Battlefront made the decision this week to cease providing free shipping on new releases that don't hit their freight limit ($200 cost). This is reasonable considering how small some of these releases have been. For example, this week's release is comprised of two $9 blister packs. Shipping costs are likely to exceed any profit made on these models.
However, what's not reasonable is keeping to this ridiculous new release program, a weak premise for requiring active stores to place an order every other week. Games Workshop once did something similar and they had to suffer great financial pain before they corrected their service problems. Those days still haunt them as they attempt to become profitable once again.
Out of principle, we're not participating in this new ordering program. We will be ordering new releases to hit the street date when they either a) are enough to qualify for free freight on their own or b) are pre-ordered by customers. In other words, if a customer really wants it, they'll need to pre-pay and order ahead of time. Otherwise, we'll get it when our order goes in, possibly in a week, possibly in a month.
What I would like Battlefront to do is to stop this regular bi-monthly release cycle of small items. It would be different if they had other games and other releases, but when our current pre-order is $20, like this week, they shouldn't expect a store to come up with a $180 order because of an arbitrary release date.
