusters.

*Edited to keep Colin happy :p

If this doesn’t kill Game, then the loss of consumer confidence will.
Game used to be known for getting the exclusive deals, and the Coll Eds. If they can’t offer that, can’t offer the lowest price and can’t even get the stock why would anyone pre-order?
This could very well be the end.

Can’t wait for their closing down sales…

@24 – I think it’s more, GAME can’t survive in it’s current outfit.

Gamestop have swooped and straight away put their pre-order ME3 coll eds and Mario party 9 headlines.
They did the same thing last week with Last Story.

@28 – That was there last night dude. Have you seen the price too? £43 for the standard edition!

@29 Shouldn’t have been there last night. It was only announced today wasn’t it?
What I’m talking about is their Twitter and Facebook pimping. This news came out and BOOM! Gamestop drum up trade on the back of bad news.
Very canny.

I thought you meant their main website, sorry bout that.

You’re probably right, not sure what I make of Gamestop yet, they charged me for my Diablo 3 CE without telling me, lovely surprise bill of £55 on my credit card statement this morning…

@24 Aww thank you

@31 I know that feeling. I pre-ordered Batman: AC with them a while back and they actually charge the money for the game at the time of pre-order.
Not ideal in my opinion, I guess it’s so they can use your cash as collateral to secure the stock maybe?
If I have the money upfront I might consider them again, but at the moment I wouldn’t pre-order through them due to this rather bizarre way of doing it.

I suppose they’re just lucky it’s not a CoD or FIFA game. They can survive Mass Effect, they can survive The Last Story, but not indefinitely, every missed pre order is another blow to their tattered reputation.

Just placed an order with game.co.uk….. Throwing caution to the wind baby!!!

Zavvi just sent me an email saying “double points on all EA Games inc. Mass Effect 3 CE”. It’s like watching vultures. They have also brought the price down in line with other places.

With all the bad things said, im gonna miss game, my local game/gamestation where very nice and committed to there job, and where always there to help myself, its either remove all the stores and go online only (a la Zavvi) or try to keep UK stores open and close international branches, but the future is bleak, bleak indeed

Mind if I play devil’s advocate for a moment?

Okay, so what I’ve heard essentially is that brick & mortar stores are having troubles staying afloat because of publisher greed, which exceeds any amount of greed from the retailer themselves. It’s almost as though publishers are pushing the digital frontier to try and kill off retailers.

When you look at how much a retailer pays per game (which, again, as I’ve heard is near what you pay), and then you look at how tax has to come out of that, and then how the price of the game has to decrease over time from the RRP just so that they can remain competitive… it’s not a good deal for them. And publishers just aren’t interested in dropping the price that they charge brick & mortar stores.

On top of this, everyone’s being hit by our current economic state. Brick & mortar stores are absolutely no exception to this. In the past they’ve had a pretty good situation with second hand sales – the way they view it is that once the initial wave of sales has gone to the publisher, second hand sales don’t hurt the publisher and allows them to remain afloat (even in economically difficult times).

The choice to not stock titles with online passes is made because of this. And the interesting thing is is that it may not be an entirely idiotic decision. Think about it. The passes for previous games offered incentives for using the pass. This time? Below average multiplayer mode and DLC that you have to pay through the nose for.

Now… this may not be a popular viewpoint, but I felt that the DLC for Mass Effect 2 was both a con (overpriced) and quite shit.

I’m actually thankful that I didn’t buy any of the ME2 DLC. I watched videos of the story DLC and they didn’t really add anything at all, and the rest of it? Just cosmetic junk, or stuff that unbalanced the game. My interest in these things? Zero. Now here’s the thing: That seems to be the tactic for Mass Effect 3. So the DLC is uninteresting, the multiplayer mode is uninteresting…

So why wouldn’t someone who has no compulsion toward multiplayer or DLC (perhaps due to being short on money, or due to Bioware having a far worse DLC history than even Bethesda with their horse armour) not wait a bit and buy a second hand copy from game? They’re getting exactly what they want – the single-player campaign, and nothing else.

So if you look at it that way, this is an intelligent decision made by GAME. Because it cuts the publisher profits out of the equation whilst allowing them to reap second-hand sales. And EA did an incredibly, amazingly stupid thing with Mass Effect 3 in not adding incentives for actually buying it not previously owned. What they don’t realise is that for an avid single-player gamer, a multiplayer mode is not an incentive.

So, to (I believe) the majority of gamers, a second hand version of ME3 is going to be every bit as good as the original shrink-wrapped version.

Something to think about?

