Limited Run Games

[Croz of Vinheim | 4]

Did anyone else pre-order the Star Wars games that were carded like the old toys?  I picked up a few for Christmas presents and its not looking good.  Originally supposed to ship in October, then Dec and now they are saying January.  Is this a normal thing for LRG?

Edited December 5, 2019 by Croz of Vinheim

[BreaKBeatZ | 136]

1 hour ago, Croz of Vinheim said:

Did anyone else pre-order the Star Wars games that were carded like the old toys?  I picked up a few for Christmas presents and its not looking good.  Originally supposed to ship in October, then Dec and now they are saying January.  Is this a normal thing for LRG?

It has happened a few times before. I know that Pixel Junk Monsters 2 and Celeste were both delayed by very long periods. Don't worry; you will eventually get the games. LRG always delivers in the end.

[TDIRunner | 2,727]

On 11/19/2019 at 6:23 PM, Californication said:

Do you have a connection to LRG?

Not at all.  Why do you ask?

(FYI.  I did not receive an email notification about being quoted in a post the way I was used to from NA, which is why I didn't notice this post until today.) 

Edited December 6, 2019 by TDIRunner

[TDIRunner | 2,727]

On 11/19/2019 at 6:41 PM, PineappleLawnchair said:

You hear that folks, without LRG, we would've NEVER had the N64 version of Star Wars Episode 1 Racer, or physical copies of Turok, Jak 1, 2, X Combat Racing, Nuclear Throne, Soldner X2,  YS origin, etc et al,. They're providing a SERVICE to us, by re-releasing bootlegs and incredibly small amounts of games to scalpers.

Very few games have ended up in the hands of scalpers.  This is proven by the small percentage of these games that end up listed on eBay or other market sources.  If you don't like the bootlegs, don't buy them.  Unless anyone is forced to buy something they don't want, you have nothing to complain about.  Quit acting like a child.  

[TDIRunner | 2,727]

I've heard a rumor floating around on social media that the final LRG Vita release may be offered free to anyone who has purchased every LRG Vita release up to that point.  Has anyone heard anything similar?

[LeatherRebel5150 | 1,055]

23 minutes ago, TDIRunner said:

I've heard a rumor floating around on social media that the final LRG Vita release may be offered free to anyone who has purchased every LRG Vita release up to that point.  Has anyone heard anything similar?

That's something LRG promised way back when. But they kept shifting the goal posts on how to determine who owns all of their vita releases.  The last I saw there was still nothing official on which game it will be or how to submit your claim to one

[BouncekDeLemos | 82]

I'll probably get back into collecting more LRG stuff sometime when I get hired on full time. lol Sucks too, there's a some good preorders hovering around. Maybe some other limited places too.

Just got word about that one French company, "Warned Collectors". Anyone use their service and/or heard back from them? Their last tweet was in August, and some games were slated to be shipping Q3... well, it's the tail-end of the year, and people're getting pissed. So much so that some are saying it's a scam. Buyers beware until we see some orders in people's hands.

[MiamiSlice | 3,089]

11 minutes ago, BouncekDeLemos said:

Just got word about that one French company, "Warned Collectors". Anyone use their service and/or heard back from them? Their last tweet was in August, and some games were slated to be shipping Q3... well, it's the tail-end of the year, and people're getting pissed. So much so that some are saying it's a scam. Buyers beware until we see some orders in people's hands.

There was a thread on Reddit a couple months ago saying pretty much the same thing. I would avoid them. 

[Skorp | 383]

35 minutes ago, BouncekDeLemos said:

I'll probably get back into collecting more LRG stuff sometime when I get hired on full time. lol Sucks too, there's a some good preorders hovering around. Maybe some other limited places too.

Just got word about that one French company, "Warned Collectors". Anyone use their service and/or heard back from them? Their last tweet was in August, and some games were slated to be shipping Q3... well, it's the tail-end of the year, and people're getting pissed. So much so that some are saying it's a scam. Buyers beware until we see some orders in people's hands.

Yeah they are very shady and should be stayed away from. I remember some people on NA complain about them not getting any updates at all on their orders and also being late for the shipping date for the first ones. No response from them at all when you message them.

[BouncekDeLemos | 82]

Dang. I wonder how the publishers of these games are feeling about the situation? Seems like they're being scammed too. They're the ones giving the money to this company to send the ISO and assets off to get them verified, converted, then pressed. Sad situation all around.

On a lighter note, this literally came in for me today. I'm stoked! It even has a manual!  LRG FTW. 

I'll get started on it as soon as I finish Shenmue 3. I know I said I won't buy any more 'till I get hired full time at my new job, but I ordered this back when I still had my other job before we ultimately had to close shop. 

