Scott Hunstad of Good Games Pty. Ltd. in Australia read Mark Craddock's comments regarding Wizards of the Coast's Prerelease product availability (see "Mark Craddock of Comic Book World on Wizards of the Coast") and had this to say.

Strength to strength really.

It's a little hard to say whether it's Wizards of the Coast's management of its premier product or if the product is driving itself, but the past couple of years for us have shown continually increasing sales in an otherwise rather difficult market.  Undoubtedly it's a bit of both.  Innistrad promises to be the best release yet.  We had significant growth in prerelease numbers over M12, with nearly 1,500 entries across our 13 locations--up over 70%.  101 people turned up to play the Midnight flight at our Good Games Brisbane store alone.  This was, well, let's say more than anticipated.  Our FNM numbers are up, the D&D Encounters programs are firing--Games days, Duel Decks, GP Trials, Duel of the Planeswalkers, Commander--the list of successful initiatives continues--and they are all specifically geared at making our local stores more successful while differentiating us from the mass-market retailers.

We now run over 100 Magic tournaments and booster drafts at our stores each week.  I look at the gap between what WotC and any other game company is doing in terms of helping out the game store retailer--it's a wide one--and the results support.  Our WotC sales dwarf nearly every other product line.

So it makes it hard for us to complain too loudly when there are stock shortages or the like--certainly we do--but at the end of the day we'd be hard pressed to improve upon a long and growing line of successful programs and product lines WotC have started.  Thanks, and keep them coming.

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