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<blockquote data-quote="spacecrime.com" data-source="post: 170421" data-attributes="member: 753">Fair enough. If game retailers have no value to you, that's cool with me. However, I think you'll find that we do have value to your favorite publishers -- and it's their opinion that matters on this issue.Game distributors and retailers handle the vast majority of most publishers' sales. The system has problems, but we sell large quantities of product fairly quickly for publishers. If the publishers had to do all of this themselves, they would sell fewer products at a much higher cost. Now, it is certainly possible that publishers could devise a system that works better than the current one. Depending on what the next ten years of information technology&nbsp; look like, it may even be likely. To date, however, every publisher that said &quot;we can do it better without retailers&quot; has found out that selling only to the consumer meant shrinking sales and a constant upward spiral of costs.The Wizards of the Coast retail stores lost 46 million dollars (on just a hundred million in sales, even) over the last 2 years, even though WotC had three of the four hottest products in gaming. They're great publishers, but they're terrible retailers! That's why they deal with distributors and retailers --&nbsp; they'd cut us out if they could, but the simple fact is that we do the job of getting their products to the consumer better than they do.You don't like retailers? Fine. Feel free to consider this post a polite invitation to kiss my scrawny fish-white booty. But even if you never darken the door of a retailer again, game retailers are one of the reasons you actually have a product to buy. Get rid of us, and you're getting rid of just about every publisher in the business as well, so have a very nice day.cheers,</blockquote>

[QUOTE="spacecrime.com, post: 170421, member: 753"] Fair enough. If game retailers have no value to you, that's cool with me. However, I think you'll find that we [B]do[/b] have value to your favorite publishers -- and it's their opinion that matters on this issue. Game distributors and retailers handle the vast majority of most publishers' sales. The system has problems, but we sell large quantities of product fairly quickly for publishers. If the publishers had to do all of this themselves, they would sell fewer products at a much higher cost. Now, it is certainly possible that publishers could devise a system that works better than the current one. Depending on what the next ten years of information technology look like, it may even be likely. To date, however, every publisher that said "we can do it better without retailers" has found out that selling only to the consumer meant shrinking sales and a constant upward spiral of costs. The Wizards of the Coast retail stores lost 46 [b]million[/b] dollars (on just a hundred million in sales, even) over the last 2 years, even though WotC had three of the four hottest products in gaming. They're great publishers, but they're [b]terrible[/b] retailers! That's why they deal with distributors and retailers -- they'd cut us out if they could, but the simple fact is that we do the job of getting their products to the consumer better than they do. You don't like retailers? Fine. Feel free to consider this post a polite invitation to kiss my scrawny fish-white booty. But even if you never darken the door of a retailer again, game retailers are one of the reasons you actually have a product to buy. Get rid of us, and you're getting rid of just about every publisher in the business as well, so have a very nice day. cheers, [/QUOTE]

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