Kotaku
From good to bad to nothing. That's the Toys "R" Us Wii pre-order deal in a nutshell.
The deal used to be this: pre-order a Wii at TRU, and you get a free game (which was widely propagated by TRU staff to be a free game of your choosing). TRU then shafted customers by changing that to Open Season, which would have been of nobody's choosing.
After outcry from customers, they amended that deal to include a choice between Open Season and Need for Speed: Carbon. Yeah...meh. Now, though, they've just given up. Stores all over Australia can confirm that the deal is dead, and has been taken quietly into the night. Now, you pre-order the Wii from Toys "R" Us and you get...the Wii. That's it. No free game (yes, there's a $730 bundle with a whole bunch of extra crap, but come on, bundles are the devil's burden).
There are going to be a lot of parents picking up their kid's Christmas presents on December 7, and parents aren't the kind of people who keep tabs on pre-order deals. If they put $50 down in March thinking they'll get a free game, they're going to turn up in December wanting that free game. I expect a lot of kids that work in the TRU video games section are going to have a very bad day come December 7.
