This is an interesting topic I was literally discussing with two friends this morning... digital media and not owning anything anymore.

Quick button topic... new car, new computer. Nothing has a CD player anymore. I don't even know how or where to buy a CD in person. Perhaps that's our generations cassette tape? Then mp3s/digital albums... everything is now pandora, Spotify, Apple Music. Sure it's cool to be able to listen to anything at any time. That is for now, until they start pulling content like Netflix does with movies, or how HBO is removing their own show westworld. Then we have Disney streaming, paramount, direct to digital movies instead of 4K discs...

Now onto video games. I just read about a new game, Chained Echoes. I'd love to play it, it's a game right up my alley. Except it's digital only, with no physical disc planned in the USA. Looks like I'll never play it at this point since I won't buy digital games. A friend said gamepass is a great idea... you can pay $60 for one game and possibly hate it, or may a small monthly fee to play hundreds of games. Call me old school, I still want it in my hands. If this current generation of consoles is the last of physical media, then so be it. I'll build a nice physical collection and ride that out for many years to come.

For $25 you can get the best Square game they never made: Chained Echoes. Got 4 hours with it last night and while the opening is a straight up ripoff/homage to Chrono Trigger, the game has breathed life into a dead format for me. I could have seen playing this in the 90's and felt right at home amongst the RPG titans. Really hope this game gets more attention and I'm glad it's on Game Pass or I'd have certainly missed it.

I never heard of this until your post now. It looks like fun and reminds me of PSone RPGs. Looks like it’s digital only for now yet I read they’re printing physical editions next year and they’re following square’s playbook of charging $300 for junk trinkets. I’d love to try this game soon though I don’t buy digital so I’ll wait and see if it’s released at a fair price at a later date. 

You are welcome. Hopefully the guy asking if companies are allowed to charge shipping at whatever rate they like is also similarly helped.

SE has been scummy for years now, nobody should be surprised by any of this.

 I am since I never ordered from them before. I didn't know the base game for the FF remaster was square exclusive, I figured since it's just a plain copy it would be available nationwide.

SquareEnix uses UPS, and from what I can see those are normal rates.

 

Standard 3-7 days $5.99+

Express 2 days $23.99+

Overnight $31.99+

 

What's upsetting people is that standard shipping wasn't offered for the Pixel Remaster.

Still extremely scammy of them. Those are personal rates as well, not negotiated corporate rates. And there's no reason they can't offer standard shipping.

Sorry if old but the game Sagebrush is on sale for $0.59 usually $5.99

 

https://store.playst...TAGAMSAGEBRUSH/

 

It's gotten pretty good reviews. 78 metacritic and 9/10 on steam.

Thank you for the deal heads up.

I skimmed some reviews both text and video. I'm undecided if it's even worth it at 90% off. It seems rather odd/creepy.

They usually don't mark things as "no longer available" because people can always cancel orders, it's why there's a waitlist. I wonder if they got a lot of complaints about the shipping cost and made it unavailable until they fix it. Unlikely, but just a thought.

I know this may be an odd thing to say, though can any store charge ANYTHING they want for shipping? Or is it even legal to make up a random price for shipping? A friend told me shipping was $20 for a plain copy of the FF remaster. I didn't believe him, there's no way a physical disc copy that weighs not even 100g costs that much to ship.

Just last week I was returning an extra Series X at Best Buy, and they had about 8 of those and about 7 GoW Ragnarok bundles sitting on the shelf.  Never seen one in person in store that wasn't pre purchased lol

That's because they are hidden for theft purposes. They're stirred in warehouse or behind the pickup area in customer service. Best Buy stores will be getting another drop ship of PS5s this week before xmas.

Does the cover art still say that all of those are supposed to have a digital copy?

Some do and some don't. Specifically with Warner bros is they are making new physical media with the same UPC yet on the packaging it will say "4K Ultra HD" in the top banner instead of "4K Ultra HD + digital copy". Online retailers stock both versions since they're the same SKU and UPC so you don't know what you're going to get.

I'm willing to bet they weren't stolen and were never put into the box to begin with.

there’s a few 4K movies I bought this holiday season that didn’t have paper slips with the codes inside. Warner bros is starting to scam customers though and purposely remove digital copies from their physical media. Trying to be real slick with it too keeping the same UPC yet removing digital copies. 

