Yesterday Bandai Namco launched sales of the Elden Ring Premium Collectors edition, the most expensive of the various versions you can pre-order for the game, through their website. They also decided to coincide this launch with that of the relaunching of the Bandai Namco website. That was not a great decision on their part.
Naturally, the $260 dollar Premium Collectors Edition which includes a Scale Replica of the helmet from Elden Ring along with everything included in the Collectors Edition, already had a lot of interest from fans excited for the upcoming game. However, the relaunching of their website, mixed with the high volume of users attempting to access the site to preorder that version of the game, saw the website become problematic.
Other issues users encountered was the need to create a new username, something that many had set up already to get a leg up only to discover they now needed to reduce the process. Others were unable to navigate past the age verification screen, others were able to get it into their carts only to be unable to actually reserve the game. These issues ultimately led to the company pausing sales on the product until they could create a more even playing field, due to the limited availability.
We appreciate your patience with the new account creation issues on the Store this morning. Given the limited availability of the Premium CE we have paused reservations and will notify here again when we will make it available for pre-order.
— Bandai Namco US (@BandaiNamcoUS) December 16, 2021
Some users in all this chaos were actually able to preorder the Premium Collectors Edition version of the game, however, the listing for that version has since been pulled. Assumably they will allow users that managed to preorder the version to maintain their preorders but that remains to be seen. As it stands currently the website has a waitlist that players can sign up for to be notified when they go live again.
Elden Ring is the newest game from Dark Souls developer From Software. While the company is known for extremely challenging games, and Elden Ring will most likely be no exception, this newest title will be open-world with more emphasis on exploration over its difficulty.
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