Bravely Default is here!

HOORAY!

A picture of my cat, posed with my copy of Bravely Default. She's very photogenic.

Everyone at the store has been playing the Bravely Default demo for weeks, because we're those sorts of people. We've also been telling everyone to pre-order it, because both Nintendo handheld releases and JRPG* releases in general are usually a nightmare of underavailability.

I still have lingering trauma from the Fire Emblem: Awakening release.

Anyway, I wasn't working today, so I made a super special trip to the store to pick up my reserved copy. Sure enough, the store was already sold out, because we only got enough copies to cover our reserves. As I was standing in the store, a frumpy JRPG nerd stomped up to the register.

"DO YOU HAVE BRAVELY DEFAULT!?"

"No," said bossbro. "We can order it for you, or you can download it from the eShop."

Frumpy JRPG nerd stomped his way back out of the store.

What follows is an open message to my fellow JRPG people:

Hey, ladies and dudes. You know how every time a new JRPG comes out, none of the stores have it in stock? That's because demand for these games is super low.

STOP WHINING ABOUT IT AND DO SOMETHING INSTEAD.

The stock that stores order for low-demand games is directly based on the number of reserves they get for it. My store was the only one of my chain in the entire district that got any copies of the new Project Diva game, because we were the only store that had reserves on it.

We had one reserve. We got two copies. The second one sold to a walk-in on launch day, and I haven't seen another copy since.

And don't give me any of that crap about "WELL, I WASN'T PLANNING ON GETTING IT" or "WELL, I'M JUST MAKING AN IMPULSE BUY." If you went out to buy it on the release day, then it wasn't "an impulse buy," and you are a dirty, dirty liar.

If you want more Japanese games to come to the United States, and in greater numbers, you need to commit to buying them on launch day.

Now, I know not everyone can afford to buy launch-day games. This rant is not for you. This rant is for the swarm of people I see every launch day who refuse to commit even one day ahead of time to buying a game on day one, even though they were clearly planning on doing so anyway, and complain when we don't have a pile of extra copies waiting for them.

Every retailer does pre-orders now, as do the manufacturers, typically. It's not like you don't still have a choice of whom to give your money dollars to. Most places (Amazon, StameGop) don't charge extra for pre-orders, either.

PRE-ORDER YOUR SHIT instead of complaining to me about lack of availability, for a market the manufacturers didn't know existed. With the onset of downloadable games, manufacturers have basically no reason to print physical copies at all outside of consumer demand. It's still hard to find physical copies of Fire Emblem, a year after launch. Hakuoki: Memories of the Shinsengumi barely had a physical launch at all.

I'm sure Bravely Default will be the same way. 

*Today, someone asked me what "JRPG" stands for, and I said "Japanese RPG." Then Ladyboss stepped in and added "...role-playing game." I forgot to translate that part. Whoooops.