Catacombs release

Killder · Post by **Killder** » Fri Mar 25, 2005 11:55 am

One in the eye for Game - guess they will lose many a sale over this :cheers:

Briannon · Post by **Briannon** » Fri Mar 25, 2005 12:04 pm

Killder wrote:One in the eye for Game - guess they will lose many a sale over this :cheers:

They've lost more than that. I am never setting foot in one of their stores ever again.

Ovi · Post by **Ovi** » Fri Mar 25, 2005 12:06 pm

Requiel wrote:The basic story is as follows.
We announced release dates back in january to the trade. Our distributors tried to talk us out of it as March is a busy month. We explained that for various reasons, the expansion had to be available this week. Our distributors got on it and started preparations with all the usual buyers. Everything was going smoothly until a few weeks ago when a very large UK retailer turned around and said they couldn't handle the release in March and insisted it went back to April. Our distributors moved it back to April. We contacted the distributors and told them it had to be March. The distributors told us that if it went ahead in March, then the very large UK retailer and all it's subsidiary companies would refuse to touch the release including the full pack at all. It would also cause difficulties for our distributors and their other clients which they were naturally reluctant to get into.
We worked out a compromise where the 'official' release date was going to be 1st April but UK stores would get stock prior to this date and could therefore begin to stock it and sell it from the 24th/25th. A kind of 'under the table' deal. We recieved a strongly worded warning from the legal team of the aforementioned very large retailer reminding us that if we released it unofficially on a different date, we would be in breach of our contracts and would be sued. This all happened over the last week or so, certainly the legal threats were new as of yesterday.
The reason for the sudden decision by the very large retailer would appear to be due to a major release this weekend and the publisher of this major release paying them a very large amount of money to clear their release schedules.

So basically it is all GoAs fault for not listening to the advice of the distributors? Then agreeing to an "under the table" deal!

Why were Goa so insistent that this weekend was the release date? Surely biting the bullet and putting the release back to 1st April would have been the sesnsible option? It's not like we aren't far enough behind the US version for 1 week to make a difference?

A Bank Holiday release for the game always looked like a stupid idea anyway, if you wanted to ensure people could play over the holiday weekend then it should have been released at least the week before!

Monk · Post by **Monk** » Fri Mar 25, 2005 12:07 pm

only 1 problem i found with dlgames and nothing to do with GOA or their conrol, but they dont accept maestro

and barclays is closed till monday when i can put more money on my account

bah annoying oh well

Satyn · Post by **Satyn** » Fri Mar 25, 2005 12:18 pm

Monk wrote:only 1 problem i found with dlgames and nothing to do with GOA or their conrol, but they dont accept maestro and barclays is closed till monday when i can put more money on my account bah annoying oh well

nich want me to call shop in belgium and see if they have a copy left? can mail you the cd key then

Requiel · Post by **Requiel** » Fri Mar 25, 2005 12:21 pm

Ovi wrote:Why were Goa so insistent that this weekend was the release date? Surely biting the bullet and putting the release back to 1st April would have been the sesnsible option? It's not like we aren't far enough behind the US version for 1 week to make a difference?

There were a number of reasons. One is to do with our agreements with Mythic, we aren't allowed to sit on a release that is ready to go live. Another is for technical reasons. I don't have details but apparently there are 'windows' in which it is possible to update the servers (I don't know if these 'windows' are for technical, finacial, contractual or other reasons). If we missed this week, there would have been a delay of anything upto to a month.

The other reason was that the congested release schedule in March isn't such a problem for this expansion. The expansion is mostly aimed at existing players who by and large are likely to buy it or not buy it anyway, regardless of sales chart competition. The box that we want retailers to focus on and which is backed by the majority of our marketing effort is the complete box which is released in April. This is the box for people who currently don't play the game and therefore is the more important release from a retail and marketing point of view. I'm not saying that the expansion isn't important, just that it doesn't need to be marketed as strongly as the complete set. If you play the game already then you'll already know that it's available/coming soon etc.

Post by **Lieva** » Fri Mar 25, 2005 12:40 pm

makes sence..
tho maybe people would come daoc to play vampiir?

vampyre-bloodlines sold alot cause it was vampires

Ovi · Post by **Ovi** » Fri Mar 25, 2005 1:37 pm

Still no excuse to agreeing to an Under the table deal, that is always likely to end in trouble, especially when it goes against the advice you have been given.

Also Goa pay your distributors to distribute, that's what they do, and I assume are usually good at, ignoring their advice isn't too sensible either. I wonder if they are sat there saying "We told you so..."? I would be

Finally misleading us as to the "official release date", which is clearly 1st April NOT 25th March as you have been telling us! Guess no one wanted to admit that the UK customers wouldn't be able to play when the rest of europe could!

Hatsepsut · Post by **Hatsepsut** » Fri Mar 25, 2005 1:49 pm

Hmm...seems to me that caring about the existing customers should be as important as focusing on new ones, else the existing ones may soon end up ex-customers...

Besides, it's hardly like the rest of europe can play. Most swedes, afaik, cannot.

Satyn · Post by **Satyn** » Fri Mar 25, 2005 2:36 pm

nvm what i said in the post above. Just got call from shop, they will have catacombs at the end of next week...in other words the 1st of april aswell.
Called other shop and they didnt get it either. I'm confused! So no point in moving to belgium we wont have it either