i was moving tward buying the current EQ2 game at retaill to get some of the free items in the retail version.Not BEST BUY  TARGET  WALMART or GAMESTOP had one copy of the game which had a new retail release  reciently.. I have seen stores moving in this direction, but was stunned at how wide spread it is now.

I think part of it, is that they still make money on resell/ trade ins. Since that is near impossible (either policy or practicality) with a pc game, why support the shelf space for one-timers?

I'm quite certain I saw EQ2 at my local Best Buy a month or so ago. Try Steam if you can't get it anywhere else.

I get my boxes from the interwebs.

Amazon, gamestop, etc.

Amazon and Ebay have copys at reasonable prices

I bought The Shadow Odyssey with the pre-order bear figurine and ingame bear mount just a few weeks ago at the local Gamestop. They still have one whole wall devoted to PC games, so it's not every store. Yet.

A lot probably depends on the local market, whether the demand for PC games is there or not. Luckily, the demand is still pretty strong here.

I've become a big fan of Steam the last couple of years - most all of the major releases are on it anymore, there's no trip to an understocked store or waiting on delivery, and if your computer blows up you can always download it again (and again, and again).  It also has loads of good indie games you'll never see or hear about through more traditional channels.

I think Blizzard is about the only major developer not using it at the moment.

The local game stops here went from a wall with at least one hundred different games on it. To a 4 sided stand with maybe 60 games on it. To now One side of a stand with not even 15 games, with the other three sides holding guitar Hero equipment, and all of the PC game boxes are empty because they take everything out and hold it behind the counter because they say of too many thefts. If you don't pre order, you basically have no chance at getting a new game as they only get 2 of each unless they get pre orders, and zero chance at any games over 2 months old unless it was an absolute failure.

You would think in a city with over a million people, and not even 6 dedicated game stores there would be more demand for pc games at so few a game stores.

Edit: What really bugs me, is the spot on the wall which used to be pc games, became an extended section of the xbox 360 part. And it has 6 copies of each game. And they aren't stacked front to back, they are side to side so that you can see the same cover for the same game 6 times. The entire wall could cover a tiny fraction of the space it has right now if stacked at all. Even the way older ones like there will all of a sudden be a huge rush for old games, and they cant make any room for new pc games.

I blame those MMO people. It's all their fault.

Most of them only buy a game at the shops once a year or so. You can hardly make a living selling games like that.

Download is the way to go these days.

If you download you get a current version of the game, not what may be an old outdated shelf copy that requires hours of patching that saves you nothing in dowload time.

In Australia, the retail prices in stores are way too expensive.  It  is much cheaper to download.  You can often save over half the purchase cost by downloading. 

Also,  the games in Australia have to go through some bureaucratic classification system.  This is ridiculous considering only a fraction of the English native speaking people live in Australia and the actual number of sales here may be small and not justify running the bureuacratic gauntlet.  Austalia really should  just accept the USA classifications and save some taxpayers money.  It is another example of the Australian Government sending jobs overseas.

I believe this is also one reason why so many developers are going with download programs

    Really there are just too many different formats out now for retailers to carry enough of anything........With all the handhelds, consoles, PCs, and many other options there just isnt enough space to carry everything........As for EQ2 it took me several weeks to ever find a copy of it also and that was 2 years ago....Im sure its even worse now even though they sometimes do carry a couple copies if there is a new expansion.

       Whats too bad is that players like me used to go to these stores and find those games that not many knew about....Now you cant find those hidden gems anymore, at least not in the stores.

EBgames is also doing that, before they had a whole wall full of PC releases and games, now they still have that wall... but only with world of warcraft and its expansions, every other PC game is not sold there anymore.

they say its because people pirate the games and they don't sell anymore.... hmm and removing them from the store completely will reduce that? hell, the ones who actually buy the games (like me) will start to pirate them since they can't seem to find them at their local store...

a solution would be that you can order them. have a list of PC games you can order from the stores and they come in on demand. no shelf space lost there. but nooo, where i live here at EB games they have this "dont know, dont care, dont ask me about PC games unless its WoW" attitude

honestly i like to have the box and CD, downloads would be acceptable when games stop being 12 Gigs. I rather install them from 2-3 even 4 dvds rather than spend 12 hours downloading them off the net after purchase

PCgaming is going at it the wrong way

The thing that kills me about the transition to digital is the loss of trinkets. I still have my pewter SW:G figurines from the CE preorder. My Warhammer figurine. EQ maps and mousepads and more, so much more. All of it will soon be a thing of the past, I fear =(.

