Westeros

We received the alert from Amazon US today: you can now officially preorder of the complete first season sets of Game of Thrones!

No release date noted, but the MSRP is plain: $59.99 for the DVD set (down to $45 at Amazon) and $79.98 for the Blu-ray set (down to $56 at Amazon).

Now, the top questions we’ve had:

• “When will it be released?” HBO’s standard practice is to release their DVD sets in the month or two prior to the new season. So, if Season 2 starts in April 2012, it’s highly likely that the DVD and Blu-ray sets won’t be on sale prior to March or February (at the earliest). There have been some commentators suggesting that this show might benefit from being released for sale during winter holiday season, but HBO has a pretty firm view of how these things are done, so we wouldn’t advise you to hold your breath.
• “When’s it coming to the UK?” Looking at True Blood Season 3, it was released in the U.K. on May 23rd (the show premieres June 26 in the U.S.)... and, interestingly, it looks like the set was released on May 31 in the U.S., so the U.K. got it a week earlier. This tells me that HBO UK will be releasing the Game of Thrones Blu-ray and DVD set more-or-less simultaneously. Whether that’s in February-March 2012, or November-December 2011, we’ll have to wait and see.
• “What extras and features will it have?” We don’t really know, but the word through the grapevine is that there’ll be a lot of neat stuff on the sets, but we don’t know specifics. Given HBO’s track record, though, commentaries on some episodes are a given—we’re really hoping GRRM’s invited to comment on “The Pointy End”—and there’s plenty of EPK material that’s both published and unpublished covering the behind-the-scenes development. We know a documntary team was on hand throughout the shooting, including during the pilot, so we wouldn’t be surprised at a 30 minute “making of” sort of thing among the other features. Material on the setting, its history, and its characters? Seems likely. Never-before-seen behind the scenes photos and stills? Yes, that’s pretty likely too. A Rome-like set of pop-ups filling in background details as an episode airs, much as HBO Go does when you turn on interactive features? I would almost say you should count on it. This is HBO, they don’t do things by half-measures.