Sold Out: What’s Happening With the Availablity of 3DS Games in Australia?

Had trouble finding a copy of Luigi’s Mansion 2, Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate or Fire Emblem: Awakening on the 3DS lately? You’re not alone.

We’ve been receiving anecdotal reports that all three of the above games have been hard to come by in various locations in Australia. So we thought would investigate it a little further.

Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate

We knew that Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate has issues when it was launched weeks ago, but it would appear that the game is still out of stock in many places. EB Games lists the game as out of stock and JB Hi-Fi don’t have a listing for the game at all anymore. We went further with our search, Big W no longer have a listing for the game, Gametraders lists it as out of stock it has even been removed from independent store Dungeon Crawl. All of these retailers were selling the game in the past, we listed most of them in our bargain round up.

Monster Hunter’s stock issues are well documented, Nintendo even spoke to us and offered the olive branch of being able to purchase download codes for the game at EB Games. Monster Hunter is a niche title, so it could be just Nintendo under estimated the demand for the game and this is a once off.

So what about Luigi’s Mansion 2 then?

Luigi’s Mansion 2

When the game was released almost a month ago we were sent the picture below by one of our readers. A sign in JB Hi-Fi saying that the game was out of stock and that you should ‘pre-order’ the game. Preorder a game already released? That seems very odd. Perhaps this one store was an anomaly however, perhaps it did get more stock later on.

But it didn’t.

Shaun who sent the image in said the same banner was up last week when he was in the store and many other retailers (and retail workers) have told us the same as well. This is all anecdotal and one JB Hi-Fi store can’t be extrapolated to the entire country. But the game does still appear to be in limited supply in stores.

So to find out more we went online yet again to try and find a copy of Luigi’s Mansion 2, because if anyone should have one it should be online retailers.

The biggest two retailers both have Luigi’s Mansion 2 out of stock online, EB Games lists the game still, but JB Hi-Fi only has a listing for the strategy guide. We went further though, Big W, Gametraders, Dungeon Crawl again didn’t have the game in stock or even listed at all.

Sadder still is that Big W seem to be paying for Luigi’s Mansion 2 adverts in Google, with a search of the games name coming up with the below listing. It links to a page saying the game is out of stock. That seems like a waste.

Fire Emblem: Awakening

The last game we put under the retail microscope is Fire Emblem: Awakening which came out last Saturday. Our online searches find the game in stock on many sites still, so stock doesn’t seem to be a problem yet online.

However when we tried to buy the game on Saturday morning, the day of release, 4 different Perth CBD  game stores told us they had sold out and only had enough copies to fill pre-orders. We’ve heard similar tales from readers in other states as well, but Fire Emblem seems to be new enough for stock not yet to be a problem. If it will at all.

So what’s going on? Is Nintendo Australia (or Nintendo in general) under-shipping titles because it can’t get copies from wherever they get copies from, or is it they don’t want to? Could it be retailers not showing enough interest in 3DS titles and not ordering as much? For the Wii U this might seem like a problem – but the 3DS is doing great isn’t it?

Are the glory days over? Will we be forced to pre-order every single title to guarantee a physical copy of the game on launch or wait more than a month for a copy?

But wait, what about the eShop?

Conspiracy Theory: Push for eShop Sales

One theory floating the internet, which has been applied to Nintendo branches of all regions is the theory that Nintendo is deliberately making games hard to find in order to push eShop sales of the games. Nintendo UK has had stock issues with Monster Hunter and Fire Emblem: Awakening was hard to find for weeks after its release in the US.

eShop sales are high margin for Nintendo, there’s no retailer, no middle man and they get everything at full retail price. Why wouldn’t they?

Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime last week was quoted last week as saying that Nintendo’s digital sales are soaring with 11% of titles sold now digital.

While we don’t subscribe to this theory here at Vooks, its something that will be on the minds of gamers as they try to find games in stock.

Tell us your experience

Have you had troubles finding any of the above three games? At either retail or online. We’d like to hear your story.

We will be following up with Nintendo for a comment.

Games were out of stock or not available at the time of stories publishing on April 24th at 10am WST.