Until this year, EA never put a "HARD" street date on NCAA or Madden. None of the box stores had the game when the EB's and Gamestops had it. This has held true for quite some time. However, after seeing what Halo 2 did when it had a hard street date, EA is now wanting to do the same thing. Last year and previous to that, the date you saw from EA was when it would be in stores everywhere. EB and Gamestops close to Louisville KY would send someone to the distro center to pick it up. Usually a district manager. From there, the diffferent regions would get it. Thats why some stores went to the airport or whatnot to pick up their allotment. I just dont see whats so hard to understand about this. And of course you are not going to see anything from EA about this year, especially if they do indeed hold the hard street date of July 12th. They dont want everyone knowing that the stores are sitting on it. The less people know, the lower risk of having it sell early.
Hard street dates are not good for anyone. From the retail stores to the consumer, everyone suffers except the company that made the game. They already have their money from the different stores that will carry their game. They are out nothing by making stores sit on it or letting them sell it early. Bungie wanted to set a record and now EA is going after the same thing. NCAA is the test run for Madden. If everything goes well, then you will start seeing more and more publishers start putting a hard street date on the games. This practice already exists when it comes to the systems. Wal-Mart, Best Buy, Target, EB, and Gamestop were sitting on Halo 2, PSP, etc days before the "Release" date. It all has to do with the board of directors from said game publishers seeing bigger sales in "launch/release" period than say having store A selling X amount of copies 2 days before store B sells Y amount. A quicker profit margin often means an increase in the shareholders quarterly dividend. This is why EB and Gamestop are merging. To be able to maintain as big a presence in the industry as Wal-Mart. As it stands right now, Wal-Mart holds 25% marketshare with Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo. The merger will give the merged companies the same clout as Wally World and can continue to cater to the gamers. Wal-Mart, Best Buy etc dont specifically cater to the gamer. Hopefully this merger wil mean that hard street dates wont become the norm and they can continue to have early releases so the hardcore gamer can get what they want at the earliest convinence.
Sorry for the rant but I hate this street date thing.