So today my preorder of Crash Bandicoot on Switch arrived, one day before its official release date and also before the review embargo had officially lifted on the game. I received a shipping confirmation email yesterday.
This is the first time I've ever received an online preorder before release and was wondering if anyone else has had the same thing happen to them?
I am currently using the 30 day trial of Amazon Prime if that's applicable at all to the situation.
Quick. Make a YouTube video review and become internet famous.
Most retailers get their stock of games a few days before release with lots of embargo stickers on them. Amazon obviously got the same boxes, didn’t give a damn about the embargo and just sent it out.
Enjoy it.
Basically, embargo dates and official release dates are just marketing BS left over from a time when people actually had to line up at stores at midnight to get their games. It makes no sense to hold inventory to a particular date, it's inefficient, a waste of space, makes things slower for consumers and retailers and is a hassle. Small retailers can't afford to piss off publishers, Amazon can, so they don't give a damn.
It's probably more likely giving them time to make sure the servers/infrastructure are sound. You want to know if there's going to be potentially tens/hundreds of thousands accessing your servers.
Saying that, you make sure your servers are automatically scalable these days.
Courier delivered it too early.