As the Gears of War 3 midnight launches excite customers in North America, all isn’t well with some independent video game retailers that tell us that they have had difficulty obtaining product. It seems the controversy surrounding product availability does not have anything to do with the standard edition, but the Limited and Epic editions of the game.

One independent video game retailer tells us, “Our store had both Limited and Epic editions of Gears 3 on order with our distributor, and we found out at the last second that we would only be getting 2 of the 15 Limited editions ordered and none of the Epic editions we had ordered. In addition, our distributor told us not to expect to get any Limited or Epic editions in the future.”

A manager at a smaller independent video game store chain with multiple stores tells much of the same story. “Our distributor emailed us to last week to let us know that the availability of the Limited and Epic editions was very tight, as Microsoft had to provide additional product to GameStop, which left our distributor short from what they ordered from Microsoft. As a result, we have a number of disappointed customers who are angry because we were not able to get them the Limited Edition or Epic Edition that they ordered. In fact, we are lucky that we ordered extra of the standard edition or these customers would have gotten nothing after waiting in line at midnight.”

While the excitement of Gears of War 3 has been hyped by a number of big retailers pulling out all of the stops, it still appears that if you pre-ordered from an independent video game retailer you may or may not get what you ordered. It does make one wonder why you should even waste your time pre-ordering if you don’t order from one of the major video game retailers.