Certain games shops – say, for example, EB Games – seem to believe that the way to increase their business is to trick people into coming into the store. They’ll have a big banner out the front advertising $125 DS LITE + BRAIN TRAINING – which sounds like a fairly good deal – and it’s only when you look very closely that you see the fine print that reveals that it’s the worst deal ever – “When you trade in a DS Lite”. Wow – all I have to do is pay you $125 and give you my old console and I’ll get an identical console plus a $40 game. WHAT A BARGAIN!
EB Games does this so relentlessly that no-one with an ounce of sense believes anything it puts out the front. It means I’m less likely to buy a game from them, because it’s such a hassle finding out the actual price (if I’m not willing to go the being ludicrously gouged route).
Tricking customers into the shop might get them some extra sales in the short term – which is all that this kind of business thinking is – but in the long term, it’s got to be harming the brand. Unless they’re COMPLETE morons, those shoppers will simply disbelieve the next thing you try to tell them.
The other thing EB Games and all the other retailers have been doing recently is putting up large posters advertising games that aren’t coming out for a couple of months. Eastland’s game shops are full of GUITAR HERO: METALLICA posters, and have been since early April, despite the game not coming out here until the 27th of May.
Nice work, distributors. You’ve made us wait for the game itself – the game’s been out in the US since last month – whilst constantly rubbing the pointless delay in the face of anyone who would’ve been interested. Hopefully by the time the game does actually come out the potential purchasers will have long since given up and your sales will be cut accordingly.
Thanks for wasting our time. Thanks for wasting our time with prices that aren’t real, and thanks for wasting our time advertising products you’re not selling.
Solution: STOP DOING THAT!
Been a long time since I bought a game from EB. http://www.play-asia.com/ is the cheapest, however if you’re getting a NTSC game make sure it’s not region locked.
Locally I normally get them from JB
At least you still have EB there. here in the UK they were bought out, and became the horrible conglomerate that is GAME, our highstreets here are the same, sickening colour of purple POS and display Wii boxes everywhere you go.
I actually miss EB, THAT was much, much better than what we have now.
Ahh we’re getting that GAME store here now as well.
Ugh yeah and the people know nothing about videogames, other than trying to sell you pre-orders, and a lot of the time they treat you like crap, for example I went into eb games/GameStop to return a game, and to buy some other games. I had the game I was going to return in my hand and i was walking over to the other ps3 games to pick out the 2 I was buying, and then return the game/ buy the others to save time/trouble.
But of course it wasn’t that easy and on my way to the games one of the clerks kept calling to me and said I had to bring the game I had in my hand up, and I told him I was returning the game, and he said “you mean trading it in right?” and I said “no returning it”, and he said oh well do you have the receipt? I showed him the receipt and I had to keep the game and the receipt up at the counter ( with the disc inside) while I pick out the other games, very annoying.
But of course it continues, I picked up infamous used, and call of Jerez new and i wanted to return the game for store credit and do two transactions for the games (since i was buying infamous and using my cc/ store credit, and the call of Jerez was for someone else and i was using cash for that) and the guy was like “oh I can ring it up at the same time” and I said no I wanted to do two separate transactions, and he just gave me a look and said “oh ok”. Just experiences like these really make me want to just stick to eBay.
I bought army of 2 when I got home and opened the case the disk wasn’t inside and today I bought mw3 and bought the English version they gave me the french