The Persona 4 pre-order art book a.k.a. my Gamestop rant...

[Nature Boy]

Not providing a pre-order bonus that you baited as an incentive for me to pre-order is just bad business, in my opinion.

Totally agree.

And I'd be totally pissed - I think pre-orders are an absolute joke unless you want the goody (and the last goody I thought was worth it was for Wind Waker).

$5 to guarantee you'll have a game for me to buy? Please. I'll wait until I'm ready to buy it, then either find it online or pick it up somewhere else. It's not like every 3rd store in the mall doesn't sell games these days. Plus if I look around I'll possibly find it $5+ cheaper somewhere else.

$5 towards a game I want, in exchange for a goody, I'm cool with. But if I gave 'em my money and didn't get my goody I'd feel robbed.

I still think the whole "GTA/Madden" comment and the rest of it sounded a little heavy handed though. Or at the very least elitest.

[heybtbm]

I think pre-orders are an absolute joke unless you want the goody (and the last goody I thought was worth it was for Wind Waker).

That probably was the best pre-order incentive of all time. It single handedly brought me into that generation of consoles.

[eskobar]

i hate the "SUBJECT TO AVAILABILITY" legal protection.

I've never had trouble with gamestop about pre-order bonus gifts but i do know that some gamestops receive more items than they need ... that breaks the balance for the availability of the bonus.

I have a friend in Mexico that gets WAY MANY preorder bonuses for free, he has a friend on a Houston, TX gamestop and every month he sends a list with the current releases and buy them directly through the manager of GS.

Is is strange that some stores did not receive the artbook because the production of it must be huge if even GAME CRAZY offers it without pre-ordering.

But, guys; the AMAZING ATLUS/AMAZON duo is reason enough to stop buying at GAMESTOP. Amazon has better prices (P4 costed 34.99 with artbook + 29.99 for social link exp, free ship) and the customer service is top.

you guys should check the offers amazon has ... :

Persona 3 FES with artbook and soundtrack (Package very similar to the first persona 3) for 23.01 ..

Eternal Poison 27.07 usd ... it was released on nov 15 and still retails for 39.99 at GS

[josekortez]

I still think the whole "GTA/Madden" comment and the rest of it sounded a little heavy handed though. Or at the very least elitest.

Elitist? Maybe. Truthful? Yes.

Whatever your opinion is on what makes a person a "hardcore" gamer or a "mainstream" gamer, you have to agree that Gamestop only gets a small percentage of people who pre-order a boutique game like Persona 4 while the whole world plays GTA or Madden, which gives GS an easier opportunity to sucker those people into pre-ordering GTA or Madden. Personally, I don't waste time with Madden, and I stopped buying GTA on day one after the series became as derivative as it currently is. At the start of the next generation of machines, there will be dozens of used copies of GTA 4 littering the PS3 and 360 shelves at Gamestop.

To clarify what I meant by my GTA and Madden statement is that my one dissatisfactory customer interaction with them over a boutique game like Persona 4 isn't going to make a dent in the company's practices that will probably continue to dissatisfy customers for years to come.

But yes, we all know that Gamestop doesn't care about the hardcore gamers who have helped the company to keep their stores open long enough for them to swoop in, swallow EB Games whole and become a veritable monopoly. And yes, you don't have to shop at Gamestop. You can go to Best Buy, Circuit City, K-Mart, Sears, Target, Toys R Us, Walmart, etc. for most mainstream releases, but these aren't specialized video game retailers and they usually don't have pre-order bonuses since video games aren't their main source of revenue.

Once again, I'm just stating my opinion along with some pure facts to back it up.

And my only regret during my short tirade is that I didn't lump the Halo fans in along with the GTA and Madden people.

[lendelin]

A pre-order guarantee for a bonus item is a deal and should be kept, GS did clearly something wrong in particular in your case becasue you value the artbook.

My advice however: look around for the best deal. I'm not a pre-order guy, I'm usually too cheap for that, but in this case for various reasons I did pre-order it.

It's easy to find out where the best deal is. Why would I pay $40 plus taxes and have the trouble picking the item up in a store when Amazon offered it weeks before up to the last minute $3 cheaper without taxes (plus free shipping) and sends it conveniently to your house?

...and DP is also a way to find easily the best deals. In a thread dedicated to PS2 RPGs I pointed out two weeks ago that the Amazon deal is by far the best for guys who want the game right away. (not to mention that Amazon is very reliable when it comes to pre-order bonuses)

Same goes for guides, btw. If you want one pretty early and don't want to wait until you get it for $5 and cheaper then Amazon is for years the best place to shop. No $19.99 prices in store, the guides drop very fast to $10 - $13, no taxes, free shipping. I can't even remember when I bought a guide in a store unless it was on clearance, or in special cases like the hardcover Twilight Princess guide ($30) Best Buy sold for $10 one month after its release.

