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The Almighty Buck Entertainment Games

Game Pricing Trends Examined 53

Posted by simoniker from the waiting-for-the-bargain-bin dept.
jvm writes "Over at Curmudgeon Gamer, there's a new article, 'A Preliminary Game Price Study', that tries to address the question 'How does the price of a $50 game drop after its release?'. Data, graphs and discussion are provided for almost fifty games across the three big consoles (PS2, Xbox, GameCube) over a span of nearly six months. Among other observations, two price drop periods are noted since the beginning of 2004, and for this data set it appears that Xbox games were discounted more on average than GameCube and PS2 games."
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Game Pricing Trends Examined More

Game Pricing Trends Examined

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  • Interesting (Score:5, Insightful)

    by The-Bus ( 138060 ) on Monday June 21, 2004 @05:14PM (#9489307)
    The short- and medium-term price of games is examined, but I'd be interested in the long term. Nominal prices have been in the $40-60 range for as long as I can remember (1980's for NES), and there was a period in time where SNES games were much, much more expensive (Mortal Kombat clocked in "on sale" for $69.99 IIRC).

    Now, in the past 10-20 years, inflation has taken a bite out of prices, so real prices have gone down significantly. That $50 example (let's call it Marble Madness) costs about $81 today, accounting inflation! The Mortal Kombat cartridge would be almost $90! Can you imagine shelling out $90 for a cartridge game let alone one as awful as Mortal Kombat for the SNES? (This doesn't include you, Neo-Geo home system owners).

    Of course, over time, the real price of video game software approaches zero as most games that are 10-20 years old command $1-5 in the bargain bin. Video games just need to sell extremely quickly and expensively to make vast profits... other profits are eked out slowly over time as nominal and real prices are reduced.

    • Re:Interesting (Score:3, Interesting)

      by TykeClone ( 668449 )
      Actually, I think that any software in the bargain bin was paid full price for by the retailer when purchased - you're just looking at excess stock that they're attempting to "get what they can" for.

      • Re:Interesting (Score:3, Informative)

        by bear pimp ( 695195 )
        Actually, game software is on sale or return. When it gets to the end of it's shelf life, the retailers ask the publishers if they want to pick it up. Of course, the publishers don't want the stock back, so they either leave it (in which case the retailer tries to get shot of it in a bargain bin whilst making a bit of money back) or it is heavily discounted.

        The food chain goes: Retailers-Publishers-Developers-Development Staff.

        • I'll take your word for that - I just assumed that the retailer was taking the risk of carrying the game and paid the wholesaler for the inventory.
      • Or they were traded in, if we're talking about places like GameStop and eb

    • Re:Interesting (Score:4, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 21, 2004 @05:28PM (#9489424)
      "Can you imagine shelling out $90 for a cartridge game let alone one as awful as Mortal Kombat for the SNES? (This doesn't include you, Neo-Geo home system owners)."

      If you even dare to imply that NeoGeo owners would pay any sum of money for Mortal Kombat on ANY system, you're fit to be tied.

    • Re:Interesting (Score:3, Insightful)

      by dogbowl ( 75870 )
      I recall games in the 80's as being around the $30 range. I *distincly* remember saving up 30 bucks to buy Mike Tysons Punch Out and Zelda.

      Furthermore, a number of sealed atari games that I have (pre-crash) are priced around $30. (Post crash ones are often in the $5.00 -$7.00 range!)

      I do remember some carts being high though. I think the $70 ones came around in the Super NES days.
      • Late 80s, maybe. In the winter of 1986 my grandmother decried the fact that "The Legend of Zelda" was being sold for $70. Of course, there were alternatives-- rather than Zelda, my dad brought home Popeye, Golf, and one other game which escapes me... I think in '89 we found a copy of plain old ordinary Pinball for $30.

        Contrast that to '94, when Chrono Trigger commanded a $70 price tag. We have to bear in mind fabrication costs, as well-- it cost a lot more to produce the ROM chips for a 32M cart than i

        • Re:Interesting (Score:3, Informative)

          by dogbowl ( 75870 )
          no, not the late 80's at all.

          NES cartridges started out in '85 at the $30 price range.

          Looking in old video game magazines (that every good geek should own), it looks as if new Atari 2600 carts came out at $30. When the 5200 was released, those games were priced around $35.

          However by 1990, new NES games were in the $45 dollar price range. I haven't actually sat down and tallied up prices across the years, but it must be that the new cartridge prices slowly rose during the NES' lifespan.

