We’re hearing plenty of reports from readers unable to purchase The Beatles: Rock Band as it goes on sale around Australia today.
It appears that EA and MTV Games have been hamstrung by a very limited supply to retail. We’ve heard that many stores are already out of stock, unsurprising since we’ve also heard that individual stores were receiving quantities in the very low single digits. Some, apparently, were lucky to receive even one copy.
UPDATE: We’ve heard that a mere 4000 units of the full instrument bundle were brought into the country for launch. It seems the Wii version occupied the greatest share, so if you want it on 360 or PS3… good luck!
If you’ve been out trying to buy the Beatles today, let us know what your experience has been like in the comments below.
Greg Tannahill
Wednesday, September 9, 2009 at 1:06 PMGot mine (game-only version) this morning without problems from Game, Canberra City. Not even preordered.
dzc12
Wednesday, September 9, 2009 at 1:24 PMLuckily I had mine pre-ordered. I got the one and only PS3 bundle at JB Kedron (according to the over-enthusiastic sales guy…) But I saw at least 4 x 360 bundles when I walked in.
Cameron Veenendaal
Wednesday, September 9, 2009 at 1:30 PMGuys,
I work for GAME @ Eastgardens in Sydney. We still have 4 Wii full bundles left, 1 Xbox Full Version. Plenty of stand alone games.
Daniel
Wednesday, September 9, 2009 at 10:30 PMWhat a coincidence, I just bought a copy from you earlier today… we’ve got a few copies for all systems down at Target, but we hadn’t received the remastered CDs. Who knows?
Daniel
Wednesday, September 9, 2009 at 1:42 PMIt’s EA and it’s Rock Band. They’ve now made it 0/3 successful launches for it.
Limited Supply on EA’s end? Maybe that would fly for the instruments but not for the game itself.
Craig Self
Wednesday, September 9, 2009 at 1:42 PMI’m gonna be pissed if i can’t get one after I finish work today. Goddamn work.
Max
Wednesday, September 9, 2009 at 1:43 PMJust got mine from jb in the City. I pre ordered yesterday just in case lol
Grim
Wednesday, September 9, 2009 at 1:50 PMGreat, I’ll just pop in to ‘the City’ and pick one up too =P
Haruka
Wednesday, September 9, 2009 at 2:56 PMJust picked up my pre-order from JB TGV. They had to pull one off the shelf because they couldn’t find any PS3 pre-orders left…
Funky J
Wednesday, September 9, 2009 at 1:47 PMSeems some stores haven’t even unboxed their supplies!
An EB Games store in Melbourne said they haven’t been told they can put them on the shelves yet…
If I was a cynic, I might suggest EB are waiting so they can get away with not having to price match other stores…
Lex
Wednesday, September 9, 2009 at 1:49 PMand…. thats why people need to pre-order the god damn game! whats really $20 bucks down at JB’s? here’s to me playing the full RB:B boxset tonight.
nomad_grrl
Wednesday, September 9, 2009 at 4:50 PMMeh, preordering did me no good – had a pre order through JB online and they sent me an email a couple of hours ago saying that they don’t have enough stock to send my copy but they might be getting more on 18 September.
Tonara
Wednesday, September 9, 2009 at 1:50 PMLucky some Game stores got theirs *grumble* they didn’t send us ps3 instrument packs (which we had preorders for), and only what was preordered for 360 up here. And yes, we have a few non preordered wii bundles available, WTF?
url404
Wednesday, September 9, 2009 at 1:56 PMJust popped down to JB Hi-Fi in Sydney City (TGV) and they had about 6 full bundles for Wii and about 4 for Xbox I think (wasn’t paying too much attention). No PS3 ones though.
Stewart Walker
Wednesday, September 9, 2009 at 2:09 PMYep, I bought mine (XBox) on Lonsdale street JB in Melbourne at lunch today. They don’t have the full kit by the looks of it yet, but they had 6 discs on the shelf when I got mine (now 5).
Michael
Wednesday, September 9, 2009 at 2:11 PMNice to see they are continuing to treat our region like crap.
I wonder if we’ll ever see Rock Band 2?
Flame
Wednesday, September 9, 2009 at 2:25 PMIt’s certainly annoying. I finally bit the bullet and just ordered RB2 from the UK (should be arriving this week).
Ben Harring-Harris
Wednesday, September 9, 2009 at 2:39 PMYeah I did that when it first came out, never looked back.
Rock Band 2 is definitely my favourite of all music games.
