Talking turkeys!

[Robot Monkey]

It's that time of the year to talk turkey!

 

What are your gaming-related turkeys of the last year? Feel free to make up your own categories.

 

Top Turkey Personality: Jack Thompson

Top Retail Turkey: Retailers who took 360 pre-orders and didn't fulfill them

Playa-hata Award: Wired for their geek gift guide that happily perpetuates the Nintendo is for kiddies idea.

 

Oh, and Happy Thanksgiving!

[Camp]

Top Retail Turkey: Retailers who took 360 pre-orders and didn't fulfill them

 

In most cases, that's Microsoft's fault.

[Robot Monkey]

In most cases, that's Microsoft's fault.

 

This doesn't surprise me. Do you want to start your own turkey list and add People (Especially Robot Monkey) Who Blame Everything on the Retailer Because He is Last in the Chain?

[JoeyN]

In most cases, that's Microsoft's fault.

 

When stores take preorders for over 100 systems its gamestop/eb's fault if they dont know how many they are getting

[Camp]

When stores take preorders for over 100 systems its gamestop/eb's fault if they dont know how many they are getting

 

er...not when Microsoft fails to give any indication of how many they'll get until it's too late.

[weremichael]

I think that it's both Microsoft and the resellers fault. Make as many as you can (without making lemons) and tell the reseller how many they get. The resellers shouldn't sell things when they don't have any idea of how many they will get. This isn't farming where we buy futures (due mostly to weather). We are buying an expensive toy that is made by people. An accurate number should be known by all parties (especially the people that paid for it early).

 

Michael

[The Daisy]

I know I might be a sucker, but I actually think that Microsoft did admit the major reason that they were at fault. The fact that they were doing a worldwide launch within a few weeks really did cut down the amount of consoles that they could allocate to any specific region. If they would have done a "standard" launch, almost all of the units would have gone to the NA region and then they would have ramped up production for the other regions before launching there.

 

I think the resellers are slightly to blame for over selling quantities, but who am I to blame them for taking people's money when they're willing to give it up.

 

Glen

[Angry the Clown]

The fact that they were doing a worldwide launch within a few weeks really did cut down the amount of consoles that they could allocate to any specific region. If they would have done a "standard" launch, almost all of the units would have gone to the NA region and then they would have ramped up production for the other regions before launching there.

 

They face a tough task of keeping a steady allocation of new stock to all regions now of course. God help them if they face delays there because they’ll be in similar hot waters that Sony currently finds itself in regarding the PSP in Europe.

Since Sony re-allocated all Europe’s planned stock to America, so the US had more for its spring launch, the PSP thus failed to launch here until September, and you’d think that’d mean a delay here would have ensured they were plentiful by the time they finally hit the shelves but stock remains laughably low two months on with Christmas only a month away.

 

Fact is, America - centre of the universe and all that – has still probably got the most 360 stock and I think the 360s launch in Europe next week, especially the UK, is going to be a fair bit more of a mess than you’re seeing over there for retailers and consumers alike given both MS and retailers look to have grossly overestimated how many they can ship within Europe this side of Christmas. It's become a case here where many who pre-ordered and were told they'd definitely have one on the 2nd are now being told that they're in fact more likely to be wasting their journey to stores to collect next Friday.

 

With luck lessons will be learned and Sony and retailers will not be so quick to offer up PS3s before having a realistic idea of how many they’ll have. Nintendo are usually rather good with stock allocation so for the Revolution at least I am quite confident the planned release, even on a simultaneous global scale, will go smoothly, after all they’ve been in this game far longer than Sony or Microsoft.

[AnthonyVolpe]

XBox 360 gets my botched launch award. Not enough product to supply the demand, and the existing product has problems with overheating and crashes. At this point I decided I'm going nowhere near the XBox 360 until Halo 3 comes out.

 

Far Cry Instincts for the XBox gets some sort of award - the worst thing I can say about the game itself is the AI, which at times is dumb as a brick. But it gets the award simply because despite having an incredible map editor and the potential for some incredible online games, no one bought it, no one's playing it, and I found all this out after the price immediately dropped $20 after I bought it. I already traded it in for Half-Life 2 and took an enormous hit.

[Adam Tyner]

The resellers shouldn't sell things when they don't have any idea of how many they will get.

Exactly. They were taking pre-orders when there was no list of launch titles, no release date, no idea of how many consoles they'd be getting, and not even a price.

 

I don't see how any company could in good conscience take people's money if they don't know what they're selling, how much it'll cost, how many they'll have to sell, or when they'll even get them. Why not go ahead and take pre-orders on the Xbox 720 right now? Then again, if people are willing to pay...

 

I wonder how the 360's launch will affect gamers' perception of pre-ordering. If you don't pre-order, you'll have an extremely difficult time getting one. If you do pre-order...well, your chances aren't necessarily any better.