[Splain | 2,560]

I see Limited Run games in my local Best Buy often. If that's unusual, I should buy more of them lol.

It took me a while to understand what LRG (and similar outfits) even was, but now I guess I'm glad they exist, for as long as they're providing a way for physical games to exist where they wouldn't otherwise. I strongly prefer physical games, but I've downloaded a few cheap indies that looked interesting, because there's no way such a cheap game is getting a physical release, right? For example Minit. (got an SRG release) would I have bought the physical copy instead if I had known about it? For a lot more money? I don't know.

What grinds my gears is wanting a game, (Enter the Gungeon) seeing that there's no physical release planned, reading a twitter post from the devs that there will absolutely never ever be a physical release ever, buying it digital, then seeing the physical release announcement.

[TDIRunner | 2,727]

5 minutes ago, Splain said:

I see Limited Run games in my local Best Buy often. If that's unusual, I should buy more of them lol.

 

That will be common for most of the games that were available through pre-order.  You won't see it on any of the games that had a specific print runs determined before the games became available on LRG's site.  

[Splain | 2,560]

I guess I don't get the limited print runs. Don't you make more money selling 8001 games than printing 8000? Is it a supply issue? Is it a demand issue? Are unpopular games more likely to sell simply because they're limited? Sorry if that already got talked to death on NA, maybe I should find the old thread and read through it first.

[TDIRunner | 2,727]

3 minutes ago, Splain said:

I guess I don't get the limited print runs. Don't you make more money selling 8001 games than printing 8000? Is it a supply issue? Is it a demand issue? Are unpopular games more likely to sell simply because they're limited? Sorry if that already got talked to death on NA, maybe I should find the old thread and read through it first.

They key is that they have to sell everything they make.  Unsold copies are bad for any business, but it's a killer for a small company.  In a perfect world, they would match the supply to the demand.  Since that's nearly impossible, they are better off selling a smaller number of copies and knowing that all will sell, than to make too many have to sit on leftover stock.  

That doesn't mean LRG always gets the production numbers within a reasonable % of the demand.   Night Trap on PS4 was a good example of that.  The production run was well below what the demand turned out to be.  They could have made a lot more money if they had correctly anticipated the demand.  But at the time, they were still too new to take that kind of risk.  That's part of the reason why they have been slowly switching over to more pre-orders.  I think they will continue to move in this direction, especially once the Vita games are gone.  

[DefaultGen | 5,400]

50 minutes ago, Splain said:

I guess I don't get the limited print runs. Don't you make more money selling 8001 games than printing 8000? Is it a supply issue? Is it a demand issue? Are unpopular games more likely to sell simply because they're limited? Sorry if that already got talked to death on NA, maybe I should find the old thread and read through it first.

Same reason Beanie Babies are retired. Artificially limiting production creates FOMO. If they sell 2000 copies of some anime game, few people would care that it's scarce secondhand. If they artificially limit it to 2000 and advertise that, everyone knows it will be "scarce" (big quotes) secondhand and people who otherwise don't care about the game might buy it to keep it sealed.

Many of the big LRG games are unrestricted preorders now so the artificial scarcity isn't too exciting, at least IMO. Or the limited print run is spread out over like 4 different SKUs to mask how big the print run actually is. When they have artificially-limited, exclusive, well reviewed games, which is pretty rare, I think it's interesting to own a copy. Multiplatform games, meh, I can always find it somewhere or on the next console it comes out on.

Edited December 6, 2019 by DefaultGen

[MiamiSlice | 3,089]

54 minutes ago, Splain said:

I guess I don't get the limited print runs. Don't you make more money selling 8001 games than printing 8000? Is it a supply issue? Is it a demand issue? Are unpopular games more likely to sell simply because they're limited? Sorry if that already got talked to death on NA, maybe I should find the old thread and read through it first.

These games are niche. The ones that get extra retail distribution at Best Buy or GameStop just sit on the shelves. Some of these limited print publishers haven’t even sold out of their backlog this year. Go look at Strictly Limited Games or Red Art Games or whatever, you’ll see they have some titles that have been available for months. These games are not popular or in demand beyond maybe some niche collector groups (like shmup gamers, or classic 2D platformer gamers, etc). 

there are exceptions but even Celeste for being well known and all is still sitting on the shelves at Best Buy.

[Code Monkey | 2,005]

1 hour ago, Splain said:

I guess I don't get the limited print runs. Don't you make more money selling 8001 games than printing 8000? Is it a supply issue? Is it a demand issue? Are unpopular games more likely to sell simply because they're limited? Sorry if that already got talked to death on NA, maybe I should find the old thread and read through it first.

I didn't get it neither initially but if a game is readily available on shelves at Wal-Mart, resellers and collectors aren't going to bother much with titles of which they have never heard. That game may sell 6000 copies.

