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Wii

Brawl Shipments Already in U.S. Stores

by Steven Rodriguez - February 27, 2008, 2:02 pm EST
Total comments: 35

But don't expect to take home a copy early.

Our resident retail mole and NWR Forums regular UncleBob has informed us that his Walmart store has already received shipments of Super Smash Bros. Brawl, Nintendo's all-star fighter for Wii. This delivery, and presumably many other deliveries in the Walmart chain of stores, comes eleven days ahead of the official March 9 North American release date of the game.


A pallet full of Super Smash Bros. Brawl,currently residing in
an unidentified Walmart warehouse.

Walmart computers will not allow the sale of the game before the official release date, so anyone hoping to score an early copy (from Walmart, at least) will be out of luck. However, NWR has been seeing unconfirmed reports of North American retail copies of the game floating around the Internet, which could mean other stores that are also receiving the game may be inadvertently breaking street dates.

Furthermore, this news begs the question: Why is Nintendo shipping the game out to retailers this far in advance of the release date? Traditionally, the dates Nintendo lists on its release calendar are when it ships a game off to retailers, with games being available in stores a day or two after that.

So why ship the game off more than a week in advance? Might Walmart, Nintendo, and/or other retailers be planning something special around the release date of the game? Or will Nintendo be producing so many copies of Brawl that it will require multiple shipments to fulfill orders? Until we have official confirmation from Nintendo, any reasoning is just speculation.

Nintendo World Report has contacted Nintendo of America for an explanation for Brawl's early ship date. When we hear back, we will update this space with further information.

Talkback

UncleBobRichard Cook, Guest ContributorFebruary 27, 2008

Just a reminder/heads up - anyone who's in the Carmi, Illinois (southeastern Illinois) area, feel free to come by the Carmi Wal*Mart for our unofficial Brawl Release event.

More details here!

SeaBassFebruary 27, 2008

awesome.

im gonna bribe some peeps

ThePermFebruary 27, 2008

What this means is this game is big, with the popularity of the franchise combined with the wii userbase, is impossible to see this game as anything other than GREAT SUCCESS!

kraken613February 27, 2008

So how much will it sale day one? That looks to be atleast 100+ copies just there! To bad we still have to wait when they are already at stores.
I think close or at 1 million copies.

WindyManSteven Rodriguez, Staff AlumnusFebruary 27, 2008

The best reasoning I can come up with for why Nintendo would be shipping off the game to stores this early is because it will be doing multiple shipments of the game before the March 9 release date.  Nintendo doesn't like stockpiling anything because of the costs associated with doing so, which probably means it's making a shitload of copies for launch day, unloading batches to stores while it goes back to produce some more.

Yikes.

kraken613February 27, 2008

^
And most stores are doing a midnight release.
Man its hard to wait for this game! Its like trying to wait for Galaxy the week before it came out!

Yo, UB. 

Let's make a deal!

ShyGuyFebruary 27, 2008

You know, Uncle Bob's phone number is right there, just begging every tourney*** on the internet to call him...

decoymanFebruary 27, 2008

... I just realized that one of those pictured copies of Brawl will belong to me in a week and 4 days...

squee!

UncleBobRichard Cook, Guest ContributorFebruary 27, 2008

Attention anyone who wants the game early...

I'll sell you a copy... for one million dollars!
http://www.cam.cornell.edu/~gfriend/cdamama/img/800px-Dr_Evil.jpg

(for any Wal*Mart Asset Protection people who might be reading, I'm kidding - I promise.)

(for anyone who really wants to give me a million dollars for an early copy of the game, I'm not kidding.)

(no, seriously, Wal*Mart AP - I'm kidding.)

They're going to hunt you down now, man.

UltimatePartyBearFebruary 27, 2008

How many copies has your store received, UncleBob?

steveyFebruary 27, 2008

148, yet he refuse to share :@

NeoThunderFebruary 27, 2008

if they are going to have shipments in stores this earlier, I don't understand why they can't just move the release date up too.  I don't see why they can't move it up to the 5th, unless there is some rule somewhere that says release dates can't be moved up, only pushed back

UncleBobRichard Cook, Guest ContributorFebruary 27, 2008

Just because one store has copies of the game it doesn't mean they all do - they've got to ship them across the entire US...

Also, many stores (GameStop, Game Crazy, Sam's Club) are planning midnight release events.  Releasing the game early would put a cramp on these events - something which could upset a lot of retailers.

BeautifulShyFebruary 27, 2008

I've read on other forums that Circuit city is selling it early. As for pushing it up early I believe you can just look at NMH It was pushed up to January 22 from I believe February 8th.

Ian SaneFebruary 27, 2008

Nintendo has pulled an Atari and six months from now will bury an undisclosed amount of unsold SSB Brawl discs in a landfill in New Mexico. ;)

I hope I can actually get this on Sunday March 9.  A friend of mine who was out of town for like six months is coming home next week and all our friends are going to get together and if we could all play SSB that weekend it would be great.  Otherwise I'll have to wait a WHOLE WEEK (oh noes!) to get all my friends over.

