Nooooo! My beloved street date!

Last week saw the release of Pokémon X & Y on the Nintendo 3DS, unquestionably one of the year's biggest releases. Nintendo took the brave step of releasing the game globally on the same day — October 12th — which meant that everyone could experience the adventure together, regardless of which region they happened to be in.

That was the plan, anyway — however, retailers all over the world broke the proposed street date and starting selling the game early, much to the annoyance of Nintendo.

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It also frustrated UK specialist retailer GAME, which broke the street date after it claimed that several other rivals — including HMV and Tesco — had forced its hand by putting the game on sale themselves.

GAME category director Charlotte Knight spoke to MCV about the problem:

We take compliance with all industry standards and regulations very seriously. It was extremely disappointing to see a number of competitors break street date over Thursday and Friday on Nintendo products across both online and store environments.

We are seeing street date breaches occur on a frequent basis and this undermines the work which goes in to creating exceptional launches. We’ve worked very closely with Nintendo in the run-up to launch in order to make them as successful as possible. We have worked with them on every decision taken.

It must be very tempting as a retailer to sell a game early, especially when it's a massive title like Pokémon X & Y and you want to prevent buyers from shopping elsewhere, but doing so undermines Nintendo's hard work.

Did you get your hands on a copy before October 12th? Let us know by voting in the poll below.

When did you obtain your copy of Pokémon X & Y? (259 votes)

  1. I got it on or after October 12th78%
  2. I got it before the proposed release date of October 12th22%

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[source mcvuk.com]