          I do remember pa
    • I paid $40 for Final Fantasy on NES in 1992. That was after the second installment (or fourth, depending on how you look at it) was out and retailers were trying to unload their stocks of NES games to make room for SNES.
  • Is it because Xbox gamers need more convincing to buy a game if it doesn't say "Halo" on the cover?

    Or is it because stores order more of them than they should, and they need to clear them out before drowning in them?
    • I remember going into an EB and taunting the guys there (I'm a Nintendo player) for having 4 TV's in the store... all running X-Boxes. Well, 2 running X-Boxes, the others were off with X-Boxes proudly connected. I (very sarcastically) accused them of bias, to which they replied "::sigh:: EB makes us do this every few months. They make an agreement with Microsoft and we're forced to hype X-Box as much as possible." "That doesn't sound too terrible if you like X-Box." "No, it sucks because our quotas go
      • Frankly, I don't think that's a particularly paranoid concept to begin with. Space on retailers shelves, and similar representation at the retail level, is a commodity that has always been hotly contested. I'm not just talking about video games, but retail in general. Special agreements to get preferential treatment are fairly common. Add to this the fact that Microsoft's behavior in regards to the X-Box seems to be "Don't worry about the price, we feel we must buy our way into this industry," I would t

  • Quality graphs (Score:5, Funny)

    by Mike Hawk ( 687615 ) on Monday June 21, 2004 @05:38PM (#9489498) Journal
    The symbols used in the graphs are very nice. The Xbox line has what resembles an X, the Gamecube one has a square and the PS2 has a triangle. This denotes a well thought out legend. I applaud the efforts of this fine website.
    • I don't get it ... I mean, I understand X-box=='X' and Gamecube==square, but why PS2==triangle?
      • The triangle is the universal sign of homosexuality. Since PS2's like other PS2's, they are homosexual...

        Really, I think that it is because one of the buttons on a ps2 controller is a triangle.

        • Re:Quality graphs (Score:2, Informative)

          by jvmatthe ( 116058 )
          Really, I think that it is because one of the buttons on a ps2 controller is a triangle.
          As the author of the graphs I can say yes, this chap's got it. ;^)

  • Missing data (Score:4, Interesting)

    by GeorgeH ( 5469 ) on Monday June 21, 2004 @05:55PM (#9489625) Homepage Journal
    It would be nice to compare sales data with price drops, to figure out how popular a game has to be to command the $50 price tag.

    • Re:Missing data (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      The suggested retail price of a game is set before it ever hits the market. $39.99 games don't shoot up to $49.99 if they become popular.

      However, what you suggest would be very useful in determining at what price certain games sell best, as determined by retailers (important - they are the same folks that NPD track, not the pubs and not us customers). From the graphs, it appears that the sampling of Xbox games that were analyzed sell better when discounted, since the prices drop somewhat earlier than for

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Monday June 21, 2004 @06:06PM (#9489695)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Pretty accurate, and to that I'll just add:

      Consider that Wind Waker broke records for pre-orders, but didn't break any records for sales. That is to say that the Gamecube market is set. There are X number of consoles out there and a high percentage of those are going to buy all the nintendo games. This is good for Nintendo, but bad for third parties and consumers who want something outside of what nintendo offers. Compare with Xbox, with its Y number of console owners who are open-minded and might tr
      • It bears mentioning that about half of XBox's platinum edition games are multiplatform games available on all three consoles, and often the GBA as well (at least the title's the same...). If there's any real sales requirement to be added to the list of 20 dollar games, that can speak volumes about your risk taking xbox crowd.

    • Re:Recent Shopping Experiences (Score:5, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 21, 2004 @09:01PM (#9490851)
      You point to Skies of Arcadia Legends for GameCube. Do you know its price history? For the sake of those that don't:

      In the U.S., this game was released in a limited print run last year. It sold out at $50 within months, and shot up to around $85 max for unopened copies on eBay, because of its newfound scarcity. This is why you see $40 used copies. Two months ago, a reprint was issued, and all retailers (who had been out of stock for months) - including GameStop, Amazon.com, and outpost.com (notable among collectors for having sporadically restocked first-print versions over the course of weeks leading into last November), restocked new copies, selling it at its new retail price of $20-$25. Selling out and warranting a reprint implies exactly the opposite of your assessment of the market's readiness to accept GameCube RPGs, and sites have already started granting good scores to Tales of Symphonia.

      If you want to point at a game that has devalued due to market pressures, look no further than Beyond Good & Evil for all three current consoles. It sank to $20 within a week or two, and the GameCube and Xbox versions promptly sold out at most retailers. The PS2 version is now the only remaining version that is commonly available, although scarcity has not caused the collectible value of any version of the game to rise.

