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Published in Gaming

Console title price cut trend continues

by on24 December 2008

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CoD5 the latest title to drop price by $10

It seems as if there is a new trend going with console titles that we have not been paying too much attention to. Publishers seem to now be cutting prices sooner than ever before and on a broader range of titles.

The latest aggressive price cutting sees the holiday release of Call of Duty: World at War (or CoD5 if you like) getting a $10 price cut when the title has only been out a few short weeks. This is not the only title to receive a $10 price break within weeks of release, as titles from Activision, Ubisoft, and Electronic Arts are getting slashed earlier than ever before.

Two factors seem to be at work here. The first is that with the current market conditions, publishers need to make sure that buyers who are on the fence will go ahead and buy a title for $10 less than they might not have considered at full price.

The second factor that seems to be in play is the fact that many titles are just not meeting sales goals, and soft sales for a title means that companies are having difficulty reaching break even points; this is especially true when multiple high-profile titles are released so closely together, which causes gamers with limited funds to have a difficult time deciding which titles to purchase.

We are not sure that the growing trend of slashing prices so closely to their release is something that many gamers will be happy about; and we are not even sure that it will improve sales all that much. However, it could have the reverse effect, causing gamers that paid full price at release to become quite unhappy with publishers that discount titles so quickly.

In our discussion with a gaming store manager today, he suggested that knocking $10 off a title isn’t really going to lead to that many additional sales. “Most hard core gamers have already decided what games they are going to buy long before they come into the store, and those that have not made a decision on a title are often swayed one way or the other by whether or not their friends are already playing this title”, he told us.

With production costs high and margins lower because of the discounts, we just don’t think that the strategy is sound to lower prices so soon after a title’s release date. Publishers may just have better luck bringing the titles out at a lower price point in the first place. With many gamers pinching pennies, the bottom line could have more to do with how good the game is, rather than how much they will have to pay for it.
Last modified on 24 December 2008
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