Early Release?

you saw Elemental on a store shelf?

are you sure it wasnt a "pre-release" box?

It was a box with a price tag on it and there was no tag or anything else indicating that it was a pre-release box

Plenty of stores have released games before the street release date before.

I was getting ready to say that anybody who buys the game now will be disappointed when they get it home and try and activate it... and then I remembered that Stardock doesn't do that crap.

But if stores have broken the street date, does that mean Stardock can go ahead and release the game for the rest of us?

well they did end up refusing to sell it to me, so I think they just got their dates mixed up when putting new stuff on the shelves

Odds are that if a store had a copy (and it is possible as the could be in route to stores as of Wednesday / Thursday ) its placement on the shelf was in error... I can tell you for a fact that my Gamestop (as in the store I work in) did not have any in store at all as of yet and probably wont have.. Its all dependent on the planed ship to retail date. In many cases the release day means one of 2 things at the store front level..

for example at Gamestop:

game has a release date, most of the time this means game ships to Gamestop on that day and will be on shelves the next day..

game has a street date, this means game ships 1 - 4 days sooner and sits in back room until release day when we make it available.

some times a publisher does ship a game a few days early so we can sell it on release day but this is hard to predict.. only a street date is easy to predict because only publisher delay / shipment mess up will screw up a street date..

elemental has a release date at Gamestop not a street date so the only way we will have copies to sell on 8/24 is if Stardock planed it so the game arrives at our stores/warehouse on or before  8/24.. else 8/25 for in store pick up/purchase. this and beta invite are why I went digital with disk direct from Stardock! I don't want to wait any longer then needed heh heh...

What store was this at? There's one company that comes to mind that likes to break street dates and screw over Stardock...

it was Walmart

Ok, Hey Frogboy, if I go to my local Wal-Mart and take a pic of them selling it early can I have mine now?

I'd not mind my LE copy arriving today or tomorrow. A pity that living in the "Old Continent" makes that not very possible.

Huh?

Someone probably screwed up and put it up early, then when they tried to do the checkout the computer told them it wasn't for sale yet.

I've found that games from smaller companies and publishers tend to have a lag time of 1 to 2 days (or sometimes more) after the release date before they show up on store shelves while the biggies like EA and Nintendo almost always have their products available on release day.

Pity? I live in the old continent and we don't need no pity...we have digital download baby!   Bought the game 11 months ago and now I just sit by the computer, the index finger shaking in aticipation of pressing the "Download" button

I would love getting my boxed copy early and I promise not to open it until the 24th. :)~~

I don't think that Walmart employees would have the wherewithall to stop someone from buying the game.