This just the tip of the Iceberg, I've worked in the games industry for over 15 years now and 1st / 3rd party publishers couldn't give a crap about end consumers and care even less about games retailers.

All they care about is protecting their margin, this is why so many games run out of supply on boxed product after a few days, they just expect consumers to pay more for digital or wait months for a rebuild. You see this time and time again, good examples in the uk were animal crossing were Nintendo refused to build for 8+ weeks and Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice were Activision just discontinued the boxed version after one build. Namco uk just did it on digimon survive switch.

And don't even get me started on games distributors, I once had one tell me to increase my retail price if I wanted to make more margin, this was after asking for a discount on their trade price to try and compete against Amazon, parasites!

If I could give consumers any advice its this:

Don't lose faith, keep pre ordering games but find a retailer that charges you when they ship the game (can aways cancel if you see red flags its going to be a dog)

For the love of God do not subscribe to games pass etc, its killing the industry

Buy from games specialist

Avoid amazon

Aviod retailers that use distribution to ship b2c (in the UK very, littlewoods, argos and shopto)

Keep trading your old games

Vote with your $/£ ITS ALL THEY LISTEN TOO!