Thank you for the recommendation, but indeed they only ship to switzerland and lichstein.

Thanks for the kind words.

To update on my situation, i actually found an online retailer/shop that had it in stock and ordered it. So... assuming all goes well i may end up getting it afterall (i am quite unconvinced until i get it in my hands after this whole thing even though i already paid for it)... but this whole process is completely unnaceptable. Nintendo needs to get their LE's up for pre-order and produce them in order with demand just like every other normal publisher. This whole "may show up anytime in limited quantities during the next 6 months" is a terrible practice and i wouldn't have bought the game if i could'nt get a LE. 

Regardless, this experience will have repercussions on future Nintendo product aquisitions by me. They better get their **** together.

Japan yes, but the US isn't far behind Europe and is light years ahead of Australia when it comes to fast internet. You grossly exagerrate the costs, and while the structure and dominance of some companies in areas leads to less growth and service, it's not unaffordable.

...so now we're back to being upset about the special edition. Which begs an earlier question; would you have been upset about this if there was no special edition at all? Is just being shown a trailer for something they said was going to be in limited quantities (read: you may not be able to get this) enough to discourage you from buying a game, even if you'd enjoy that game on its own merits?

Australia's figures are largely misrepresentitive due to where much of the population lives. Within large cities, Australia's connection quality rates slightly above the US (citing Akamai's State of the Internet Report), which is where game sales largely operate.

As for costs, I'm not sure what exactly you're claiming I'm exaggerating, because I mentioned several. The costs of contracting a publisher? Of localization? Of producing physical copies altogether? According to Feed Vibe, 30% of the revenue from any video game sold via a separate publisher goes to said publisher, and another 20% goes to the retailer. In other words, that's a full 50% of revenue being lost right there. Developers will be more than willing to drop large sections of the population in order to make up that additional 50%, especially if they're larger companies with shareholders consistently pushing them for greater profits.

I wouldn't, no. The problem is i got teased with something i liked and then wasn't given a proper chance to aquire. What is the point of this rather than piss people off? Even if it's a reward for early pre-orders, at least be honest and say that upfront. Keeping us in the dark about details for months and the bam all sold out without even giving a chance is ridiculous.

Also, i don't think they ever said anything about limited quantities, just that tere would be a special edition. The problem isn't the numbers though, its the fact tgat they gave zero information on hw to aquire it before hand. This current method just rewards the ebay trolls that will buyba buch of them and then sell for a profit.

Oh and please don't give the snarky response of: It's a limited edition! Doh! 

Theres many so called limited editions widely available at retailers. Even Nintendo ones. Say, for example Bayonetta and i'm sure Starfox will be widely available too. In normal retailers these things are available for pre-order and get produced with that demand in mind.

So, this isn't about the game itself, no. It's about beeing disatisfied with the buying process. I will not just take any sort of abuse to get a videogame i may be interested in. I'm interested, but not to the point i will be fine beeing steped on.

Well, I'm glad you were able to get it in the end. Sorry it was such a hassle for you to get.

I didn't have any trouble pre-ordering it. I guess the US didn't do it similarly to NoE. I went online after they announced it on a Nintendo Direct and was able to snag a copy. I think what Ninten should do is just make more copies available, or just have a standard 3-in-1 card. I don't see how this would be a problem for Ninten, aside from investing more money in having more physical copies.

Anyways, having finished BR and now playing Conquest, I think they're both worth playing. Both feel quite different from each other, def warranting playing both. Can't want to get to revelations eventually..

You have a stronger argument for the same in  the US...

and I was talking about the cost of internet. Sorry for not being as clear.

I'll take these in turn, because there's a lot of elements to this.

The problem is i got teased with something i liked and then wasn't given a proper chance to aquire. What is the point of this rather than piss people off?

I think you're looking at it the wrong way. You got "teased" with something that Nintendo simply wasn't prepared for. They vastly underestimated the demand for the special edition, and considering how ridiculously well Fates has sold, I can't say I blame them. They advertised it with the belief that a certain number of people would buy it, and they made a mistake there. It's simply a failure in forecasting demand, not some dark scheme by Nintendo to annoy people. I guess if you're truly that offended by a prediction error, then feel free to continue boycotting it, but I think you've got the wrong idea if you think Nintendo is just purposefully trying to piss you off or lie to you.