Now if a publishing company states they're only going to make 7000 copies, they will probably sell the additional 1000 to resellers and collectors. Many people in this thread have fully admitted to buying a game without even knowing if they want it and I've read others mentioning they will return it if it doesn't resell.

[avatar! | 1,807]

4 hours ago, BouncekDeLemos said:

On a lighter note, this literally came in for me today. I'm stoked! It even has a manual!  LRG FTW. 
 

As far as I know, ALL LRG games come with manual (note, the very first one, Breach & Clear, on the Vita did not). 

I really appreciate that these games come with manuals, and I'm personally willing to pay a bit more to have an actual manual, something that is lacking in today's AAA games. 

[DefaultGen | 5,400]

17 minutes ago, avatar! said:

As far as I know, ALL LRG games come with manual (note, the very first one, Breach & Clear, on the Vita did not). 

I really appreciate that these games come with manuals, and I'm personally willing to pay a bit more to have an actual manual, something that is lacking in today's AAA games. 

Night Trap on PC has no manual  It doesn't even have a cardboard insert, it's just the jewel case rattling around a giant box. Not that anyone cares about LRG Night Trap on PC though.

[Inzoreno | 102]

6 hours ago, TDIRunner said:

They key is that they have to sell everything they make.  Unsold copies are bad for any business, but it's a killer for a small company.  In a perfect world, they would match the supply to the demand.  Since that's nearly impossible, they are better off selling a smaller number of copies and knowing that all will sell, than to make too many have to sit on leftover stock.  

That doesn't mean LRG always gets the production numbers within a reasonable % of the demand.   Night Trap on PS4 was a good example of that.  The production run was well below what the demand turned out to be.  They could have made a lot more money if they had correctly anticipated the demand.  But at the time, they were still too new to take that kind of risk.  That's part of the reason why they have been slowly switching over to more pre-orders.  I think they will continue to move in this direction, especially once the Vita games are gone.  

On an episode of Retronauts where they were interviewed, Josh said that with Night Trap, they hadn't figured it would be as hot as it ended up being because it was a game quite often pointed out as being terrible and they had no expectations that people would actually want it. 

[Inzoreno | 102]

9 hours ago, BouncekDeLemos said:

I'll probably get back into collecting more LRG stuff sometime when I get hired on full time. lol Sucks too, there's a some good preorders hovering around. Maybe some other limited places too.

Just got word about that one French company, "Warned Collectors". Anyone use their service and/or heard back from them? Their last tweet was in August, and some games were slated to be shipping Q3... well, it's the tail-end of the year, and people're getting pissed. So much so that some are saying it's a scam. Buyers beware until we see some orders in people's hands.

Back when I was collecting for Switch (I 'switched' to PS4 in the middle of the year), I had preordered the first two of the Switch releases from them, Pankapu and Dungeon Rushers. As of right now, I've gotten no games, no messages from them, nothing. At this point, I've written it off as a lost cause. The general idea seems to be that they were trying to fund production through the sales, but the initial games just didn't sell that well and they ended up having to fold. Dunno how true that is, since no one seems able to contact them. 

[avatar! | 1,807]

Will you look at this... I found three sellers doing this

Don't get me wrong, I understand collecting, and appreciating in value. However, I find this behavior disreputable to say the least. I mean, if people knew they could support LRG directly and get the game for 35% cheaper, why wouldn't they?? 

 

 

Edited December 8, 2019 by avatar!
So deleting pictures is interesting. Apparently, you can't delete the picture directly you need to hit the little trash icon or otherwise it comes back from the dead....

[MiamiSlice | 3,089]

3 hours ago, avatar! said:

Will you look at this... I found three sellers doing this

Don't get me wrong, I understand collecting, and appreciating in value. However, I find this behavior disreputable to say the least. I mean, if people knew they could support LRG directly and get the game for 35% cheaper, why wouldn't they?? 

These eBay sellers are betting on people being too stupid to check the Limited Run website. I also think for this listing that shows up as “2 sold” already - those sales must be fake. 

[avatar! | 1,807]

27 minutes ago, MiamiSlice said:

These eBay sellers are betting on people being too stupid to check the Limited Run website. I also think for this listing that shows up as “2 sold” already - those sales must be fake. 

I'm sure you're right. I've often wondered, what percentage of sales are fake? I've never found any statistics on those, but I suspect it would be surprisingly high. 

[Nintendo Historian | 43]

I just picked up “Time Spinners”by “Limited Run Games “,and loving it so far ..I must confess though I am little taken back by the claims of other gamers that there are references to LGBT in the game ,I have not yet encountered that ..But as a Conservative I would of passed on this game if I had 100% confirmation of that ..