Good. I've despised Gamestop for a long time now.

I couldn't care less if brick and mortar dissolved. Online purchase is becoming more prominent every day, virtual downloads and physical purchases.

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Originally posted by skeaser
The thing that kills me about the transition to digital is the loss of trinkets. I still have my pewter SW:G figurines from the CE preorder. My Warhammer figurine. EQ maps and mousepads and more, so much more. All of it will soon be a thing of the past, I fear =(.

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I don't think that has to do with the transition to online purchases. I think it's more along the lines of what the companies think they can get away with. Charging the most for the least amount of substance.

Originally posted by uohaloran

Good. I've despised Gamestop for a long time now.

I couldn't care less if brick and mortar dissolved. Online purchase is becoming more prominent every day, virtual downloads and physical purchases.

 

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Originally posted by skeaser
The thing that kills me about the transition to digital is the loss of trinkets. I still have my pewter SW:G figurines from the CE preorder. My Warhammer figurine. EQ maps and mousepads and more, so much more. All of it will soon be a thing of the past, I fear =(.

---

 

I don't think that has to do with the transition to online purchases. I think it's more along the lines of what the companies think they can get away with. Charging the most for the least amount of substance.

True, even factoring in server costs it should cost to get the digital medium vs. the box, manual, discs etc.

I been noticing the same trend away from PC boxes being sold as well.  More n more space to the consoles. Slowly killin off the PC game market. Perhaps it is cause PC users can easily d/l the game?

Personally I preffer to have the box around. So I can re-install the game on a later date with no problem should i choose to do so.

Originally posted by skeaser

I get my boxes from the interwebs.

Amazon, gamestop, etc.

I do all my "Retail box" game shopping online too

think its been 2 years since I last bought a computer game from walk-in store

Originally posted by Squal'Zell

EBgames is also doing that, before they had a whole wall full of PC releases and games, now they still have that wall... but only with world of warcraft and its expansions, every other PC game is not sold there anymore.

they say its because people pirate the games and they don't sell anymore.... hmm and removing them from the store completely will reduce that? hell, the ones who actually buy the games (like me) will start to pirate them since they can't seem to find them at their local store...

a solution would be that you can order them. have a list of PC games you can order from the stores and they come in on demand. no shelf space lost there. but nooo, where i live here at EB games they have this "dont know, dont care, dont ask me about PC games unless its WoW" attitude

honestly i like to have the box and CD, downloads would be acceptable when games stop being 12 Gigs. I rather install them from 2-3 even 4 dvds rather than spend 12 hours downloading them off the net after purchase

PCgaming is going at it the wrong way

Nope. But retailers do NOT care about piracy. They care about selling boxes. If i am a retailer, I would replace the PC games section with something that sells better too.

And your solution is not a solution. Why do they have to do extra work (meaning extra staff costs) when there are OTHER games (like 360) that sell?

Personally I'd rather download my games anyway. I already have boxes of game CDs and DVDs. They are clutter. 

On the other hand, I can log into Direct2Drive or Steam and re-download any game I want to replay down the road, or just keep a copy on my 500gb back-up drive. No space wasted.

In Colorado though, Bestbuy and Walmart still have a pretty good selection of PC games. But as far as EB games...they can suck a nut. I havn't done business with them since I went to pick up my Doom 3 pre-prder, and they claimed they didn't recieve enough copies to cover their orders...yet Bestbuy had an entire wall of them.

Oh, and I find it funny that they want $50 for a used Gamecube game that I can get at Bestbuy NEW for $13.99

Fuck EB games.