For UK gamers planning to pick up the special edition of The Last Story from retailer GAME, there's been some disappointing news as their orders have been cancelled.
As reported by Eurogamer, emails were sent to affected customers earlier this week, giving only a few days notice before the title launches on 24th February. A copy of the email is below.
Dear Customer,
Thank you for your order.
Unfortunately, this product is no longer being stocked and we will therefore be unable to fulfil your order, which has now been cancelled.
No money has been taken from your account for this item.
Please accept our apologies for any disappointment and inconvenience this may have caused.
If you have any queries please don't hesitate to contact our Customer Service Team.
This version of the title has been removed from the retailer's website and won't be stocked in stores, though the standard edition will be on sale as normal. In response to this issue and the news that some Ubisoft launch titles for 3DS rival Vita won't be stocked, as well as the absence of Tekken 3D Prime Edition from its stores, GAME Group Marketing Director Anna-Marie Mason was asked by Eurogamer for the reasons behind these decisions
There's no one specific reason. There isn't one specific catch-all reason. We do endeavour to give our customers the widest possible range, whether it's GAME, Gamestation, online or in-store.
We can't stock absolutely everything. That's just not possible.
In the case of The Last Story Special Edition, perhaps GAME shouldn't have accepted pre-orders for a product that they wouldn't, ultimately, deliver. For those of you interested in this particular version, there is still time to track it down elsewhere. Don't forget to check out our The Last Story review for the lowdown on this latest Wii JRPG adventure.
[source eurogamer.net]
Comments 24
What a specialist game store
I remember that WHSmith, a book shop, had eShop cards before them...
oh my god! what the f*** is wrong with game? pricing 3ds games for £40 in high street stores, not recieving order from online and now dropping games from behing stocked such as tekken 3d and now its this. THE WORST STORE EVER. go with shopto.net
GAME does it again!
My local GAME isn't even buying this game for the release... They didn't get Xenoblade either. On the other hand, they got several different Dora the Explorer games. Yay! [heavy sarcasm]
Got to take the bus and go into the city to find it then.
this from a store that promotes the heck out of modern warfare 3 and final fantasy 13 for the xbox, PS3 - yet decides not to stock tekken 3d and the last story.
i can get this limited edition box set on amazon UK for a cheaper price, so it's not that big of a loss.
I've had to reserve a Limited Edition copy at HMV. Its just a bit annoying how they decide not to deliver the Limited Edition TWO DAYS before the game is released. Maybe when GAME punched the numbers they realised they couldn't afford selling the LE of the game.
Another thing is how they haven't stocked up on Tekken 3DS either. I know in the past, games such as Okamiden (DS) and Muramasa (Wii) were not stocked on day one. They go through phases where you have to order the game through their website or look for it elsewhere.
Considering their financial position, the question is how many other games are going to go through this mishap in the future? And GAME also has ownership over Gamestation so whatever happens it's also affected.
It will be interesting to see how many LE of the game actually sell in comparison to the standard version. The Last Story has been advertised pretty much everywhere as well. Pandora's Tower will also have a limited edition; will it too face the same fate? Only time will tell. Enjoy the game, whatever version you may get and I'll hopefully see you online !D
Boy, GAME must be in trouble. I could even get that they might not be able to stock it in stores, but outright cancelling online preorders at the point where they could have taken the money from the preorders and made profit?
Yeah, I think nintendo must have refused to give them the limited editions...
@Terra You're right, though it's my view that GAME should have seen issues like this coming long ago, assuming its financials have struggled for a while. It also left it late to make the decision, which isn't impressive at all.
I guess my point was it should have predicted issues like this and played it safe by not offering this edition in the first place, or bent over backwards to make it happen and maintain a good reputation. I'm not saying it didn't try to avoid this, but I sure think (based on my own speculation, I admit) that this is something that could have been avoided.
It must be a numbers game for The Last Story to get dropped. They probably needed to order a certain number of copies to make it affordable, and couldn't ensure that all of those copies would sell.
Still, I'd be pretty angry if I had placed a preorder and then found out it wasn't being honored with only two days until the product release. Ouch. At least the "limited" edition doesn't seem to be in short supply anywhere.
They're probably going out of business. Good riddance, I say.
@sigourneybeaver Show some consideration. A lot of peoples livelihood relies on them staying afloat. The majority being gamers at that.
People are always buying used games in GAME stores, I noticed because a lot have been gone and even one I wanted to get which wasn't even on sale as new was gone!
I've seen nothing but bad news coming from GAME. Cancelling pre-orders only days before a game is released, refusing to stock games by certain publishers... If they aren't careful, they'll lose practically all their business to someone who CAN do these things for the consumers.
I think (based on earlier rumours from staff that were pretty much confirmed) it's the suppliers who won't give Game any more credit to buy stuff with.
I'll be glad to see them sink - if you have any gift cards or other credit in the company, time to cash it in, I say.
What is wrong with GAME? First Tekken now this. GAME is turning into Europe's version of GameStop.
i pre-ordered the LE yesterday on amazon.co.uk. Perhaps they still have it on offer
Two words - Bad credit.
Bye bye GAME.
Well...
Well, they don't make many friends this way!
Oh, I can imagine how I would react when it affected me! I would be VERY grumpy!!
Can´t stand GAME. If I´m in the shops I sometimes wander into GAME to check out news, but when I see the poor stock and the insane prices (charging used as online retailers charge new in Sweden), I get disgusted and leave feeling all dirty.
Anyway hope to see people online, I think it will be a laff.
"We can't stock absolutely everything. That's just not possible."
That may be true, but skip the shovel ware, not the AAA titles. This sounds like a rather flimsy excuse to me.
sounds like this GAME store sucks.
I got this email on Monday this week. So I did a bit of Google searching and found that other people had been notified at the beginning of February that their order had (apparently) been swapped for the regular version. So it would seem they knew about this for a lot longer than they let all their customer's know.
It's clear that GAME are in trouble. There are a lot of tell-tale signs including the distributor credit as detailed above and the re-branding of the website which they had major trouble with which would suggest either issues internally that could be redundancies giving them less staff to sort the issues quickly or less cash forcing them to use cheaper and more inexperience agencies.
I don't know if any of you know about Gameplay.co.uk either. I used them in the Dreamcast days and early Gamecube days. They were a fantastic value online company with superb service. GAME bought them and then their own online site appeared offering pretty much the same service. So I swapped because I got reward points as well offering me slightly better value. If you go on Gameplay.co.uk's site now, there's a notice saying they're merging with Gamestation (another GAME owned company when they bought them a few years ago) which also looks like redundancies and cost savings.
They've tried to monopolise the high street market at a time when people stopped spending money due to the economic downturn. GAME's online retailers are also forced to try and be competitive due to bigger sites like Play.com and Amazon who can afford to offer products much cheaper.
GAME's online preorder service has rarely let me down. I've only ever had two games in the eight years I've used them that failed to get to by release day and on both occasions I received a voucher or credit as a result. It's annoying but really I have plenty of other games to play so it really shouldn't be much of an issue, it's only my impatience that makes my immediate reaction be that of anger toward them.
So I'm basically saying it's a shame they're in trouble. I'd happily keep using them until their fortunes turn back around or they go bust. I'd even be happy if they asked for money up front in pre-orders if it meant that would guarantee they could stock all the games. And they should be stocking ALL the games because they are specialist high-street and online retailer of video games. Anna-Marie Mason's comment is just a defensive counter, but it's quite ridiculous.
I have started Shopto.net for sales and some preorders that are just much better value than GAME. Though I've personally found their service is not just as good.
@Mikau94 I don't even think Gamestop has done things this bad yet.
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