Now I'm confused...I thought electronics stores like Gamestop
buy their items from vendors. Now if they buy them from vendors, then they need to buy a certain amount right?
Sure it might bring the pre-order number up
Ok cool, o so that's where pre-orders come into play right?
So the more pre-orders the store gets the more copies they buy to anticipate demand right?
So if 5 people pre-ordered a certain game then Gamestop will buy more than 5 copies right?
indeed, but that just sounds fucking stupid
??? What's so stupid? Doesn't buying games from vendors mean $$$ for publishers/developers?
I mean do any of the in-store sales of games go directly to the VG publishers/developers?
No right? Well sure some of the money goes to pay for the copies the store bought from the vendor (at a warehouse/bulk rate), but ultimately the sales are pure in-store profit (besides various overhead, employee salaries, etc....
)
but they don't count them in the same number do they?
??? o you mean the NPD and VG Charts #'s right?
Long story short, they're just sales
estimates gathered from said electronics stores that account for "actual" software/hardware sold...
This helps justify how many of the vendor bought copies are "actually sold"...it's not a concrete number, it just helps companies see if the game "sold" well.
So in that case, no my hollow pre-order doesn't count....
The real revenue that publishers and developers earn is made from the vendor sales...so running out of in-store copies (subsequently ordering more from vendor) + initial pre-orders copies =
for devs/pubs...
So the basic jist is this, pre-orders = increased vendors sales = $$$ in NISA's bank
pre-ordering it but then not buying it, I'm pretty sure that's now how a game gets more copies sold, all that happens is that the shop gets more copies, doesn't sell them, will think twice about getting that many copies again the next time, and the game will be available for less customers
This is a reverse of what you say but, that reminds me...I wanted to pick up the new Badman 2 PSP game and guess what? There were no copies in 5 different Gamestop stores I visited around where I live....I guess no one pre-ordered it...so I guess Gamestop thought the game wouldn't sell for crap so they didn't buy any copies...
The thing that I've noticed is that NISA games don't sell where I live....no one pre-orders and almost no copies of NISA games are in the stores....each store had 1 copy of Atelier Annie and A Witch's Tale respectively since launch and guess what....they're still there...no one bought them...
So the Gamestop's by me just shrug when they see a new NISA title like Badman....
So by me doing a "hollow" pre-order I'm guaranteeing that at least a few copies of NISA games will show up and hopefully sell...
At least NISA is getting their share of the profit... 
