Why Is There No Unified Release Date.

[GamesIm4]

Me and a friend have been looking forward to a couple recent XBOX 360 games. I want Gears of War and my friend wants Blitz: The League. Today we tried to get both from Wal-Mart and were disappointed to find out that Blitz wasn’t going to arrive till later in the week and they couldn’t find Gears of War in lockup. We went home and looked at the release dates and discovered there was no real unified release date for almost none of the games.

These are the release dates from xbox.com

Gears of War Release Date from Xbox.com: 11/7/06
http://www.xbox.com/en-US/games/g/gearsofwar/default.htm

Blitz: The League Release Date form Xbox.com: 10/31/06
http://www.xbox.com/en-US/games/b/blitztheleaguexbox360/default.htm

Bestbuy.com

Gears of War: 11/8/06
Blitz: 11/08/06

Circuitcity.com

Gears of War: 11/08/06
Blitz: 11/1/06

Target.com

Gears of War: 11/9/06
Blitz: 11/10/06

Ebgames.com

Gears of War: pre release11/7/06
Blitz: pre release 11/7/06

See the attached image of the diffrent sites release dates. (If you can read it)

So after rounding up a few of the places that are selling the games, only one says something about releasing the games on the 7th, that’s EB. But even that is for pre-release (whatever that means). I ask Microsoft please work with the retailers so the games are in the stores by the date you say it’s going to be released. I know if this was Halo 3 the game would be in people’s hands by now.

[predatorprime]

This issue is pretty consistant with every game. Some retailers get games prior to others, and usually the big box stores get stuff last. Walmart is about the worst place to buy games if you want it anywhere near the release date, sometimes they don't get games for a week or so. The whole idea is that the hard core people that know about the games and preordered them are going to buy them from a store like EB or Gamestop anyways, so normally it doesn't matter. On that note I'm going to see if any of my preorders are in today on the way home from work