      If you want another example, ask Visual Concepts about what they think of Madden, then prepare to avoid a few punches to the face.
    • sweet mother of jesus, skies of arcadia has finally fallen in price. I must have missed that!

    • Based on the ridiculous hype surrounding the XBox (thanks largely, whether you liked it or not, due to Halo), I can see the market functioning like this: PS2 games get stocked en masse and sold. Assuming the XBox is the PS2's nearest competitor, XBox games get stocked en masse and then dumped into the bargain bin. Assuming "nobody" plays on the Cube, Cube games scarcely get stocked at all, and the few that do make the shelves get sold before bargain bin time rolls around.

      This actually annoys me a lot, a


  • I think the study was very interesting. I actually thought that price drops happen a lot later. It would be interesting to repeat the collection of data mid-year. Are the price drops around early January due to a 30 day drop or because its after Christmas??

    Its kinda like doing a study of Christmas trees and discovering a 95% drop in January. :-)

  • As a former EB games store manager... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 21, 2004 @07:59PM (#9490424)
    I have to say that this study doesn't say much.

    EB issues "price changes" across the board every few weeks. This accounts for the drops that are seen.

    As for Xbox games being discounted more, I would say that this sample size is way too small. Also the focus on "top tier" games shows fewer drops for PS2 games.

    Let me explain. From working at EB, I know that there are an unbelievable number of "trash" PS2 games that are released. Most of you have never even heard of these games (RTX Red Rock, Seek & Destroy... etc.) these games run at $30-$50 for about a week and then plummet in price, often to under $10 in a month. Had some of these been included, the results would be different.

    Also, microsoft's extremely agressive pricing of it's first party games CS and PGR2 also has an effect on the xbox graph.

    As for gamecube... well. You folks at slashdot seem to want to always focus on the fact that the GC is hanging in there on the hardware side. Which is 100% true. Unfortunately, the GC get's KILLED in software sales. The average PS2 owner has 9 games, the average XBOX owner has 13, but average GC owner has only 5! (Gamenews daily, Feb04)

    One last comment about the bargain bin, the reason that they are full of xbox games.... surprise! Because they sell! Everyone is sick of seeing all the old PS2 games (*many* of them sports games). So the bins are about 50% xbox 40% ps2 and 10% GC.

  • that "when the price dropped relative to when the game was introduced" would be the more interesting question, which the author does not address (though he does list this in "possible improvements).

  • Competition is good (Score:3, Insightful)

    by superpulpsicle ( 533373 ) on Monday June 21, 2004 @08:36PM (#9490633)
    I'd have to say as much as I want one console to completely beat out all competitors to make consumer decision easy... competition does keep prices low.

    With 3 consoles in the market the games are cheap. With 2 consoles left, you might see games hover alot longer at $40. With 1 console left, you're done. Back to the 80s NES days where megaman costs $50 for years and years.

  • I almost stopped reading the article because it didn't address used games, which even stores like EB offer now as well as the places that specialize in such.

    IMHO if you you're going to wait for a certain game to price drop significantly instead of buying it right off, you might as well stake out a used copy. Even re impulse buys, there have been quite a few games I would never pay x$ for, but then saw extra cheap used and went for.

    Anyway, he does include some numbers for used data in the spreadsheets he
  • for a while there the prices on games where tanker after the first month under pressure from the flood of new titles. You could get first run stuff for $20-$30 bucks shortly after it hit. Looks like the game studios got that trend under control. I've noticed a bit of a slow down in new releases (but no coresponding increase in game stability/buglessness, whats up with that?). It's like the movies, they all keep track of what each other is releasing and don't flood the market. I remember getting UT for $20 b

  • Rate of price drop relative to genre (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Argon Sloth ( 655369 ) <`ac.retsamcm' `ta' `meleknif'> on Tuesday June 22, 2004 @02:16AM (#9492655)
    I think it would be interesting to take a look at the impact a game's genre has on its price drop. I'd assume that sports titles would drop much sooner and by a larger fraction, than a RPG.
  • So I had been waiting for Suikoden 2 to drop from it's $49.99 price when it first came out. A few months later, the price was still the same and there wasn't a copy to be found. Years later, I still look for a copy some where in some bargain bin. It still sells at $49.99 used at Game Stop [gamestop.com]. Even Ebay prices are exorbitent reaching up to over $100 [ebay.com]. And here I thought that no one would be interested in the game. Bah.
  • I seem to notice that GBA games don't drop in price very often. This may have to do with the fact that the games start at (the relatively low price of) $35, and the cartridge medium is pricey as it is. But I can still buy GBA launch games for 35 dollars. What's up with that?

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