Zucas said:
Well an interesting theory indeed but its doubtful that's what happens. Remember preorders by retailers are based off of hype not assumption. This is probably why these titles that you call niche but I call mainstream don't sell well early on. Because there is no hype surrounding these titles. So they take a modest preorder and do so for a few weeks and eventually it catches on with the mainstream. Thus they start making weekly preorders which is what legs is. The ability to keep a constant pace of preorders within the retailer such that supply is always there. So I personally think its the exact opposite. The hyped games or core ones get the big stocks to start off with and will always have that while the mainstream ones have to earn it. Game Party had to earn it and now a store wouldn't want to be without it. Nerf-N Strike seems to be something similar. |
How is that the opposite of what I said? Maybe I didn't make it clear what I meant by niche. I simply meant titles neglected in the gaming press. And by "buying a small bit of everything" I meant bit of everything outside the over-advertised nonsense that they buy tons of copies of.
Otherwise, we're pretty much saying the same thing. Games without the blessing of the selective "core" gaming media lunatics (the real niche) tend to only get small orders from retailers. Because of that everyone else (mainstream like you already said) are often underserved until someone realizes the actual demand. Hence these slow upswings in sales that start at next to nothing.