January 25, 2012: "Ship" Date Vs "Street" Date

If you've ever looked at our New Releases page (and if not, now's a good time to start!), you've seen that each game has a "shipped on" date. For items heading to game stores -- that is, anything that isn't an e23 release or a Warehouse 23 exclusive -- that is the day that the games started shipping from the PSI warehouse in Atlanta to distributors, who then send it on to your Friendly Local Game Store. It's about two weeks from the ship date to the "now in stores date," often called the "street" date. (Obviously, it takes longer for games going to overseas destinations; we're talking specifically about North America here.) Why "street" date? Sometimes, a new game is assigned a "do not sell before" date, the official date that games hit the street. We don't often set a hard street date, but two weeks from "ship" to "street" is a good general rule for most of our games.

I thought it was a good idea to put this information together so I could tell you that, after juggling schedules and freight loads, we managed to get Munchkin 8 on the water a little ahead of schedule, and now our February New Releases shows Munchkin 8 as a new release . . . when the game will actually be in stores in March because the ship date is right at the end of February. Since our New Releases page is driven by our in-house scheduling system, everyone can see when I shift a ship date between months, and I wanted to dispel any confusion.

This is basically a long way of saying two things:

1. Munchkin 8 is ahead of schedule!
2. Munchkin 8 is on schedule to be in stores in March.

-- Phil Reed