Re: T-Minus 2 weeks - who\'ll get theirs first?
The studios and the publishers (this applies to movies, books and music) are all very serious about enforcing street date restrictions. The reasons are simple: (1) The book, record, movie has to be in the store at least several days early to allow time to get it out on the shelves and to ensure that there is time to deal with any problems (short shipment, truck breaks down, books, records, films damaged.) (2) It isn't physically possible to get the book, record, movie delivered to every single retailer on the same day. Tuesday is typically release day for movies and CDs. Some stores will have the product on the Wednesday before the "street date", others might have it on the Friday before. It just isn't fair if the folks who get it early can get a jump on the competition by accident of UPS schedule or whatever. Also the big chains and mass merchandisers tend to get their deliveries first because they are the biggest customers for the publishers and have the most efficient distribution systems. They're already crushing the mom 'n' pop operations, why give them one more weapon.
With mail order this gets a little weird. So what if somebody gets a disc a day or two early? This isn't going to have any effect on brick and mortar retailers. Most mail order vendors try to mail things so that you receive your order on the street date. In practice this means within a day or two either way, given the vagaries of delivery companies and the postal services. (Unless you've paid a huge amount for overnight or otherwise guaranteed delivery, in which case you'll get it on the street date.)
One exception to this rule is Amazon.com. (And, I would assume, Barnes and Noble, although I've never ordered from them, so can't be sure.) They don't ship unitil the street date. Big as they are, they are scrutinized much more closely by the publishers, and they refuse to take a chance on "breaking street date."
Regards,
Joe
