Pokémon X and Y Street Date Broken
Many of the shops on the UK high street have broken the street date of Pokémon X and Y. The games officially have a release date of 12th October, which is tomorrow; however almost every UK retailer that sells games has sold the titles today.
Reports of the street date being broken started to circulate across the Internet around 9:30 am this morning. Many people started to tweet that they had managed to purchase copies today. As time went by it soon became clear that at least some stores were intentionally selling the game a day early.
Around midday I received a text from GAME telling me that my Pokémon pre-order could be collected now. So I travelled to my local GAME store to see if I could manage to purchase a copy of the game. After handing in my pre-order coupon I was sold the game with no issues and no mention of the broken street date. After the transaction was completed, I questioned the stores manager (who asked to remain nameless) about the broken street date.
“Some of the major supermarkets decided they were going to sell [Pokémon X and Y] a day early, which resulted in everyone else following suit. I would be very surprised if there wasn’t some serious repercussions for the supermarkets in question”
“ We got in this morning and had to rush around to get all the copies out of the boxes and ready to sell, just so that we don’t lose out on business. We weren’t the only ones either, it appears both CEX and HMV have done the same.”
The store manager made it clear that if the supermarkets had not broken the street date then neither would they, but in fear of losing out on sales they made the decision to also sell the game early. I did ask who made the decision to sell the games early, whether it was head office or the store’s manager, but they refused to give me a definite answer – make of that what you will.
I also asked about the possibility to purchasing a 2DS, which is also due to release tomorrow, but they refused to sell me one.
It is still unclear exactly who broke the street date first – the staff at GAME seemed adamant that it was a supermarket, but others are reporting that GAME were the main culprit. What we do know is that now both GAME and other retailers, including supermarkets, are selling the game early.
There have been reports that after seeing the game being sold early Nintendo gave the go ahead to other retailers to do so as well. However, this is yet to be confirmed by Nintendo or any of the retailers.
Did you manage to pick up a copy of Pokémon X/Y or even a 2DS today? If you did, let us know in the comments.