Be cheap. It pays off.

[animesuperj]

Most of the time Gamestops won't even get enough pre-order bonus material to cover the amount of pre-orders they got in. Case in point was the Persona 4 art book. I think my Gamestop got 4 of them in, and I know they had more pre-orders than that. Also, Gamestop's will get the pre-order stuff in BEFORE a game is released. I know my Gamestop got the Persona 4 book about a week earlier. Go to the store you pre-order from a couple days before the game is released and ask if they got the bonus stuff in, then tell them you reserved it (which they can check) and tell them you want your bonus. If they're not jerks, they should give it to you.

Also, if they're out of bonus material when the day the game is released, it's a good chance that employees took the bonus stuff without buying the game. Happens with the better stuff like art books and soundtracks.

[Nature Boy]

Elitist? Maybe. Truthful? Yes.
....
And my only regret during my short tirade is that I didn't lump the Halo fans in along with the GTA and Madden people

You are angry at Gamestop for not delivering, right? Not the people that happen to purchase or like Madden/Halo/GTA who had nothing to do with the transaction?

That's why I thought it was heavy handed. Doesn't matter if it's true or not.

I'd be mad at Gamestop too, regardless of whether or not the publisher shipped all they thought they could.

If they *know* they're going to get short shipped on a goody, all they'd have to do is tell me when I'm pre-ordering.

I might take the chance anyway, or I might walk away, but at least they're giving me the choice at the time of purchase. Taking my money and then blaming the publisher afterwards is *not* cool to me.

[Kitsune Sniper]

Well I wanted to get the Social Expansion thingy but guess what? Amazon's out of stock. I had no idea what it was until now...

And now scalpers are selling it for $150.

Fuck.

[The 1 2 P]

Gamestop is like the George W Bush of game stores. For all their shady ass practices and broken promises--people keep going back there to shop. As horrible a job as Bush did his first 4 years, the majority of the US just voted him back in to continue the carnage. I don't mean to turn this into a political rant or get side tracked, but if the majority of us dislike Gamestop so much then we really need to stop dealing with them.

[Princess-Isabela]

gamestops are truly garbage places to go to,
people who work there are douches for the most part.
prices are bad too, just buy stuff online(amazon for example) - solid customer service, plenty of product and you'll be in the clear.

[Damaniel]

I ordered my copy of Persona 4 from Amazon the day after it came out, and they sent a copy of the art book with it. I wasn't expecting that, but it was a nice bonus.

I *had* pre-ordered the game from Gamestop, but none of my local ones could find my pre-order in their system, and unfortunately I had lost the receipt. That's the third time in the last few months that a Gamestop employee had screwed up a pre-order -- one reserved Fallout 3 for me instead of Fable 2 (I caught this one the same day), and one reserved Tales of Desperaux(!) instead of Tales of Vesperia. I didn't catch the second one at all and since the store didn't have extras, I had to get it from somewhere else.

I've tried to do pre-orders from Gamestop to help the sales people meet their quotas, but many of them are so incompetent these days that I'll probably stop bothering to.

[The 1 2 P]

That's the third time in the last few months that a Gamestop employee had screwed up a pre-order -- one reserved Fallout 3 for me instead of Fable 2 (I caught this one the same day), and one reserved Tales of Desperaux(!) instead of Tales of Vesperia.

Those are the kinds of mistakes you'd expect parents and grandparents to make. But employees of a game store? Making rookie mistakes like this? Reminds me of the time two Gamestop employees tried arguing with a woman that the Final Fantasy series was never on the XBox 360. Luckily I was there to put them both in their place with a mocking "you work here and you didn't even know this series came out on this system?" Just shows the kind of GS employees I'm use to

[josekortez]

I got my copy of Persona 4 with the art book yesterday from Amazon, and it came in less than a week with the free shipping. If there's another game that I just have to have as soon as it comes out, I'll give Amazon my business from now on. Good deal!

[Kitsune Sniper]

I got my copy of Persona 4 with the art book yesterday from Amazon, and it came in less than a week with the free shipping. If there's another game that I just have to have as soon as it comes out, I'll give Amazon my business from now on. Good deal!

Check this: I preordered it a day before the release date. I was told it would ship -today-, but they shipped it last week and it arrived at my post office on SATURDAY. Now that's good service.

[mailman187666]

Well I wanted to get the Social Expansion thingy but guess what? Amazon's out of stock. I had no idea what it was until now...

And now scalpers are selling it for $150.

Fuck.

I just got my social expansion thing in the mail yesterday along with the game and had no idea that they would sell out so quickly. Mine came with the art book as well as the rest of the items no problem. Amazon is pretty good I think.

[esquire]

Gamestop is like the George W Bush of game stores.

So does that mean the OP should've thrown his shoe at the store clerk when they wouldn't give him his artbook?

[Frankie_Says_Relax]

The following is a fact.

