horatio

I am relatively new at gaming, but one thing has me curious: I notice that unlike, say, DVDs, new games have a set price (usually $50) which retailers are not able to deviate from. Is there some sort of rule that store cannot mark down new titles?

joshd2012

Technically, that would be against the law, but they find ways around it. They basically tell the retailers, either you sell the game at X price or we won't send you any games to sell. The videogame business is so huge that they have to stay at that set price in order to get a slice of the pie.

Noonan

Yep, it's called unilateral pricing. Just like he said, it's illegal to force a retailer to sell at a cirtain price, but the manufacturer can just decide to not do business with that retailer anymore if they don't like the prices they are using. Ahh, the wonders of loop-holes.

Groucho

Bear in mind that DVD's tend to stay the same price for a long time, whereas video games usually have a big drop after a few months.

young

yeah, and as the buyer, you have a lot of power. imo, games should cost about $20. it would probably be good for the industry - decrease piracy, and increase market penetration.

PixyJunket

I've always felt $30-$40 was a good price point for optical based media games.

90% of the games I've paid a full $50 for that I felt were worth it were Nintendo games.

[violin music] Ah.. I also remember paying $70 for Street Fighter II and Final Fantasy on SNES.. [/violin music]

Noonan

Hell yeah. I think when SFII first came out on SNES the EB near my house was selling it for $79. Worth EVERY penny. If you think these prices are bad, talk to someone who still buys Neo Geo carts...

~~ PAL ~~

I'm cheap, and almost never pay full retail for video games. As long as you're not looking to own a game on release day, there will usually be deals out there that will save you some bucks. You just have to keep your eyes out for them.

Corky Roxbury

yeah and know you could sell(shudder) your FFII for more than $79


and I just shelled out more than $250 for a neo geo cart this week

mr.snowmizer

Am I the only one who rejects the premise of this thread?

Does nobody else see Best Buy, Target, Circuit City, etc, having sales on newly-released games quite often?

horatio

I originated this thread and I don't see such discounts (of course, I just got into gaming, so that could be it). I see maybe an offer for a discount on another item associated with a particular game (i.e. buy new game get peripheral discounted), but not on the game itself.
My question is: what does it matter to the manufacturer if Target Or CC want to offer it at a discount. If the manufacturer is still getting the price they want from the retailer, what do they care if the retailer wants to mark it down?

Gizmo

If games were $20, the quality of the games would be much like Kabuki Warriors, crap. The $50 helps pay the developer and everyone else who works on the game. Very few brand new releases (there are exceptions) are $20 (most of the time ports are, like when State of Amergency debut on Xbox, it was already 2 years old on pS2).

illennium

I don't pay more than $15 for a game (frequently $10), so I don't care what games initially retail for. I'm not so into gaming that I can't wait a year or so for a game to drop to my desired price.

menaz

Thats exactly how I am. Just recently I bought a couple of first gen. ps2 games at gamestop for $6.99, best $6.99 Ive spent on games. 99% of games I can wait for, unless its a Metal Gear, which I am still only getting for $24 on release date.

Does anybody know what the wholesale cost is for a game?

Trevor

You just need to look harder. Almost every game is available for a discount on release day at at least one store. The most recent new release that I bought was Baldurs Gate Dark Alliance 2 a couple weeks ago. It was 49.99 almost everywhere, but MicroCenter had it for 29.99. I pricematched at Best Buy and got it for 27.99. And most of the time they will take the coupon also, so it would have been 22.99 for a new release $50 game.

And this is not uncommon. The deals are almost always there on any game.

At a minimum, you can buy it at Best Buy, and get $5 off and the 4% rebate thru their rewards program.

deadlax

the wholesale cost for a game depends on the manufacturer. For some reason, gamecube games are the cheapest of the lot, and can often be found in the low 30's. PS2 and XBOX generally cost retailers somewhere around 40-42.