Sunday 25 November 2007

Does Wehkamp know something we don't? (updated)

This is very weird. Wehkamp, the Dutch mail-order and Internet shop, still maintains that the Wii game NiGHTS: Journey of Dreams will be released on the 1st of December here in the Netherlands, while the rest of the world and its neighbour know that the game won't be released in Europe before January next year.

I would normally brush this off as a simple mistake. However, as maybe the biggest mail-order company of the Netherlands, you'd think Wehkamp would take those things seriously. Moreover, it's the only game that shows this strange release date behaviour. I've followed the release dates of quite a few games on the Wehkamp website, and they've all kept in sync with delay announcements.

So, what's going on here? Is this really just a weird error from Wehkamp? Or is SEGA organising some surprise early release? I frankly cannot believe either, but I guess we'll know within a week.

In any case, if SEGA does indeed pull up some weird trick out of its hat, I'll have the satisfaction of receiving the game early. After all, I've pre-ordered it an eternity ago (before Super Paper Mario was even released!).

Update: so it seems Wehkamp was just stalling to change the release date after all. It's now set to the 31st of January, more in line with other announcements. However, I find this rather unprofessional: not everyone is reading the specialised press, and changing the release date at the last moment when everyone else in the industry (and thus retailers as well, you'd expect) has known about it for one month shows lack of respect for the consumer. It seems to be a common trend everywhere nowadays and I don't quite like it (to say the least!). I need to keep an eye on it...

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