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Game Pricing Trends Examined
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."
From the article:
There are at least two key price-drop events. The first is from about the last week in January to the first week in February (25-35 days after the beginning of the year). The second is during the last two weeks of March (75-90 days after the beginning of the year). These are observed across all three platforms: Sony PlayStation 2 (PS2), Microsoft Xbox, and Nintendo GameCube (GC).
Very helpful indeed.
Alex.
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.
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
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?
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.
Are the prices and dates similiar?
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
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.
Why can't I moderate something "Wrong" or at least "Grossly Misinformed"?
Nintendo was already caught once in the past fixing prices... And now, I look at this graph, and I see Nintendo's prices are flat lines that react to price drops of Sony's games, but do not fluctuate in the meantime.
What else could this mean? The other consoles prices fluctuate constantly... why wouldn't the prices of Gamecube games fluctuate similarly, unless Nintendo was fixing prices?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
For starter's, please look up the definition of what price fixing is before you speak.
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.
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 try a new game if it is on sale for $20-30, even though it doesn't say Nintendo on it. Xbox also has its hardcore gamers who already know which games are coming out and when, but the publishers and stores obviously feel they can get some random walk-up impulse sales as well on Xbox. Ship more units, ship more titles, it just might pay off on Xbox.
And of course it will pay off on PS2, there are plenty of those out there so its not even worth mentioning.
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).
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.
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 $20 within a week or two, and the GameCube and Xbox versions promptly sold out at most retailers. The PS2 version is now the only remaining version that is commonly available, although scarcity has not caused the collectible value of any version of the game to rise.
If you want another example, ask Visual Concepts about what they think of Madden, then prepare to avoid a few punches to the face.
sweet mother of jesus, skies of arcadia has finally fallen in price. I must have missed that!
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It bears mentioning that about half of XBox's platinum edition games are multiplatform games available on all three consoles, and often the GBA as well (at least the title's the same...). If there's any real sales requirement to be added to the list of 20 dollar games, that can speak volumes about your risk taking xbox crowd.
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I almost stopped reading the article because it didn't address used games, which even stores like EB offer now as well as the places that specialize in such.
IMHO if you you're going to wait for a certain game to price drop significantly instead of buying it right off, you might as well stake out a used copy. Even re impulse buys, there have been quite a few games I would never pay x$ for, but then saw extra cheap used and went for.
Anyway, he does include some numbers for used data in the spreadsheets he links at the end, in case anyone is interested.
"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."
Is this because X-Boxes generally suck and X-Box owners need some incentive to buy their games instead of modding and using an arcade emulator?
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 bucks a couple months after it hit, UT2k3 took almost a year to do the same.
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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.
Laziness is a virtue, anyone who bothers to tell you otherwise, is clearly lacking it.
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 up."
So, if you were a paranoid GCN freak who thought you were getting shafted, you're half right. It's no big conspiracy or anything, it's just a shifty marketing strategy between EB and MS (though I really don't know what EB gets out of it... maybe exclusive titles, or earlier shipments?)
BTW, I didn't seriously accuse them of bias... I was making a sarcastic joke... I'm not really a paranoid fanboy
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I'd rather be flamed than ignored.
And yet all I'm actually annoyed at is the small GCN selection... I usually can't find anything I'm looking for, much less at a used price.
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I'd rather be flamed than ignored.
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. Even Ebay prices are exorbitent reaching up to over $100. 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?
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 think it goes without saying that MS would have some form of preferential agreement with retailers...
I bet if you do a study like this in the Old World the line would actually go up. Games are goddamn expensive there I tell ya.
== chicks are for fags ==
A couple of days ago, I called an EB store to check on the availability of a game. The first thing I heard was, "Thank you for calling Electronics Boutique, your Xbox headquarters."
Trying to sound serious, I asked, "Oh, wait, you don't sell PS2 games any more?" The response was, "Oh that's just something Microsoft pays us to say. We sell everything."
None of this should be surprising, since the game publishers do it too for game reservations ("Thank you for calling EB, where you can reserve Splinter Cell: Euclidian Geometry, my name is Homeboy McGee, can I help you?"). But I thought it was worth noting because I've never heard somebody at EB claim to be "my PS2 headquarters" over the phone before.
fluctuate
P Pronunciation Key (flkch-t)
v. fluctuated, fluctuating, fluctuates
v. intr.
To vary irregularly. See Synonyms at swing.
To rise and fall in or as if in waves; undulate.
v. tr.
To cause to rise and fall or vary irregularly.
dammit!,
eudas
Blessed is he who expects the worst, for he shall not be disappointed.
No. Selling out means they under estimated the demand for one game. Unless you tell us how many copies they made vs how many copies of other games you haven't made that point at all.