Oh yeah fight fight fight fight!

KdjaCL

High street giant GAME has reduced the price of its chart titles to £29.99 from today as part of an aggressive ten-day promotion - a move which is likely to provoke an ugly confrontation between publishers and retailers over the coming months.
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The move, effective across all of its UK stores from today, has been widely expected for some time with GAME and other high street chains increasingly under pressure from aggressive online retailer and supermarket pricing which has slowly chipped away at its market share.

Indeed, price erosion has been particularly severe for some time, with online retailers routinely slashing between £8 and £12 from the suggested recommended price of £39.99. Statistical data from Chart-Track suggests that the average price of a chart videogame is around £35 or less - a figure which has effectively been 'propped up' by GAME and its ilk largely standing firm on the issue of new release pricing up to now.

But now that GAME has decided to respond with such a dramatic price cut, the floodgates are set to open across the industry with other retailers such as Dixons, Gamestation, HMV, and Virgin expected to match GAME's tactics immediately. But it's the effect on the independent retail community where the price war will be felt particularly keenly.

The latest high street price war has long been expected; indeed, in the summer of 1999 Virgin Retail kicked off a similar price war in the UK that was also initially billed as a 'promotion', but quickly established £29.99 as the standard price of console new releases. It was only when the PlayStation 2 was released in November 2000 that prices returned to their previous levels, and the publishing community can expect something similar to occur this time around.

The question is how publishers respond to the move; will they be forced to reduce their cost price, or will they attempt to slug it out with retailers and let them take the margin hit? Going on past history, once retail forces the price of games down, many publishers are often left with little option but to comply on all but their very biggest titles. EA may find itself in a stronger position than its rivals, but small to medium sized publishers will find it especially difficult to reduce their unit price.

Although the move is limited to the UK market at present, it would not be a major surprise to see the same thing occur across Europe very soon. And with publisher revenues likely to be hit hard as a result, it appears that this generation's dreaded transitional period is now officially underway

http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=57898

Nothing like a good old price war to get your games collection up to date.

kdjac

Ciaran500

Will we finally start to see decent prices on the high street?

evad_lhorg

not only UK stores. all chart titles are 49.99 here instead of 59.99

Retr0gamer

That price is still too high considering what you pay on play and from america. I paid 40 euros for a new release from america recently.

flogen

Well given that sales were down by a large margin across most game retailers this year, in the UK and Ireland it has to happen. There was nothing for people to buy this year that they didn't already have, the new PS2 was popular, but not as popular as the "crisis shortage" implied. Last year and the year before people were buying consoles and games for christmas, no one was doing that this year for numerous reasons.

I'd say we'll see a price drop of sorts for a few weeks, and it may take the next gen consoles to put things back to normal, after all, GAME and the like know they can ask for more for a ps3 and it's games, it's going to sell no matter what.

flogen

whiskeyman

I got ESPN NFL for E30 (brand new) the other day.
It's a fantastic game. I'm not really a huge American Football fan, more a big sports fan... but this game just plays brilliantly if you've any interest in sport games.

All the new ESPN titles are selling for 30 in all outlet - NHL, NFL and NBA.
Seeing such a low price, many questioned their quality... but the reviews are showing that they are matching, and even surpassing, their EA Sport rivals.

Hopefully more game producers will do a similar strategy. They must realise their margins are just far excessive, and they can reduce mark-up to increase sales and probably gain even better margins.


30 should be the benchmark price for big title games, given the technololgy and size of the market these days.

Zhane

Argos still have the best price for high profile games i think at €45 a game, any platform. then again, they dont have the huge library to make it a threat to high street stores

regeneration

I feel sorry in a way for retail chains - in their defence, they do have to cope with far more overheads than an online retailer; but when shopping online meant I got thief3, brand new, for e28, you can't argue with that. Mind you, I haven't bought a brand new game in ages, there's been little to get excited about lately...

super_furry

whiskeyman wrote:

I got ESPN NFL for E30 (brand new) the other day.
It's a fantastic game. I'm not really a huge American Football fan, more a big sports fan... but this game just plays brilliantly if you've any interest in sport games.

Picked it up myself yesterday quite impressed with it, but the passing seems to be really tough. Far too many interceptions, but that's probably down to my own ineptitude.