[Gandalf Parker]

As I understand it part of "game drops" happen because of discounts for bulk purchases. The stores drop the price for what they have in the warehouse, not the publisher. And many retailers have stopped purchasing from front-line publishers due to lack of agreements meeting the store policies (at least thats what the local retail store said. The stores want to allow returns all the way up channels (or re-shelving) for complaints the way they can with a toaster or a sweater. They can with game catridges and those cheap $10 3rd hand titles but not with sotware from the publisher. (Shrap can correct me on that)

Aaron is doing the standard high-stakes "gamble". He gambled that he had enough followers from his first games (am I remembering right?) to go with a publisher that managed all of the "work hour" stuff like online ordering, overseas coverage, publicity, reviews, coverage at trade shows, help-line support (like forums). In return he got almost instant flow of direct profit checks from beginning to end.

Now he apparently feels he has enough of a base to jump to the "shelfware and advertising" level. It doesnt take alot of reading in the games and development newsgroups to see the pros and cons of that. That goes from "work hours" to hefty "$$$ investment" by the publishers. And that has to be paid back before the developer sees anything from it. There are alot of gripe sessions from publishers naming major companies and complaining that they never saw any money on what they thought was a fairly popular game. They got a bigger base but no payoff so the next version switched publishers again to someone geared for steady checks. Maybe Aaron will come back for SEVI (Keep going Aaron. I want to see the advertising for SEX)

You know, nothing really stopped any of us personally (Aaron included) from doing the "advertising gamble for return" thing with our own moneys as a middle-man site.

Check out the "about us" on the main page and read why Shrapnel was created. It helps.