THC BLUNTED Posted March 18, 2010 Share Posted March 18, 2010 I was wondering if anyone here knew how game prices drop. Some games stay at $60 for awhile and others drop quickly. Just curious if there is some sort of time table or some other way of telling when a game will drop in price. I wanted to buy Batman AA and its down to $40, wondering if it would go down again or if $40 is my best bet. The more money I save the more games I can buy, any info on the topic would be helpful thank you. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sambuca Queen Posted March 18, 2010 Share Posted March 18, 2010 I worked in a game shop for a while and from the looks of it some games stay top end prices because they are still popular months after being released. Ones that suffer poorly and dont do well tend to be marked down for months so they can shift them and get more popular stock in. Take Sacred 2, I managed to get it in the xmas sale, second hand and the price had gone down by £8. That game is like 2 years old isnt it? Maybe more and its still priced at £30 second hand! Now games like Batman will on occasion go down in price as the head offices know it will make more money when its cheap. but thats only going to be for a certain time only, then they chose another game to mark down. I say get Batman now as its come down in price, chances are itll go back up soon. Its diccifult to pinpoint when drops can occur as its usually an email sent from the headoffice to management and then told to the workers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EmporerDragon Posted March 18, 2010 Share Posted March 18, 2010 Batman will drop again as a GOTY 3-D edition will be coming out in a few months. Anyhoo, as a retail employee, I'd agree with Sambuca. It all depends on popularity. Popular titles and evergreen titles stay high in price, while unpopular games don't. Probably the fastest drop I saw was Beowulf. It took about 2-3 weeks for the price to drop from 60 down to 20. Sadly, it then became one of our better selling titles, as far too many people (at least where I work) buy games based solely on price, nothing else. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cyburn360 Posted March 18, 2010 Share Posted March 18, 2010 Well Tales of Vesperia is still £30+ (new) and £25-30 preowned though it is kinda niche. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EmporerDragon Posted March 18, 2010 Share Posted March 18, 2010 Well Tales of Vesperia is still £30+ (new) and £25-30 preowned though it is kinda niche. And here in the states it's down to $30 new. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
THC BLUNTED Posted March 18, 2010 Author Share Posted March 18, 2010 What does it take for a game to become a platinum hit? Fable 2 took over 2 years to become a platinum hit and halo wars was a platinum hit in a little over a year. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rollinstone12 Posted March 19, 2010 Share Posted March 19, 2010 It seems that games only turn into platinum hits once everybody that wants it already owns it. Only latecomers to the 360 or people that somehow overlooked it benefit from platinum hits. Anyway, most games don't stay $60 for long at all. A lot of online retailers have sales a couple of weeks after release for $40 or less. More permanent price drops seem to take effect after 2-3 months, or when so many people already have the game that sales are slow (MW2, Halo 3). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bapae Posted March 19, 2010 Share Posted March 19, 2010 It all depends on how well the games is selling if not many people are buying it they lower the price to it will appeal to more people same with games staying at $60 for a long time why lower it and make less money if people are buying it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
veece16 Posted March 19, 2010 Share Posted March 19, 2010 Games like MW2 or any of the CoD series usually remain at the retail price for half a year or so before dropping. Other games like Batman AA tend to drop quicker since their not as popular.(Although it was a good game.) I would look on Amazon or maybe Ebay for a good used copy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tussell Posted March 19, 2010 Share Posted March 19, 2010 It seems that games only turn into platinum hits once everybody that wants it already owns it. Only latecomers to the 360 or people that somehow overlooked it benefit from platinum hits. Anyway, most games don't stay $60 for long at all. A lot of online retailers have sales a couple of weeks after release for $40 or less. More permanent price drops seem to take effect after 2-3 months, or when so many people already have the game that sales are slow (MW2, Halo 3). I didn't buy Fallout 3 until the Game of the Year edition so I could reap all the DLC for $60 with the game. However, I still can't get into the game! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mcnichoj Posted March 19, 2010 Share Posted March 19, 2010 There's a bunch of factors that go into price drops. Like if a game isn't well recieved they'll stop printing copies and thus make it rare and it will maintain a high price. On the opposite side if they print a lot of copies and it tanks then you'll see a price drop shortyly after. Popular games vary, if it maintains sales for a long period of time then it may maintain a high price with the occasional sale because one retailer would like to sell extra units and pull away potential customers away from another retailer in the hopes you'll do other shopping there at the time or in the future. MSRP is more of a suggestion rather then a rule or law, but they still help push prices down. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hkem Posted March 19, 2010 Share Posted March 19, 2010 My experience working at GAME was that prices remained high based on the amount of pre-owned in stock available. Single-player games like Batman and Assassin's Creed drop in price fast, whereas multiplayer games like Halo and COD remain high (until the new one comes out) because they have more longevity and replay value. Generally, a triple A singleplayer game will sell a lot of copies in the first few weeks and then all be traded in soon after completion. Mint sales drop off as people buy pre-owned and the distributor has to drop prices to the retailers to compensate. Normally retailers will offer half of what a new game is sold for in trade-in so you can pick up a preowned copy for just over half from classified ads. Personally, I would rent a single-player only game, complete it and then send it back. Unless you often replay games or like to have a collection, it's never worth it from a financial perspective. A rough timetable from my experience would be that singleplayer, large release, mint games halves in price after 2 months (£40 to £20), about a third in 6 months (£20 down to ~£13) and a quarter within the year (bargain bin under £10). