By David Craddock
Have you ever grown tired of GameStop employees telling you something along the lines of “if you don’t preorder (insert game title here), you’ll never find a copy?” Well, it was bound to happen: this hackneyed employee response you firmly believed existed only to increase a store reservation quota has sadly come true. But the good part is, it couldn’t have happened to a better game.
[i]Katamari Damacy[/i] is flying off of store shelves, with the average game retailer only receiving between 5 and 10 copies of the quirky title. Brian Schorr, Namco Hometek’s Sales Channel Manager, says that “Namco is extremely pleased with the response that Katamari Damacy has received. We have been aware of the potential of the title for some time. Our initial orders were filled and demand has already resulted in re-orders from most specialty retail outlets.” Schorr continued by saying “We are working closely with retailers to make sure that Katamari Damacy is readily available, however, we encourage gamers to talk to the store managers and inform them of their desire for the game. Namco has plenty of product available for all retailers that request it.”
This problem seems to showcase one of the main problems with any entertainment industry: unless a product is extremely well known, it probably will not have sufficient stock to meet consumer demand. More well known titles such as [i]Fable[/i] are taking up so much shelf space that other lesser known games are being overshadowed. Not that many of these titles are not worthy of their shelf space, ([i]Fable[/i] is an extremely awesome game) but it’s still a problem for the little guys trying to garner attention, which [i]Katamari Damacy[/i] has evidently done quite well.
In short: if you want this game, run to your local video game outlet and reserve the game. Most of the time reserving a title isn’t worth doing, simply because the store is going to get three thousand copies regardless of how many preorders they receive. But for the more obscure titles such as [i]Katamari Damacy[/i], reserving is well worth your time.