Be Excellent To Each Other

Just had the same mail. Well, not exactly the same mail, but you know what I mean.

They can't possibly have meant they're sending them out via Special Delivery then, because that would mean GTAness tomorrow. They've probably just stuck them in Royal Mail Signed For or whatever they call it now - regular delivery speed but needing your autograph.

My Lego Star Wars II came today via Signed For, and I got in to find it was on the doormat and had the Signiture strip removed from the sticker. Only thing is, no-one was in the house when it was delivered so my postie must have signed it himself...I wonder if I can claim I never actually got it...

Ummm, that would be fraud.

Try it.

On the part of the postie. If he's careful he could perhaps get another copy while not actually saying "I never got it."
"Hello, I ordered a game and the website said it was signed for but I never signed for it - could you tell me who did? ... Who is that?"
etc.

There are people in the US that have received their copies from their online pre-orders already. They send it out early so that they don't risk people not getting it until after the release date.

Special Delivery isn't guaranteed but allows HMV to get some compensation if it doesn't arrive next day.

Oooooooh.

Fingers crossed, then. Cheers, GazChap.

[edit]Ah, although they're in Guernsey. So most likely some time Monday. Even so, wahey![/edit]

Yes it is. In as much as these things ever are.

I hope it does arrive tomorrow. And I hope it gets here before I go out for lunch with me Ma and Sister.

Tuesday.

He's right, it's Tuesday.

Going anywhere nice?

*smugs*

An Pub in Cank. So no

Of course. Now, come on, the punchline is...

You know what I meant

See you next Tuesday?

I'll have the Ginge if you don't want her...

You fucking even touch Willoughby and you'll die by my hand!

So, has anyone who ordered via HMV received their copy yet? They e-mailed me a tracking number earlier but no delivery attempt has been made and status for the tracking number they've sent is not available through the website.

No Postie came but no Gta

I don't think you'll get them until Monday at the earliest...

Shut your hole! I'll get it tomorrow! *sits by front door watching the letterbox*

Because it comes out on Tuesday.

I'm going to murder you.

Wait until Tuesday.

Keep watching.

Has anyone got any leaked footage then? YouTube police have taken them all down it seems. Also, why don't you lot just buy the game from a shop on the release day? Then you're guaranteed a copy!

Postie's just been, no GTA for Dims. Sofas around the country gloat. The tracking number that HMV sent me is also just showing "come back later"

I'm not gloating, I'm just baffled by this newly discovered "Tuesday blindness. "

Maybe it's Friday/Saturday/Monday optimism.

Oh, okay. Maybe it'll come last week!

Well, you see, when someone sends something by Royal Mail Special Delivery, it's supposed to be delivered the next working day.

HMV sent the game out, via Special Delivery, on Thursday. This is evidenced by the fact that we do indeed have a tracking number for the shipments.

If Royal Mail are deliberately holding off delivering the package until Tuesday, that effectively nullifies the point of Special Delivery and sets a worrying precedent

You're saying that parcel delivery companies are unreliable? I see. We must start a new thread and discuss this forthwith!

I imagine that the terms of a Special Delivery are such that it is the delivery date being met and fulfilled, which matter, and the date they arrange for the 'getting the package to the delivery people' and HMV's deliveries IT system are getting a bit on each others toes.

Some people have them. I saw an actual real copy today.

I didn't want this. I've only ever enjoyed previous 3D GTA games for a few hours then been totally put off by the hideous targetting controls making it impossible to shoot some strategically important dude in the face. I get frustrated, turn it off, never come back.

But this one has fixed that with cover and auto targetting. And everyone is getting it. And it has 15 player multiplayer. And I just read a glowing 10/10 review from IGN (first one they've given out since Soul Calibur apparantly) and rumourmill suggests pretty much every review coming is 10/10 too. Gnnnnghh.

I think I may buy it on Tuesday. I have a Game, Gamestation, Asda, HMV, Sainsbury's and Blockbuster within a five minute walk of the office during lunch so I suspect I'll land a copy no problems.

Auto targetting... great.

The GTA series has the most wanky targetting of any games ever, so some kind of aiming assist is appreciated. I would, as you said elsewhere, like it to be optional though.

