I voluntarily purchased a couple of books for the first time in well over a decade. One of them being the Steve Jobs biography. It’s a great read and one that I could lose several hours to easily. But it will probably be my last book until things start changing with how these pages are distributed.
Before I continue, I’d like to acknowledge the following paragraphs as a first world problem.
Amazon announced the Amazon Kindle Fire yesterday. It’s a new 7″ tablet priced at $199.99 USD. What’s impressive about this is the kind of power that’s packed in this low cost tablet; it’s essentially a stripped down Blackberry Playbook running on a highly modified version of Android Gingerbread.
Early impressions of the device has been positive with some folks praising the device as a possible Android rival despite the fact that it’s powered by Android.
Who knew an online retailer would be such a huge player in the tablet market?
Well, the reality is that Amazon.com is more than an online retailer in the United States. They have an MP3 service, a cloud storage service, a movie streaming service and even a an web services. And don’t forget the Kindle brand which they’re leveraging to get into the tablet market.
Meanwhile in Canada, Amazon.ca is moving along slowly without the slightest hint of even offering any of the above.
Oh well.
The Amazon Kindle Fire launches November 15 and you can pre-order one at Amazon.com. No details on when Amazon.ca will get it.
The only time I actually pick up games in a retail store is after a GameStop PowerTrade promotion. Otherwise, I’m waiting patiently at home for my game to arrive via mail or download. Downloading from Steam is dependent on Valve’s servers and my ISP which means I can usually get an game within an hour or so.
By mail, I was waiting anywhere between a couple of days to a whole week before my game would get here. But thanks to FutureShop and BestBuy’s earlier shipping practices, I’ve been receiving games on day one. I received Portal 2 today and I also received Killzone 3 on its launch day.
This has been great.
These two electronic giants are doing right by their consumers with this.
Amazon.ca has been pretty consistent, but instead of getting my game on day one, I get a nice shipping notice saying that it was on its way. Today is Tuesday which means I should be expecting a package by Friday at the latest.
Dell.ca seems to be the most inconsistent. If it’s in stock, I get it the day after release. If it’s not in stock, it can be up to a week. And worse of all, they use Purolator which means I need to find an inconvenient Purolator station.
On a whole, games have been arriving in a timely fashion. I wish every retailer was shipping their merchandise out early, but I can’t complain if I’m not paying for shipping. I’d love to have Amazon Prime option here in Canada, but that’s probably not going to happen any time soon. We don’t even have all the different types of merchandise available in Amazon.com.
Baby steps, I guess.
It’s time for another installment of…
Good idea:
Extra incentives for pre-orders.
Bad idea:
Chopping up in-game pieces for retailer specific pre-order incentives.
The end.
This past Friday was the first real Canadian Black Friday.
Nearly every major retailer (on or offline) threw up a sale of some sort. I cobbled up as many deals as I could in a post, but I didn’t take advantage of a single one. I either already have the item that was on sale or I didn’t think the deal was good enough (Red Dead Redemption, I’m looking at you, Mr. $49.99.)
I did, however, take advantage of some computer part sales. I picked up the following from Memory Express:
Pretty awesome. I’d actually pick up another Vertex 2 SSD drive, but the MIR is limited to 1 per household. Oh well, I’ll wait for Boxing Day.
I was hoping to run into some Blu-ray movie sales, but no luck.
I was most surprised by GameStop’s showing. They had some real deals. They also had some real iffy “deals” as well, but they were actually throwing out legitimate deals like the Fallout: New Vegas for $40 and Tekken 6 for $10.
The most disappointing retailer, for me, was Amazon.ca. They had solid deals like Borderlands: GOTY for $40 and Mafia II for $30 on PC, but the quantity was lackluster compared to their American counterpart. Hopefully, they’ll make up for it with Boxing Day.
Overall, it was an okay Black Friday. It reminded me of Boxing Day, but without significant deals on computers or home audio.
Black Friday 2010 begins November 26, 2010! And Canadian retailers are getting into the thick of it. Here you will find game deals as I stumble into them. I will try to update this page as soon as possible, but if you want faster updates, follow GameDealsCanada on Twitter or Facebook!
Without further delay, here are the deals sorted by platform!
Please post a comment or send a message via Twitter or Facebook if there are any errors or new deals!
Bolded deals are my personal highlights.
@GameDealsCanada began as a direct result of a dare. I had the idea to start a Twitter feed dedicated to video game deals, but lacked the motivation to create it. “Who would follow such a thing?” Then Robocrotch said, “If you start the feed, I will join Twitter and follow it.” And thus that’s how @GameDealsCanada was born.
With 200 followers (including plenty of entertaining spam followers), I’d say it’s been a successful little side thing. I’ve received kind words and thanks for the service which is always a nice ego boost however, I wanted a bit more feedback.
Firestorm (of NeoGAF and RFD fame) pointed me towards HootSuite. It’s supposed to be a way to monetize Twitter through Google Adsense, but at the moment it’s nothing more than a stat tracker. You may have noticed the HootSuite toolbar and Ow.ly links; that’s all HootSuite.