@38 Your points are valid. However, if a kid sends his/her mum to purchase this at their GAME/station store only to find its not in stock, it will only go on to damage what little credibility they have left.

Now that Nintendo have also pulled the plug (see Eurogamer) clearly shows that the GAME boardroom have made so many enemies with their aggressive stance on pre-owned and, during the 90s essentially dictating terms of business and now the shoe is on the other foot, GAME dont like it and it will end up costing them their business and I will be amazed if they are here by Xmas.

@38 Most brick and mortar stores take 70% of the revenue from every sale. Steam takes 30%.

It’s not greed though, it’s just economics. Brick and mortar has far higher expenses in terms of rent, salary and insurance, while likely catering to a far smaller audience than a website.

One website that reaches everyone is always going to be more succesful than a hundred smaller stores that won’t reach as many.

When you figure in the financial crisis, you’re also far less likely to be able to secure loans and capital with those kinds of expenses unless you have a very very good business. Currently brick and mortar isn’t a growth business, and the digital distributors are, so it’s fair to say that they’re backed into a corner.

Video killed the radio star.

GAME just keeps hammering nails into their coffin. The game already has more preorders than ME2 and this company that is apparently dying because of their horrible choices continues to make horrible choices. This is just as bad as Hollywood video and Blockbuster refusing to get into streaming or redbox, which eventually lead to them claiming bankruptcy. Look at Gamestop, they know eventually everything will go digital and so they went and bought a digital retailer. Retailers can’t think that they will always sell movies, music and video games all these mediums can go digital and they are and every year more games are being sold digitally. SO become a part of the wave or be destroyed by the riptide that comes with it.

@41 Yup, Blockbuster syndrome all the way.

If you ask me, Gamestop got into the game way too late as well though. Buying Impulse was a bit of a panic move.

@42

I agree. Impulse was never really a big contender so I doubt that it will be enough to save Gamestop in the long run.

Great news. Now you deluded ME fans can ponder about why mas effect 2 is the most over rated game of all time. If mass effect 2 was a 6.5/of 10, judging by the shitty me3 demo, it will be lucky to get a 5.

i really cba to read this but can someone simply answer this question…will gamestation have it?

No.

Much to my dismay this afternoon, I was one of the GAME preorderers. I can’t stand GAME, every single business practice they’ve pushed forward over the last year or two has been horrendous. I thought the entire shambles with their website relaunch resulting in cancelled preorders couldn’t be topped, but lo and behold, here we are. Granted in this instance the fault may lay at EA’s feet, it appears, but honestly, if this is the end of GAME, it’s long overdue. The only reason I preordered from them is that I had a load of points stored up from historic purchases from years ago before they turned to shit, and wanted to use them up on ME3 before backing away from them for good. (Not to mention that, at the time, they had exclusive rights to the Collector’s Edition.) Should’ve made the move sooner, I guess.

Fortunately, I saw this story break while on my lunch hour at work, and quickly placed a new order at Amazon upon checking my GAME account to discover that my preorder has indeed been cancelled. What I find most disgusting about this entire debacle is the lack of communication from GAME about the situation. Yes they’ve issued a press release, and there’s a few things about it on their facebook page, but as a customer who had an order registered with them from months ago, I’ve received no direct communication from GAME to inform me that my order has been cancelled. Had I not checked the net on a whim at lunch time, I may never have known, and I shudder to think how many people who perhaps don’t visit gaming news websites often are now completely clueless about the cancellation of their preorder. Shocking customer service, and yet exactly the kind of thing GAME are reknowned for. While this current dilemma may not be entirely their fault, they (the business entity, not the individual employees) absolutely deserve to go tits up. I just wish it could have waited until after ME3.

PS: the diablo 3 Collector’s edition is no longer GAME exclusive, just saw it on shopto’s website

And the internet kills another high street company.

Do you know how much Amazon pays in UK corporation taxes every year on sales of many billions of pounds? Zero. Nothing. Not, a, penny. All of its profits are funnelled out of the UK without any charge from HMRC. And now another UK company will go down, councils will lose business rates, people will lose jobs, and high streets will continue to die so you can buy dirt cheap products from corporate tax evaders who are leeching our economy.

Remember this next time you get a great deal online and whine about retail prices. And remember this those of you morons who complain about the bankers, Vodafone etc.

PS Amazon UK did pay some tax once. In 2007 it generously wrote a cheque to the UK taxpayer for the sum total of £19,367. Or to put that another way, about what an average married working couple pays a year in income tax and National Insurance.

Crush the bankers!!!!