I state this information (which may be blatantly obvious to some) not as a swipe at Gamestop employees (as I was a Funcoland manager for many many years) but ... simply as a statement of fact.

Employees of Game Stop, EB, (and any other retail chain that get "pre-order" bonus merch) take the stuff for themselves.

Due to the fact that more often than not (and especially in the case of books, shirts, and other non-game-disc/cartridge merch) the stuff is not for sale, not inventoried, and there is no "punishment" for doing so.

While I was occasionally guilty of doing so myself with bonus merch, I only ever did it in the case of HUGE quantities of the bonus merch (where we got more than enough to fill all the needs of the pre-orders) ... but that's not to say that there aren't managers out there taking that SINGLE copy of a P4 art book home instead of giving it to the only in-store customer who pre-ordered.

And of course, not every manager/employee partakes in this. But there are probably more that do than do not.

It's a tough fact to deal with ... but a fact none the less.

[josekortez]

The following is a fact.

I state this information (which may be blatantly obvious to some) not as a swipe at Gamestop employees (as I was a Funcoland manager for many many years) but ... simply as a statement of fact.

Employees of Game Stop, EB, (and any other retail chain that get "pre-order" bonus merch) take the stuff for themselves.

Yeah, when I originally suggested that, the manager and the associate on duty at Gamestop that night were quick to respond by saying, "Oh, never, we never take any of the bonus items home!"

Yeah, right...

[Jisho23]

Yeah, when I originally suggested that, the manager and the associate on duty at Gamestop that night were quick to respond by saying, "Oh, never, we never take any of the bonus items home!"

Yeah, right...

Thats such a crock...

This is why I avoid Gamestop/EB as much as I can, if only to not be harassed about pre-ordering. I got my Persona 4, with the god damned artbook.

[Iron Draggon]

I've in-store pre-ordered stuff from GS/EB stores before (before and after the merge) and had this happen. Was I upset? Yes. Do I know if the store even got enough to cover the pre-orders? No clue, but I know this is often the case that they didn't even get enough to cover orders.

What I have done since then though has gotten me my special item ever time. I order it online. Either Amazon or GS online orders (if done before the game releases) that mention the special goodies when you order it will give them to you. Sometimes a game might be delayed a day or two in shipping out (seems to happen to amazon) but i'll be damned if I don't get my goodies using this method.

NEVER trust Gamestop to give you your preorder bonus items! Here's why:

I preordered Grid for the PC at Gamestop.com hoping that by using the online method I wouldn't get screwed out of the bonus swag by them like I always have before when placing preorders in one of their offline store locations...

WRONG!

what happened was they cancelled my preorder after delaying it for days, and when I called to find out why, they gave me some lame-ass excuse about the address on my credit card not matching the address on file with my bank, and claimed they had emailed me about it to tell me that if I didn't correct this situation somehow within 48 hours they would cancel my order... but I never got any such email, and I never had any such issues placing preorders with the exact same credit card with Amazon.com during that same time... I also checked with my bank, and there were no such issues with my credit card... Gamestop literally just randomly picked me out of the crowd to screw me out of my preorder swag, because their advice to remedy the situation at that point was to place the order again, which of course wouldn't be a preorder anymore, because the game had already been released...

BOYCOTT GAMESTOP, ONLINE & OFFLINE!

as for Amazon, they've gotten really bad about not getting enough copies to fulfill all their preorders in stock to ship them all on the actual release days, and I haven't preordered anything from them that was supposed to get me some bonus swag yet, but at least I have always gotten the games, and never gotten some lame-ass excuse for canceling my preorder from them... I did end up cancelling my preorder for SCORE International Baja 1000 from them though, because they still didn't have it in stock yet for days after release, while other Amazon merchants had it in stock and for alot less...

so my experience placing preorders with Amazon hasn't been much better lately either... when I canceled that one preorder, it was after several preorders placed with them had all shipped days after their release dates, while other Amazon merchants had the games in stock for less on release day... and I was only able to cancel it because they hadn't started processing it yet... otherwise, I still would've been stuck paying more to wait longer for it, as I was for the last few preorders I placed with them...

but I'll still use Amazon for preorders in the future, because it's the easiest way to find all the games I want and pay for them ahead of time, so I can keep up with all the latest releases by staying ahead of them all... and I don't even have to leave my house to do it... that's the best part... I click a button on my mouse, and games come right to my door... perfect shopping!

so one of these days, we'll see if Amazon treats me any better for preorder bonuses... I would've placed my preorder for Grid with them, and at least gotten the bonus codes that I was supposed to get along with the free tshirt that I was supposed to get from Gamestop, but they didn't offer the tshirt, that was a Gamestop exclusive... which makes me even more pissed off at Gamestop, because they actually bribe game developers out of these sort of exclusive deals, just so they can randomly fuck their customers out of them! so I haven't bought anything from Gamestop since, and I never will again!