And, as another point, this may not even be Nintendo's fault, which I'll get into below...

Oh and please don't give the snarky response of: It's a limited edition! Doh! 

Theres many so called limited editions widely available at retailers. Even Nintendo ones. Say, for example Bayonetta and i'm sure Starfox will be widely available too. In normal retailers these things are available for pre-order and get produced with that demand in mind.

Honestly, limited editions being so regularly avaliable is largely a recent phenomenon due to some serious overestimations on demand by retailers. For example, a few months ago, Gamestop started selling a ton of Dark Souls 2 limited editions (which cost over $100 on launch day) for $20. Twenty freaking dollars. That's a major loss for retailers. Similar things happened with plenty other games, such as Order 1886. This, has had two major implications.

1) Game retailers (such as Gamestop) are now far more hesitant to place large orders for limited/special editions. If they sell out, fine, there's some profit left on the table, but it's probably not a huge deal. If they order too many, however, and have to sell them extremely cheaply later on, that REALLY hurts their bottom line. So when Nintendo decides how many special editions to produce, and they're talking with retailers to determine how many to make, retailers are more likely to give them a low estimate. So this issue may not even be on Nintendo at all; it could very well simply be a matter of stores like Gamestop and Best Buy telling Nintendo that they're not willing to carry many special editions.

2) Many of these Dark Souls 2 limited editions were from canceled pre-orders, which means that pre-orders are now no longer a reliable method for determining demand. In other words, retailers have nothing to really go off of when deciding how much to order other than precedent, and considering Fire Emblem, to my knowledge, has never had a limited edition before (outside of console bundles), both retailers and Nintendo are far more likely to guess low and lose potential profit rather than guess high and cost themselves badly.

I won't give you the response of "it's called a limited edition, so it's obviously limited" but I will give you the response of "it's a special edition, so demand will obviously be a fickle thing." If the amiibo fiasco has taught us anything, it's that you should never assume there will be limitless quantities of anything.

So the argument is essentially that I'm underestimating the cost of bringing high quality internet to large groups of the video game playing demographic, if I'm understand this correctly.

I've got two responses for that. Firstly, internet costs are largely irrelevant for developers, all things considered, so long as their profit isn't affected. Keep in mind that, assuming the numbers I referenced in my last post are right, developers are losing 50% of revenue due to publishing and retailing fees. What that means is that (assuming no seller fees for something like Steam) a developer can sell half as many games digitally as they would physically and still make the same profit.

Now, obviously, some money will inevitably go to downloading platforms like Steam, so it's not going to be the full 50%. Valve won't post any official numbers, but numerous indie developers who have been interviewed have said they're very happy with the percentages given. So let's say that, for the sake of argument, there's a 20% cut for Valve. That means developers can still make as much profit from selling 5 games digitally as they would from selling 8 physically.

Here's the point to all that; developers that go digital can afford to ignore quite a few people now; an additional 30%, at least. So even if the costs for bringing internet to people are high, chances are...the developers won't care. Because it's still a better deal for them to just produce the product more cheaply and sell to a smaller crowd than to mass produce it via an expensive process and sell to a larger group.

Secondly, though, and perhaps more importantly, is that fast internet is pretty much avaliable to the VAST majority of people in America, Japan, and Western European countries where video games are prominent. America, as I mentioned before, lags behind the other two, and as a statistic for the US, according to WhiteHouse.gov, 98% of Americans have access to high speed wireless internet. $7 billion is currently being put into funding additional high speed internet infrastructure across the country, which will only bring that number higher. So, in short, the costs aren't even what I'm concerned about at this point; the infrastructure, in most places, is either already there or is being brought there by public funding currently. And yeah, while this excludes much of rural Australia, keep in mind that, as the Akamai article mentions, that's not a particularly popular video game market to begin with, so developers probably aren't concerned about losing them in the first place.

Having played all three, this is effectively paying twice the price for a bit more than twice the content. There's some overlap in maps (although the actual battles are different) and characters (although the equipment they use is different), but by and large Pineapple had it right in another thread: Fates is effectively a way to pick which Fire Emblem game you want to play, and a chance to immediately buy more Fire Emblem at a reduced price if you're so inclined.

Which in this case works out pretty well, because Birthright sucks. You're thus getting two games for the price of 1.5!