[game_preservation] Frank Cifaldi's preservation article on 1Up

[Andrew Armstrong]

I'm going to at some point contact UK retailers, once I have somewhere 
to put the data. Amazon, AFAIK, has a lot of 3rd parties telling them 
when a product was released whenever they list it as for sale from a 3rd 
party - I've seen games which are not too old (or even some relatively 
new ones) with dozens of entries, from lots of different re-releases and 
packaging, none with a uniform release date, and likely none of them 
correct anyway. :)

I think maybe if Amazon has their own record of when a product was 
available from their own warehouse, that'd be more accurate - after all, 
what is a more accurate release date then the date the shops sell it?

But as Martin said, the availability date versus release date does 
differ - so Amazon would only have the former not the latter. Worldwide, 
for instance, the UK has different stock dates (when things get put on 
store shelves) to the USA, so even a worldwide release will likely mean 
delays from one location to another apart from for big items. It's not 
exactly a hard science, more like guesswork. For this idea of look at 
shop stocks from years ago - well, it depends I guess on the company I'd 
guess. There's no real way to tell without asking. Would still be useful 
information even if it was inaccurate in places anyway - since at the 
moment, as far as I can tell, it is as Martin says - asking people who 
were around at the time or guessing based on adverts and other 
near-to-the-date things (trade shows and suchlike). Would be nice to 
have harder sources.

Andrew

On 10/01/2010 06:26, Mike Melanson wrote:

> Frank Cifaldi wrote:

>> I wonder if Toys R Us would be willing to provide that sort of 

>> information?

>

> This sounds like an interesting approach to investigate. However, then 

> I remember that Amazon.com, the leading online retailer as well as 

> innovator in the ways of tracking intricate details of merchandising, 

> can rarely help me nail down the release date of a (relatively minor) 

> game that's only a few years old.

>