The 2011 peak priorities

[EvilBoris]

I can't remember many others but I certainly know both Fallout 3 and New Vegas were a most half price within a month of release in late November/early December.

It all comes down to how much stock is sold and how many games shift. Anything successful won't see any prices drops, just look at the MW games. They barely reduced in price over the period of 2 years

[JSR]

I can't remember many others but I certainly know both Fallout 3 and New Vegas were a most half price within a month of release in late November/early December.

It all comes down to how much stock is sold and how many games shift. Anything successful won't see any prices drops, just look at the MW games. They barely reduced in price over the period of 2 years

I'm not saying it hasn't happened, but selling a new game at half price right before xmas is dumb. At half price they are losing money.

[Neon Ignition]

I fully expect big drops from several releases in December. New releases all but stop once Dec starts and as the recession continues to see stores struggle the Boxing Day sales have moved further and further forward in an attempt to ensure people come to their stores not counting the supermarket competitiveness. Exclusives like Uncharted or big assured hitters like COD will hold fast in their price point but NFS, Skyrim, Ultimate MvC3, Rage etc are all the kinds of titles I fully expect to have added to my back catalogue for a cheaper price before X-Day

[Flabio]

Rememeber UMVC3 is coming out at around 25 in the first place, not a lot of margin for a drop there.

[EvilBoris]

I'm not saying it hasn't happened, but selling a new game at half price right before xmas is dumb. At half price they are losing money.

At half price a retailer is probably breaking even on the majority of games.
If a large retailer like Game or HMV are sitting on 10'000 copies of a game and aren't shifting any, then the first thing they will do is to reduce the price and hope they shift a few more before the game becomes too stale and they can't sell any. GAME for example start their boxing day sale a few days before christmas now, because they know that people will still be buying gifts.

Out of all the titles that will lost lost in the deluge of games over the next few months and end up with heavy reductions, I'd expect Rage to be one of them.

[Neon Ignition]

Bodycount is a shoe-in for heavy price drops too

[EvilBoris]

Oh yeah, that one is gonna die.

[PeteJ]

Yep, die so fast I forgot it was even coming out. In fact, it may even be out.

Rage I'm not so sure about, there is a huge number of die-hard iD fans that will keep it towards the top of the chart but launching a new IP this time of year is madness. Commendable, but madness.

[Flabio]

Bodycount is out this week I think. It's not reviewing too well...

http://www.metacritic.com/game/xbox-360/bodycount/critic-reviews

['Press Start']

Surely to ensure you spend money with them big on line stores and supermarkets are going to do some deals on release. Look at COD: MWF 2. I got it for ?26 from Sainsbury on release.

There will be deals, stores are not going to wait around to see if customers walk/browse through there door. They are going to capture the customer with price wars. watch

[Flabio]

That'll happen with FIFA and CoD, but I've not seen the supermarkets price war over something like Batman before.

And even then they often only do it for the opening weekend.

[Neon Ignition]

They'll inevitably end up being worthless in time but this is also the first year where I've been swayed by many of the Collectors Editions that have been lined up like these:









There's a couple that are poor or over priced but broadly the quality has improved a lot. I'm sure MW3's Prestige Edition will be naff though

[mekanor]

The sad thing is, I'll buy 2 of the above collectors editions...

[Neon Ignition]

Even worse, I'm getting all 4

[JSR]

At half price a retailer is probably breaking even on the majority of games.

Where have you heard this? At average the retailer has around 20% margin on their games, even less on high profile games like CoD or FIFA (though around christmas, many games have a higher cost to retailers simply because the publisher can take what they want). This is the reason you don't see pure game stores without second hand games anymore; that's where they make their money.