Off Topic but Best Buy, bought Jurassic World Dominion 4K and when I opened it up at store didnt have Movies Anywhere code in it.  Also tried at Amazon same thing happened, someone is stealing codes.

were these factory Y fold sealed?

I PMed the walmart deal at Best Buy through chat. Spent hours though afterwards trying to fix their screw up.

You see they DID pm the price at $69.99 for the deluxe Final fantasy. What they also did was remove the preorder promos from the price matched order. No one now can seem to add the preorder promo items, yet if I make a new order online myself they automatically add as a free item at checkout. 

price error walmart.com final fantasy XVI steelbox preorder for $69.99, $99.99 everywhere else

I don't believe it's an error as it's been this price for multiple days now.

Is the FF16 CE sold out? I can add to cart but can't check out, says there's a validation error on my card which doesn't seem right because I used those cards at SE before and they're still valid. 

It was a crap show yesterday as bots and scalpers crashed the SE website. People had to 'checkout' dozens of times before orders worked. I doubt it's still up or legitimate today.

I miss the sonic frontier $25-$30 deal in black friday, think i cna find something similiar near christmas?

of course. The reviews are mediocre so I can easily see a firesale in the future. I don’t buy digital though it’s on sale now on the PSN store. 

Maybe preloading is how they’re doing it now, when I got mine in January 2021 I had to go into the store and download it myself

My launch PS5 had it pre-installed. I clean installed the OS day one and Astro was not on the factory OS. At that point I had to download Astro.

It takes two.

Overcooked.

Sale somewhere...?

At this point this thread should probably be closed or at least un-stickied since the consoles are readily stocked in most stores and websites now. 

God of war Ragnorak Jotnar edition is back in stock on Sony direct:

 

https://direct.plays...ps5-ps4.3006775

It's been for a few days now. I don't believe this was ever labeled a 'limited edition'. It's been restocked in gamestop and best buy stores for quite a while now.

Callisto seems to have good reviews and some ok ones. I hear that it’s fun but short. Good for those who haven’t played dead space (me) since it’s basically dead space just a different name. Also the price point definitely is a problem if it’s a short game u can actually finish in one day. Now I’m actually thinking twice about using a coupon on it especially when we might get a b2g1 this month

Update: lmfao I just checked target and nfs unbound, midnight suns, and callisto protocol are sold out. How many copies do they even get lmfao. I’ll check again when their site updates

Aaand callisto is right back up. Maybe people cancelled after seeing the reviews? I can’t quite pull the trigger now lol will probably just use my $10 off $60 on dead space. Brokengamezhdr seems to not like the game and wants a refund lol. No NG+ for the game yet, now wouldn’t be the best time to play it

I’m staying far away from it until it’s super cheap for a few reasons. Embargo is one, when companies do that they know their game is bad. Secondly most game are broken at launch. Look at Pokémon right now. Have to watch for some updates to QoL. Third it’s a 10 hour game. No way it’s worth full price. 
 

as far as canceling orders or the game disappearing from targets website, they like to play games and turn inventory off when they feel like it. 

Is it sold out already?

no. Sale prices weren’t working earlier on BB’s site. 

Cheap/crappy headsets today. 
 

https://www.bestbuy....1649105798442.c

Supposedly someone broke embargo and said it's amazing but who knows. All I know is that if a game is already selling skins, weapons and other trinkets it's already low on my to buy list and will just wait for clearance or a sale.

GOTY or gold edition will already be on the way.

Thought about pre ordering Callisto protocol with my $10 off $60 target coupon but target’s usually bad with pre order shipping so gonna try and place an order on the day it actually drops. We should expect them to be sold instores unlike other games like gungrave right? Especially since it’s a fairly popular game

be careful… there’s a review embargo which historically means the game is really bad. 

No real ‘video game’ deal today for best buy. The offer is 10% off PSN cards. 
 

https://www.bestbuy....at1649105798442

Yeah, it sucks that every version but the digital version is discounted. Those running on discless hardware get screwed more often than not on the timely discounts. Hopefully the expansion will make it to GamePass eventually!

that’s sort of the owners fault for purchasing a discless console. It’s widely known physical media often goes on sale when digital is controlled by the company’s branded store. They don’t have a reason to discount digital media.