I really have no other way to describe what we are seeing. You see, while we were all enjoying PAX East (either there or checking out coverage of it), Amazon dropped a bombshell on their fairly loyal customers. As of right now, they are testing out a new idea of hiding high-profile physical games behind a pay-wall. If you expected to have Amazon ship these to you, you now need to be an Amazon Prime subscriber.
I can put no bounds on the dickishness of this action. While everyone was distracted by PAX, they slip this little behavioral difference in, demanding subscription fees from their customers for the “privilege” of buying a game that they could order without one from any other online retailer. As to why this dick-move is aimed at console gamers, well the games getting this treatment are almost exclusively for Xbox One and PS4. Someone on Imgur took the time to gather the current lineup, but if they succeed, it wont be the end of the list.
And this is where we have to come in. As gamers, we simply can not accept this kind of bullshit. When the best “excuse” the site can come up with boils down to “you can get it with our demo of Prime too, so that’s ok!” They need to wake up and smell the ashes this decision will make on their sales. I can’t tell you what to do, but I can predict the future…. if Amazon thinks the numbers are worth it, they will increase the games they do this with (and possibly other platforms). And if they see success, other online retailers will take notice.
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