I would be very surprised if a contract to make certain items available exclusively via a retail partner did not stipulate some minimum amount of time for the games developers and publishers to abide by said exclusivity agreement and not make the items available via other means.
Likewise mentioning that the items would or might be made available at some point would also be contractually prohibited, as it would be contrary to the retail partners interests. (Much like some NDAs specifically mention that youre not allowed to say youre operating under an NDA.)
Keep in mind that no business goes out of its way to NOT give its customers what theyre asking for and that Cryptic has never said they wouldnt offer the retail bonus items at some point.
If Im off base a Cryptic rep can just chime in and say so, but if they dont
Personally Id wait until at least six months after launch before wondering whats up.
It's only a suspicion, but I'd hazard a guess that pre-order Lifetime Subscriber bonuses won't be available to others until some number of months pass for customer fealty's sake, even though they may announce upcoming availability sooner.
Passion requires temperance with reason. A Klingon taught me that.
Small problem. STO had no PREORDER items. All the items are attached to the retail keys and you can still get them from the retailers TODAY by putting in a retail code from said retailer.
Only PREORDER item is the Liberated Borg and the MU uniforms.
Small problem. STO had no PREORDER items. All the items are attached to the retail keys and you can still get them from the retailers TODAY by putting in a retail code from said retailer.
Only PREORDER item is the Liberated Borg and the MU uniforms.
With the C-Store though, Cryptic could do something different than actual items to retailers.
They could basically put everything in the C-Store. Want to give retailer incentives? Then calculate what would be in the package and give that retailer a "comes with X number of C-Points" to cover it.
Example and using nice numbers to make clearer example:
Amazon had the Borg BO. Let's say they put it in the C-Store for 1000 points. So Amazon standard version comes with the 1000 C-Points.
The uniforms with the CE each 1000. The little redmatter thingy 500. So Amazon CE comes with additional 2500 over the 1000 on standard for 3500 total.
Now if I wanted all of the items in their existing CE setup with Amazon, I'd have the C-Points to cover it. But what if instead of one of the uniforms (DS9 one since the TNG movie was close enough for me), I wanted the Best Buy tribble instead which is in the C-Store for 1000 as well.
With the C-Store they can give retailers the C-Points as exclusives and let the players decide what items they use for it. Someone who won't want an item may instead what a ship skin or playable race or even bridge pack or extra slots instead.
I get your point but that's not what the pertinent retailers bought into. It's not what's most convenient for the Cryptic/Atari future user base that the retailers were most interested in, but what would move merchandise.
It may have even been offered by Cryptic (didn't some retailers like the Impulse download service by Stardock just offer 500 Cryptic Points?) and rejected. Maybe they wanted something sexier they could describe or illustrate on a box that was different than some other retailer. I don't know.
Nevertheless, my point was about what happens going forward regarding the items rather than what should have been in place before launch.
The issue with offering 'vendor' perks in the C-store, as that as far as the Vendor's are concerned, if anyone can get their exclusive 'perk' then why buy from them??? Instead it's the lowest price (which favors digital downloads with no Brick and Morter overhead) will dominate... So this idea can't be viable until the Vendor exclusives end...
Comments
Only PREORDER item is the Liberated Borg and the MU uniforms.
"Retail Exclusives"
The title was mis-worded. The point holds.
With the C-Store though, Cryptic could do something different than actual items to retailers.
They could basically put everything in the C-Store. Want to give retailer incentives? Then calculate what would be in the package and give that retailer a "comes with X number of C-Points" to cover it.
Example and using nice numbers to make clearer example:
Amazon had the Borg BO. Let's say they put it in the C-Store for 1000 points. So Amazon standard version comes with the 1000 C-Points.
The uniforms with the CE each 1000. The little redmatter thingy 500. So Amazon CE comes with additional 2500 over the 1000 on standard for 3500 total.
Now if I wanted all of the items in their existing CE setup with Amazon, I'd have the C-Points to cover it. But what if instead of one of the uniforms (DS9 one since the TNG movie was close enough for me), I wanted the Best Buy tribble instead which is in the C-Store for 1000 as well.
With the C-Store they can give retailers the C-Points as exclusives and let the players decide what items they use for it. Someone who won't want an item may instead what a ship skin or playable race or even bridge pack or extra slots instead.
It may have even been offered by Cryptic (didn't some retailers like the Impulse download service by Stardock just offer 500 Cryptic Points?) and rejected. Maybe they wanted something sexier they could describe or illustrate on a box that was different than some other retailer. I don't know.
Nevertheless, my point was about what happens going forward regarding the items rather than what should have been in place before launch.