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One such store owner is Zach Gieg, the owner of a small chain of shops in Pennsylvania. Gieg reportedly spent over $3,300 to put up promotional materials for the game. He believed that the expense would more than pay for itself once he started to sell the game on release day.
While a few stores have said that they might be able to get Xbox One copies on time, in general, local stores will be cut out of the first week of Red Dead Redemption 2 sales, which will choke their earnings for the game.
“I’m telling you: Gamers don’t like to wait,” Gieg told me over the phone. “We have a very loyal customer base, per se, but I don’t think I’d want to wait for a week. It’s ridiculous. They’re gonna download it or go elsewhere and buy it at a big box retailer.”
“I’m telling you: Gamers don’t like to wait,” Gieg told me over the phone. “We have a very loyal customer base, per se, but I don’t think I’d want to wait for a week. It’s ridiculous. They’re gonna download it or go elsewhere and buy it at a big box retailer.”
Gieg estimates that between his stores, customers had purchased over 1,000 copies of Red Dead Redemption 2.
Kotaku continues on to say that even services like GameFly won't get the game on time.
“Our supplier has indicated that we will not receive the game prior to its release date,” it wrote in an email to customers this morning. “At this time, we do not expect to ship PS4 discs before Wednesday, November 7th. We understand Red Dead Redemption 2 is a very popular game and apologize for this delay.”
It's not yet certain why this is happening. Some distributors say that there is an issue with supply, but some store owners aren't buying that excuse. They say that this has never before happened, even with the biggest game releases. One theory, at least one believed by shop owners, is that the shortage is an artificial one to prevent smaller shops from getting copies and breaking the game's October 26 street date.
Let's face it, breaking the street date is a fairly common occurrence with smaller stores. And with a game as hyped as Red Dead Redemption 2, it's more likely than most to push some owners to start selling the game early either through ignorance or to get a jump on the competition.
Of course, this is all speculation on multiple fronts. A report on IGN backs the theory of a supply issue because the game is said to be printed on two discs instead of the normal one. That's what we in the biz like to call "a buttload" of discs to have to print and could very well cause a supply issue.