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Raiden 00101 Posted March 19, 2010 Share Posted March 19, 2010 yeah the more popular a game is, the higher you can expect it to stay at a higher price. During the beginning of Summer 09 I saw Call of Duty 4 as high as $60 at best buy and $45 used at gamestop. The price didn't seem to drop until the end of the summer when everyone was starting to preorder MWF2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HoneyBadger870 Posted March 20, 2010 Share Posted March 20, 2010 One problem I have with the prices, and EBGames is the worst about this, is how used games are sold for only $5 off the retail price, $10 if you're lucky. Being a poor gamer, I really wish the prices would go down more quickly than that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DOOKH8R Posted March 20, 2010 Share Posted March 20, 2010 I didn't buy Fallout 3 until the Game of the Year edition so I could reap all the DLC for $60 with the game. However, I still can't get into the game! Sometimes I just don't get you at all Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DJ DEXTA Posted March 20, 2010 Share Posted March 20, 2010 All i can say is thank god for ebay! AMEN :woop: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Volzagia Posted March 20, 2010 Share Posted March 20, 2010 Its based on popularity of the game and how long it has been out im pretty sure. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hippymanjas Posted March 20, 2010 Share Posted March 20, 2010 I usually buy preowned and during my brief time working for GAME in the UK, prices for them were dictated by trade-ins. Lots of trade-ins = less popular = lower the price. Didn't work with all games, but for most it did. AsDJ DEXTA said, thank the heavens for eBay! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
macamatic Posted March 21, 2010 Share Posted March 21, 2010 Time for an economics lesson. At the core, the equilibrium (ideal, basically) price and quanitity sold of an item are dependent on the supply and demand curves for that item. Where they intersect is what it should be sold for in order to ensure maximum efficiency. However, retailers don't give a crap about efficiency, just about profit, so it's all about something called elasticity of supply and demand. It's a little confusing to explain, but the idea is that the more elastic the demand for a product, the more sales will increase as price drops. If profit goes up with a decrease, the demand is elastic; if it goes down, it's inelastic. Supply is the other way around: lower prices mean less brought to market and vise-versa. When games first come out, the demand is very inelastic. There are always tons of people who have no problem paying $60 (largely because they've been conditioned as such by every game costing that much), despite it being quite possible to save $20 or more if they wait a month or even less. As a result, there's no reason to lower it for a while. As elasticity increases, it becomes more and more profitable for the retailer to lower the prices. Remember that the investment has been made; this is a matter of getting as much money as possible, whether to profit or to minimize losses. As you can imagine, some games have more elastic demand over time than others. Mostly, AAA titles will sell very well for a long time - Brawl, for instance, had barely dropped in price last I checked, because almost everyone with a Wii will buy it, while Brutal Legend, which is somewhat niche, is already $20 after 5 months. As someone said, the style of the game is crucial: people play CoD and Halo multiplayer for years, but are likely to trade a strictly single-player game like Mass Effect in once they've beaten it (possibly gotten all the achievements). In this case, it's not a matter of elasticity, but simply supply: as supply increases, the price for the same quantity supplied goes down. It's basically a matter of the retailers trying to clear out stock. This is why stores (especially online) will have a fantastic deal on an item shortly before it disappears: they were trying to get rid of the rest of them. Every department store has a clearance section founded on this idea; game retailers just don't organize them that way. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
njdevils17 Posted March 21, 2010 Share Posted March 21, 2010 I didn't buy Fallout 3 until the Game of the Year edition so I could reap all the DLC for $60 with the game. However, I still can't get into the game! I probably should have waited for the GOTY edition. I bought Fallout 3 for $60 and 4 of the DLC's which ran me $40. So I pretty much paid $100 so far Fallout 3 (haven't downloaded Mothership Zeta yet) But at least it's a long game and one of my favorites of all time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
speed gun Posted March 21, 2010 Share Posted March 21, 2010 as its already been said it depends on the popularity of the game and wheter it has good gameplay and the amount of people trading it in Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Code of Conduct Posted March 21, 2010 Share Posted March 21, 2010 All i can say is thank god for ebay! AMEN :woop: ^^^ Except when you get totally ripped off when they dont send you the game. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zippy100012 Posted March 21, 2010 Share Posted March 21, 2010 game prices just usualy drop due to age. no matter how good it is ( unless it qualifies for platinum ) it will drop inevitably. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Serious Pille Posted March 24, 2010 Share Posted March 24, 2010 You guys are pretty damb lucky in germany we usualy pay about 70Euro for a new game which is about 107Dollar o.O Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hippymanjas Posted March 24, 2010 Share Posted March 24, 2010 You guys are pretty damb lucky in germany we usualy pay about 70Euro for a new game which is about 107Dollar o.O I'd buy one or two and then join a rental scheme if that were me! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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