Question

Friday July 20, 2007 - 10:44AM EDT

This recent Harry Potter leaking has brought up one of those nagging questions I always have about things like this. The thing I am referring to is release dates. I am still baffled as to why they do this.  The same thing goes on with video games. Why is it that when they have made the product and it is ready for stores they either ship it out and tell them not to sell it or store it in warehouses for weeks or months trying to protect its secrets. I really have no sympathy for the Harry Potter publisher's anger or anyone else when they simply keep a product in storage for no seemingly logical reason. They could avoid the whole hoopla of leaks by just shipping the damn thing out when it is finished printing.  Video games are a slightly different story because it takes more time to manufacture them and there is probably a period where they need to build enough of them so that everyone can get it at the same time, but they still do the same shit where a system or game will be sitting in a store or warehouse ready to go yet it will just sit there until an official release date.  My only idea as why this occurs is because of the brilliance of marketing executives. I'm being sarcastic if you haven't guessed already. I just think these assclowns shouldn't get all up in arms about release dates. I wonder who was the original assclown who came up with this release date bullshit. It seems like something that should be just a part of the internal process as a goal marker but not integrated so rigidly into the marketplace.  I guess someone might argue it gives people a date to know exactly when something is available.  Well I hardly think stating that something is available on the release date or earlier would be much different than saying just on the release date. Besides in the age of technology we have a company can announce to the minute exactly when they ship or send things out anyway. Maybe release dates made sense when communication wasn't as pervasive or fast as today and there wasn't an easy way to inform people within a decent amount of time to the debut of something so you had to set a release date way in advance so people would know. But today that kind of idea doesn't apply. It's just funny how the author is imploring people not to spoil things.  You already spoiled things by letting books sit in a damn warehouse collected dust.