The IGN review made it sound a lot like the Crackdown one, with a lock on and a nudge system for choosing to aim for parts of the body. It also has a free aiming system as in classic GTA that can do more damage, apparantly. Not that I think IGN are the paragons of gaming journalism though so I'd wait until some more reviews roll in.

This, this, a thousand times this. I hated the controls, particularly the Xbox ones. At one point San Andreas required me to be simultaneously using both sticks, a face button, and one of the triggers (for a drive by shooting). How the hell did that pass any sort of QA?

and that.

For the life of me I couldn't fly the helicopters properly on Xbox SA due to the insane control scheme.

I just read that. Apparently the PS3 version looks nicer and has quicker load times. But does the 360 downloadable stuff outweigh this?

I want someone to tell me which version to get, basically.

Ugh, yeah, GTA always had shitty targeting. Except! On the PC, the 3D ones were good for it because they used the mouse. I remember annoying Stu for saying it on WoS a while back, but I should have clarified - the direct control of the aim rather than scrolling through targets was what made it, not the mouse-as-opposed-to-joypad.

Saints Row did it quite well - the only thing that was tricky was shooting while driving, but that wasn't because the controls were poor - it was because you had to to drive a car while aiming a gun, and it took loads of co-ordination and sheer luck if you weren't looking a the road - which made sense, really.

I was out last night with someone who works for one of the game retailers in the UK. And throughout the night he was getting loads of emails and calls from work saying that a couple of Asda stores had broken the Tuesday embargo and were selling GTA4 early.

Looks like they were on the case straight away and put a stop to it though... booo.

I don't 'get' these embargoes. What do they achieve? And are Take2/Activision/Whoever really going to say to GAME: "no, you can't order a million copies of GTAV because you sold IV a couple of days too early"?

EDIT: I know they're because the publishers would have to sort out their distribution, which requires, you know, some effort.

Sales targets / opening 'weekends' etc. Think Halo 3 release day.

But, no-one cares unless it's a massive game, and those would sell buckets anyway. The idea of creating an event for a game release is fucking stupid.

If they don't want shops selling it before the release date, then why don't the cretins ship it the day before.

The shops are perfectly entitled to sell stock they possess, after all.

I guess maybe the shops might prefer to have a launch day too just so they don't get loads of giddy morons pestering them every day for the two weeks before the official launch date asking if they have some in yet and also so there's no bickering between retailers over who got their stock first.

Those that might care, do, if it's not a massive game. They know it won't get to #1, but they're hoping still that a nice sales-bomb will do some business with the charts all the same. Especially since so many shops now only sell what IS in the charts.

It's a little-known industry secret that all games are shipped a month before release date, arriving a few days in time. Not because of careful arrangements, they just all use ParcelForce.

True, and this is something that irks me. The idea of stock being 'unavailable' until a certain day does not benefit the customer. But then, the customer is just a necessary but troublesome factor in this whole equation in the first place, so let's just try not to think about them too much, mm?

When is it GTA IV comes out again? Tuesday, right? Okay, just making sure. *checks post box again*

Why the hell should some arbitary date define when I can give my money to the fucking people who have defined the arbirary date? If you've got it give it to me. It's the dead hand of (two drink minimum) arse hole marketeers who want to create an 'event'.

Cunts.

The idea behind having set release dates is to that all of the retailers can start on an even footing.

In my home town, take GAME (as the chain store) and Game Zone (a small indie store). GAME have the buying power to get a top-priority shipment through DHL/FedEx or whatever, whereas Game Zone only have the power to get a small shipment from The Home Delivery Network (these are just examples, natch )

Chances are, GAME would get theirs first as the service from DHL/FedEx is likely to be much better than that of HDN. So, if they could start selling them straight away, then effectively Game Zone would not be able to compete with GAME and they'd lose out.

Having all retailers launch on the same day means that consumers can choose to go wherever they want rather than having to go to a single location to get their game, and this ultimately benefits everyone - retailer and consumer.

At least, this is how I understood it.

As it goes, I went to Tesco, Asda and Morrisons today and none of them have broken the street date.