Since I'm in Canada though I figure I'll be lucky if stores are even carrying it by Tuesday.

that Baby guyFebruary 27, 2008

Hey, our favorite site has picked up this story!  Including the picture with the watermark!  Any guess who I'm talking about?

Aside from that, Nintendo is shipping the game early so it is at retailers by its street date.  They just want to make sure that the game doesn't arrive at retailers a day or two later.  Remember that there's several stores offering midnight launch events?  They probably wouldn't want to do that unless they could get their hands on the game.

Bartman3010February 27, 2008

Brawl is streetdated, and several stores are doing midnight releases, such as Best Buy, Gamestop and Game Crazy. As well as competitions to go along with the launch. Obviously they're pushing this game as their Halo 3, though I kind of doubt that this is going to be all that successful (But the delay makes sense if they're to ship a truckload of copies)

Berto2KFebruary 27, 2008

Lets not forget to mention that for stores with large sales floors like Walmart that are receiving the floor displays need to rearrange their departments. This will give them plenty of time to setup for not only appearance, but security as well.

Dirk TemporoFebruary 28, 2008

Um... It's well-known that a lot of Gamestop stores and some Wal-Marts are having midnight launches.

KDR_11kFebruary 28, 2008

Quote from: Ian

Nintendo has pulled an Atari and six months from now will bury an undisclosed amount of unsold SSB Brawl discs in a landfill in New Mexico. ;)

Like they did with SSBM you mean? I got that from a store which was SERIOUSLY overstocked.

SheckyFebruary 28, 2008

As much as I like Circuit City, I'll play nice and not subject the store to the penalties for breaking street date - You know Nintendo is pay attention to this one.  Now, lets see if TRU will ship out on time....

ArbokFebruary 28, 2008

Quote from: KDR_11k

Quote from: Ian

Nintendo has pulled an Atari and six months from now will bury an undisclosed amount of unsold SSB Brawl discs in a landfill in New Mexico. ;)

Like they did with SSBM you mean? I got that from a store which was SERIOUSLY overstocked.

Yeah, but you live in some anti-consumer haven where Wiis are always in stock...

KDR_11kFebruary 28, 2008

So, how can I break the region crap on my Wii so I can play SSBB this year?

vuduFebruary 28, 2008

Quote from: thatguy

Hey, our favorite site has picked up this story!  Including the picture with the watermark!  Any guess who I'm talking about?

And they didn't even give UncleBob credit!  Instead they thanked some fruit named Kraken.

Berto2KFebruary 28, 2008

Quote from: KDR_11k

So, how can I break the region crap on my Wii so I can play SSBB this year?

Easy...buy a Wii freeloader!
http://uk.codejunkies.com/Products/Wii-FreeLoader__EF000595.aspx

NinGurl69 *hugglesFebruary 28, 2008

Freeloaders stop working at every new system update.  Or do they?

ThePermFebruary 28, 2008

I remember when we worked at Gamestop how many copies of San Andreas we had, it was nuts. The game wound up being a great seller until the whole Hot Coffee thing.

NinGurl69 *hugglesFebruary 28, 2008

Quote from: vudu

Quote from: thatguy

Hey, our favorite site has picked up this story!  Including the picture with the watermark!  Any guess who I'm talking about?

And they didn't even give UncleBob credit!  Instead they thanked some fruit named Kraken.

You mean this kraken?
http://nintendoworldreport.com/forums/index.php?action=profile;u=10468

kraken613February 28, 2008

It wasnt me. I dont like GoNintendo all they do is steal stories!

KDR_11kFebruary 29, 2008

Quote from: Berto2K

Quote from: KDR_11k

So, how can I break the region crap on my Wii so I can play SSBB this year?

Easy...buy a Wii freeloader!
http://uk.codejunkies.com/Products/Wii-FreeLoader__EF000595.aspx

Does that work if the game includes a firmware update like pretty much every Nintendo game does?

mantidorFebruary 29, 2008

Quote from: KDR_11k

Quote from: Berto2K

Quote from: KDR_11k

So, how can I break the region crap on my Wii so I can play SSBB this year?

Easy...buy a Wii freeloader!
http://uk.codejunkies.com/Products/Wii-FreeLoader__EF000595.aspx

Does that work if the game includes a firmware update like pretty much every Nintendo game does?

your only hope is if Nintendo lets this slip under the radar, after all freeloaders aren't exactly "non-gamer" stuff and maybe they won't care.

CericFebruary 29, 2008

There are Flashable Mod-Chips but with accordance to Forum Rules Plus I haven't used it I can only tell you about there exsistence.

walkingdead2February 29, 2008

i don't know if it was explained firmly or not as i just skimmed this post.  but the reason is to make sure that all retailers have this game at the same time.  this is a huge release and they don't want any one crying foul.  i remember when i worked at gamestop and we had quite a few games with a firm street date, just to make sure every one is equal.  but there were a lot of other games that we got quite early.  most of the games arrive at the store the day of, this way all the stores can have it as soon as the open.

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