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That is the funny thing though, usually an internet presence is the glue
that holds a community of gamers together between conventions and special
in-store events, as all the smaller and larger game companies catering to
the 'Hobby market' know well.

Unlike major companies like Hasbro, or Bandai, which cater to the
mainstream market with palette-loads of games shipped to the local
Toys'R'Us, mainly big 'properties' and family classics like Monopoly,
Pictionary, Stratego etc., smaller companies like Wizkids, Decipher etc.
need to foster a community, especially online(!), organize tournaments
etc.,which obviously a large corporation like Bandai isn't used to doing
(even though they talk the talk, as per the interview you mention) I also
remember reading an interview (maybe the same) about them opening a
specific website like that, but one would think that by the time a product
is released, it should be up and running... I guess we'll see on
Saturday.

I just finished reading a book on (non-computer) Game Design and the
rather peculiar american games industry responsible for manufacturing and
distributing these games, and it was full of anecdotes of mismanagement
and odd decisions that make you wonder what were they thinking? It's just
funny to see it ongoing.

Perhaps, because it is aimed at such a 'small' market they don't know
well, Bandai has barely been able to meet the demand with more pre-orders
than expected, and not wanting to overstock, and thus have no interest in
pushing it at this time...

Another example would be Wizkids, who previously ran into major problems
producing _too much_ product, and not finding any buyers, and just
recently largely miscalculated the interest in their latest product,
Pirates of the Spanish Main, after fanning the interest of gamers for
months _online_ (irregardless of wether it's actually a good game), and
ended up well short of the demand. Now some people make quite a bit of
money on eBay while Wizkids looses sales, scrambling to get more product
manufactured.

Anyway, just some idle musings...