October 12, 2022: Shipping Headaches? They're Still Here.

For those who think the world has returned to normal, the truth is that the state of many things on the planet is still terrible. As an example, the container we mentioned recently (see this Daily Illuminator post) is suffering from shipping troubles . . . and we may miss our window of time to ship new games to stores before the holidays. The ship reached the port without trouble, hitting the expected late September arrival, but then we found that the next available berthing appointment is not until the second half of October. We're losing roughly three weeks to this delay, and those are three weeks that we couldn't afford.

The world is not "back to normal," and game publishers are still forced to juggle the impact of shipping costs and delays as we try to create new games and deliver them to stores worldwide. If you're waiting for a new game and wondering why it missed the original street date, global shipping complications certainly played a part in the delay.

(A slight bit of good news is that shipping prices are slowly stabilizing. We're not back to normal, but we're also not facing the extreme highs of 2021.)

-- Phil Reed