General Updates

Pokemon Platinum Tomorrow Our shipment of Nintendo's latest Pokemon game will arrive on Friday and we'll process and ship preorders tomorrow. The official street date is Saturday in Japan but vendors were able to ship the game last night.

Japanese Supplier Update Last week, we posted a bit of troubling news about one of our Japanese suppliers whom we assumed had gone out of business. We had been dealing with the company since 2001 so the lack of communication since early August was unexpected. Since our tidbit, we were able to contact an employee. Actually, only one employee remains at the company. Based on our short conversation, business had been tough for them and Japanese manufacturers have changed credit terms for certain (or perhaps all?) distributors and sub-distributors in the supply chain. In other words, undercapitalized companies won't be able to procure the credit they need to purchase inventory and maintain operations. As such, the company is for all intents and purposes, bankrupt. Sadly, our bank deposits won't be refunded. Their closure will cause some supply disruptions for NCS in the short term but we've been moving preorders and restock orders to other vendors so that upcoming preorders won't be impacted too severely.

EBay Suspension We didn't think we had much of a following on Ebay but once they suspended us yesterday, a volley of email came in asking if our account had gone the way of the dodo. We didn't know the account had been suspended until the first customer email arrived on Wednesday morning. Ebay suspended "ncsxshop" because our listing for the Japanese Gamecube version of Donkey Konga Jungle Beat contained a reference to the Datel Freeloader boot disc. Apparently, advising prospective customers that a USA Gamecube requires the use of the Freeloader to play Japanese imports is considered encouraging copyright infringement in Ebay's eyes. At least we weren't accused of racketeering. The suspension will be for seven days from yesterday so our account will be active again on September 16. Perhaps the suspension will allow NCS' Ebay customers to seek out our shopping sites directly.