Yeah my local BestBuy had an entire shopping cart of those Spider-Man PS4 Pros just sitting there, waiting for people to pick them up from pre-order. Stood in line at the pick-up area for 5 minutes and half the people picked up their themed system with the game. 

When they don't sell give them out am i right ;-P
/s
Seriously though that's really nice of them.

Heheh.  It doesn't surprise me at all either.  Gamestop is very much a Sony/Microsoft store.  They sell Nintendo stuff too, but some of the staff will try to guide you toward the Sony/Microsoft stuff or just badmouth Nintendo.  If Sony is giving the managers free consoles, then I can understand why they love Sony so much.

Yea I heard some staff talk crap about Nintendo too, but I don’t think it’s exclusive to Nintendo, at least I hope so. Funny that Nintendo gives GameStop a few exclusive Amiibo and is partly responsible for GameStop’s recent rise in sales. But as noted in these forums and anywhere else, not everyone likes what Nintendo does in a business sense, whether it be their policies, their preorder and stock issues, etc., employees will call them out.

I think there is a disconnect between the execs at Gamestop and the average store employee.  Like every official company statement from Gamestop is very pro-Nintendo nowadays.  The Switch is selling well and it tends to sell a lot of physical copies.  Meanwhile digital sales are on the rise, and much more so on Sony/Microsoft consoles than on Nintendo ones.  So Nintendo should be Gamestop's best friend right?

The problem is that the store culture is still very much pro Sony/Microsoft.  It mostly started that way when the Wii came out.  These consoles appealed more to the average Gamestop customer and on top of that people didn't trade in Nintendo games nearly as often.  So a kind of anti-Nintendo store culture developed, at least among some employees.  (Others are more neutral, so it does vary some.)  That anti-Nintendo culture is still there even though the top brass really want to be pro-Nintendo right now.

If Sony is giving away free consoles to the managers, then they are just adding to the disconnect.  Sony might not be able to charm the Gamestop execs so they are charming the store managers instead.

It's a bribe, form of corruption in some industries

The staff’s attitude has more to do with managing decisions than reaction to some business practices, whatever the hardware maker. If there’s one thing I can attest from my personal experience is that the regular store manager at Gamestop is more of a gamer than an actual person with actual qualifications to manage a business, but to be fair, responsibility wise, anyone with a minimum of organization skill and judgment can succeed. Alot of the thing you see on the web concerning Gamestop’s policies are greatly exaggerated or aggravated by poor management decisions or practices and this include upper management.

I’ve seen colleagues willingly sending customers to the local Wal-Mart to buy their Wii because the system was underpowered compare to the HD twins. I’ve seen other hiring only young people who loved the 360 just because of pure hatred for the PS3. Having a favourite platform is one thing, but influencing is own business with different vendors (aka Sony, Nintendo, Ubi, etc) base on favoritisme instead of logical financial reason is really stupid and more common than we think in this company.

As for business pratice, you will be surprised on the low impact they have on the regular Gamestop employee.

Nintendo’s price may stay high too long, but at the same time, so is the resell value. And that is when customer trade their Nintendo games which they tend to keep. For each Zelda traded, we have like 15 Uncharted or 20 CoD.

And as for stock and preorder, the retailers are more often responsible of the situation than anything else. Just for an example, the preorder/sales ratio is bigger with Nintendo than any other publisher, this trend is clearly visible at Gamestop or even at foreign store like COMG, but this fact seems to pass over the buyers head when they deal for inventory with publishers. I know that Gamestop’s relation with Nintendo is not healthy and both are responsible of that, but there’s a reason why Nintendo is more predominant at online retailers like Amazon.

thanks for reminding me Sony is on top, haven't checked sales numbers in a long time. 

That has more to do with the fact that the age group that works at GameStop genuinely doesn't care about Nintendo. You can see the opposite bias in the gaming media, because those people grew up with Nintendo games and praise them undeservedly.

Gamestop has a giant conference every year where the Store Managers get the scoop on what is to come in the next year. Part of that is they get a very large care package of goodies. Games, Consoles, Accessories, clothing swag, etc. This has 2 purposes. Gamestop don't pay much, but the bonus reward of these every year makes it completely worth it for some Managers. Second, Publishers want to get the word out on their products, the best way to do that is getting it out their in the hands of trend setters. Gamestop Employees and Game Reviewers both get this kind of stuff, it is normal. Sure you can see it as a bribe if you want to, but keeping those who have direct relations with your userbase informed on the benefits of your product is just good marketing.