If you're as old as I am, go take a nap.  Are you back yet?  Sorry, I didn't want you falling asleep while reading, as folks our age tend to do.  I may have yet to hit the big four-oh, but it feels like the world is a different place than in my youth, and it sure is spinning faster these days.  Yeah, when you've been into video games this long, you see quite a few things change over time.

For example, it doesn't seem like too long ago that once a game was released, it was as simple as walking into any major retailer to nab a copy.  Sure there have always been obscure titles with small print runs, but preordering felt like an extravagance, online retailers felt like they had unlimited inventory, and unless you were importing or looking for a game more than a few years old, most relatively modern games seemed pretty easy to get.  Although I do remember the challenge of trying to ask for Katamari Damacy at a GameStop during the week of release (or just explaining what the game was.)



Many of us on the site remember when the prices of NES and SNES began spiking up.  And how for many years, Final Fantasy VII and Symphony of the Night were available for under $20 pretty much everywhere, until suddenly they weren't, and priced doubled and tripled. 

Some of these pricing bubbles have burst but as a whole, retro collecting is a very different financial game than it was only a few years ago.  This alone is remarkable but something else has happened recently on the other end that has been equally surprising; now some modern games become hot commodities and unavailable even as soon as they are released.

Song of the Deep, Insomniac's recent release, is readily available digitally of course.  Getting a disc copy however, especially a nifty SteelBook Collector's Edition with an accompanying novel, is a bit tougher, or at least a lot pricier.  It was only $30, at least initially and exclusively at GameStop.  But even preorders were limited, and now eBay offers copies at greatly exaggerated prices.


Sure, that one is an oddball exception, but it does represent a recent trend; the unavailability of new games, at least disc copies.  The two biggest game retailers we have nearby, Wal-Mart and GameStop, often struggle to get more than a few copies of a new game, and of they sell out, it can be weeks (if ever) for a restock.  Ziggurat, Kromaia Omega, Giana Sisters (Wii U or PS4), Teslagrad, Odin Sphere on Vita, and Aegis of Earth (for anything) are among many recent releases that never showed up at either store.  If EA, UbiSoft, or Activision published it, yeah, you can probably find.  Although even the 'heavies' have exceptions; finding Overwatch was not an option for a couple weeks, and The Division, Doom, and even Black Ops III have disappeared for days or weeks at a time, especially during the initial launch.  Nothing earth-shaking, but surprising, and different that it was a few years ago.

Well, thank goodness for online retailers, right?  The last bastion for us physical media collectors!  Well, about that...


A year ago I reserved Zero Time Dilemma.  Actually I reserved two, one for each portable, each from different retailers.  Neither has yet to appear, and one was unceremoniously cancelled.  Online orders for Fallout 4 and Metal Gear Solid V met with similar cancellation fates, without any good explanation.  Exceptions compared to many successes, to be sure.  But it shows there are no assurances, even with planning and patience.
And that's not even bringing up actually limited Limited Editions, Kickstarter or Limited Run Games.



I know there is a popular notion that pre-ordering games is not only a bad practice, but is actively hurting the game industry.  These days, between Amazon Prime's 20% off new releases and Best Buy's GCU discounts, I have to say that if you can get a discount on a new game and you know it's something you want to own and play, it may be worth considering.  Five years ago, it was a simple matter of waiting it out and finding a discount; everything was going to go down in price eventually and likely be available. Nowadays, some games only a few years old ramp back up in price, and there are dozens of fairly recent games I'm still waiting to find cheap after several years of looking. 


The exception for me, and in fact the polar opposite, is digital releases.  I keep slapping my hand when I see a digital release that I want to play.  Literally, every game I have ever bought at full price ends up at half the price or less within a year or two, and often before I get to play it.  Unless it is a developer I really want to support and buy new, I have convinced myself to wait.  Chances are, between PS Plus and Games with Gold, I'll get it free anyway.  And sometimes, my patience is rewarded with a physical release I'd prefer anyway (yay Killer Instinct, Tales from the Borderlands, Brothers, Dirt, Toy Soldiers, Pinball Arcade, etc.)

Gaming retail has changed rapidly in just a few years.  Online retail and digital release has, as promised, altered how we buy new games, but it has also altered the basic availability of games we always assumed we'd be able to get sooner or later.  I can't count the times a customer has come into our store and was genuinely surprised upon release day that we just didn't have any copies.  Folks that never believed in pre-ordering are more and more left hunting down even popular titles.  I've learned never to assume we have something in stock until I check, even for a Halo or Call of Duty.  And if you want a Nintendo game, for heaven's sake, just pick it up when you can, because those babies sometimes disappear and never pop back in.

The standard budget considerations apply, naturally.  Video games are still a luxury item by any measure.  But for modern gamers as well as retro collectors, the rules are different now.  I've worked in the industry for a long time and even I'm surprised at how different things are compared to just a few years ago.  Sure, I'm getting older, and part of me is slow to adjust to the Brave New World.  I just want to grab a few fun games to play in the meantime, and thought I'd share some warnings so you can do the same.

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