Michael
Wednesday, September 9, 2009 at 3:12 PMWell in my opinion, if they can’t get the game to us and treat us like humans, they don’t deserve my money. So I’m refusing to import.
rb-
Wednesday, September 9, 2009 at 2:16 PMPicked a 360 bundle up @ JB at TGV this morning first thing. Sales guy mentioned that they wouldn’t last into this afternoon and wouldn’t hold one for me until the end of the day to pick it up after work ><
Carting it around the city 4tl
Brendan Keogh
Wednesday, September 9, 2009 at 2:38 PMI preodered the game (alone) for Wii and got it yesterday because I serve the local EB manager coffee every morning ;)
Trent Waugh
Wednesday, September 9, 2009 at 2:45 PMIve had mine since monday from game at toombul. Had mine preordered. also saw dick smith at chermside had them as well on monday. i love this game.
nzjono
Wednesday, September 9, 2009 at 2:46 PMSo the new drums are the wireless ones from Rock Band 2 right? Couldnt find any copies in Surfers Paradise today – Game and EB. :-(
MunKy
Wednesday, September 9, 2009 at 2:52 PMDick Smith @ Northlakes QLD has full instrument bundles – and one on display to play with :)
Big W @ Northlakes has plenty of copies but can’t release because of some barcoding stuffup? Has anyone been able to get one from Big W?
Justin Tam
Wednesday, September 9, 2009 at 3:02 PMGot mine about 1pm from JB HiFi Miranda for the Wii. Great game so far, albeit a bit easy. Although it’s extremely fun singing, and I’ve found the bass charts to be far more enjoyable than the rhythm guitar itself.
oggob
Wednesday, September 9, 2009 at 4:01 PM@ Hornsby…
EB – Didn’t see it on the shelves…
JB – Had about 3-4 Full kits on each platform sitting on the floor… Standalone, didn’t see any…
JB
Wednesday, September 9, 2009 at 4:15 PMI walked into my local Target store at lunch time scanned the shelf, saw about 5 for Wii, 5 for 360 and 5 for PS3. Grabbed my PS3 copy and left.
This is the game only version, I wasn’t looking for the bundle.
James
Wednesday, September 9, 2009 at 4:21 PMIf you’re in Adelaide, I noticed JB at Marion had a bunch of 360/Wii bundles.
Lockie
Wednesday, September 9, 2009 at 4:45 PMI went to two kmarts in Melbourne, both only had the disc for sale, and the manager at a nearby EB checked his computer and told me the Wii Bundle was listed on the system as ‘Discontinued’ – which he said was strange…
Aaron K
Wednesday, September 9, 2009 at 5:43 PMTo anyone who bought the Limited Edition, does anyone have a missing piece? I’m missing the top part of my mic stand. =\
Liam
Thursday, September 10, 2009 at 2:32 PMTry shaking the box the mic came in, I thought I was missing my top bit too. It fell out of the box with a little shake, along with a clip to hold the mic lead in place.
Aaron K
Thursday, September 10, 2009 at 9:48 PMDo you mean the actual mic or the mic stand?
Trav
Wednesday, December 2, 2009 at 6:01 PMAny luck with the mic stand top? Mine was missing too and I am having dramas getting JB to come to the party still!
NegativeZero
Wednesday, September 9, 2009 at 5:46 PMGlad I preordered. Picking up my copy from JB tonight.
And incidentally I will probably never preorder from JB again. What an absolutely hamfisted system they have.
NegativeZero
Thursday, September 10, 2009 at 1:47 AMI grabbed the last bundle (360) from my local JB, and while I was picking it up there was another guy also looking for a 360 bundle, talking to one of the other sales staff. I got the impression that they filled preorders and may not have even had enough copies to put out for sale at all.
I bet EA weren’t expecting the game to sell, because Rock Band didn’t. Completely ignoring the fact that RB launched here at the same time as GH4, and everyone knew that the bundles were the old crappy instruments they weren’t able to flog to US and UK customers. Honestly the only reason I got the Beatles bundle was for a replacement drum set, though as it turns out the bass is fairly nice too.
EA have seriously understimated what the demand is going to be and have probably sabotaged sales of the game in Australia completely. It’s wierd, it’s like they actually secretly don’t want to compete with Activision at all. Guitar Hero 5 is going to outsell this 5:1 despite being the fourth tired rehash of the exact same game this year. :(
ThePhantom
Wednesday, September 9, 2009 at 6:40 PMGame Rockingham has two of each of the instrument bundles. Sold out of Wii stand alone copies but still got two of each for ps3 and 360. Haven’t checked JB or EB yet.