Video Games Drop in Price 60% in First 8 Months

[jjgames]

Article about the prices of new video games and how fast they drop in price. Compares to older games price drops too. New games drop in price much, much faster.

http://www.usedvideogamepricing.com/2007/07/video-game-prices-drop-60-in-first.html

The graph only shows the prices since February, but the analysis is for games released in October and November of last year.
http://www.jjgames.com/static/images/released_year_comparison.GIF

[MrDemonicAngel]

this isnt news....think everyone knows about this trend...
thanks for the post tho

[jjgames]

this isnt news....think everyone knows about this trend...
thanks for the post tho
I agree that everybody knows that prices go down after a game is released.

But I don't know if people knew exactly the percentage. I thought it might be nice to actually quantify. Especially for the cag community who likes to save as much money as possible.

[yukine]

Interesting to see that in 2006 games drop by 60%, versus 20% in previous years. It'll be interesting to see if there is any significant change due to the latest decision on price floors.

[dtcarson]

Well, if I'm interpreting the chart correctly it's saying that a game with release date of 2000 has a "price unit" of 1.0 on 02/07/07, but by 6/27/07 it's .75 of 1.0. Which makes sense--their price unit of 1.0, which could be anywhere between 5$ and 30$ is not the same as that of a game released in 06, which is probably 30-45$. So the game that was released in 2000 has already seen its major price drop.
"Games released in 2006 depreciated an average of 32% from their release date until February 1st, going from $42.08 to $28.66 in three months (not shown on graph). And then drop another 38% in the following five months from February until July 1st, going from $28.66 down to $17.70. The average video game released in 2004, 2002, and 2000 only dropped 20% during this same time frame going from an average of $9.61 to $7.70.

By the second, fourth, and sixth year after a game's release, the prices follow almost the exact same pattern in their price depreciation. "

Basically he's saying games lose a large portion of their "value" in the first 8 months, then they continue to drop, but much slower. The longer you wait, the less you'll pay (generally speaking) but the 'sweet spot' is probably 8 months after release.

And isn't this the case with most technology, though the scale may shift a little bit--dvd players, dvds, cars, computers, they probably all have a pretty regular depreciation curve with only a few rare but attention-getting outliers.
Still, it is nice to quantify it, and to have a figure to think about (8 months).

[Puffa469]

The trick is identifying the very few games that don't drop in price like all the others. Some games just dissapear instead of dropping in price.

This chart is why you should never preorder/lineup at midnight to get the newest, yearly released sports games.

[Dr Mario Kart]

You should really do a study of JUST ATLUS titles.

[happy]

Just a bit of math here, $50 = new game price, $20 = GH price after 8 or 9 months now for PS2 games at least. Drop=$30
3/5=6/10 or 60%

So yes new games become greatest hits after 8 or 9 months thanks, or for those that don't make it that's the time they drop to said price naturally because $20 has become the accepted price for a new sales boost.

[Slate]

Man.. I remember when the Da Vinci Code came out. It was $50, And the next month it was $20.

[jjgames]

You should really do a study of JUST ATLUS titles.
I have in my 'ideas' list to look at price changes by publisher and I definitely will include Atlus because I love there games AND I think their prices would stay a lot higher.

I will let you know when I post analysis like that

Dtcarson, you interpretted the graphs and data perfectly. Good explanation.

[spoo]

Unless I'm completely retarded at reading graphs, doesn't the graph show that Video games Drop to 60% of their original price? 60% of the original price is a 40% drop in price.

If the creator of the graph wanted to show a 60% drop in price that would be 0.4 of 1.0 price.

I haven't taken a math class in 8 years but the graph seems wrong. All I'm saying is that the graph is broken.

[jjgames]

Unless I'm completely retarded at reading graphs, doesn't the graph show that Video games Drop to 60% of their original price? 60% of the original price is a 40% drop in price.

If the creator of the graph wanted to show a 60% drop in price that would be 0.4 of 1.0 price.

I haven't taken a math class in 8 years but the graph seems wrong. All I'm saying is that the graph is broken.

You are not completely retarded at all. Your logic is correct, but the graph only shows the daily price drops from Feb until July 1st and during that period prices only dropped about 40% (like the graph shows).

The actual blog post shows the actual prices back in Oct and Nov of 2006 and that is where the 60% drop comes from.

[CaoPi]

scarcity and supply and demand is also related of course as Dr Mario stated the Atlus titles always seem to get a low print, and titles become pricy!

[spoo]

You are not completely retarded at all. Your logic is correct, but the graph only shows the daily price drops from Feb until July 1st and during that period prices only dropped about 40% (like the graph shows).

The actual blog post shows the actual prices back in Oct and Nov of 2006 and that is where the 60% drop comes from.
I should have RTFA :oops:

[Josef]

Nintendo published games tend to be a straight line on that graph.

[Jon Rose]

I agree that everybody knows that prices go down after a game is released.

But I don't know if people knew exactly the percentage. I thought it might be nice to actually quantify. Especially for the cag community who likes to save as much money as possible.

It's actually important for everyone else, too, or at least those of us who have enough of a thought process left to not speak in elipses. One of the major problems right now is that people take actual information for granted, and the result is a headless blunder of an industry.

As an example, people usually just bitch about GameStop and used games and ripoff blah blah blah. Same complaints, but no one ever comes up with anything substantive, leaving the emo retards to just get bored with it. Then instead of the dialogue progressing, these jackasses end up shutting down any further attempts at dissemination with their limp-dick apathy while not having any insight themselves.

Conversely, with a simple chart like this, we can look at it and go "Hey... so all this shit about buying shelfspace for games that GameStop doesn't make much money from? Maybe that's not such a great idea."

And let's face it, it's not like the videogame industry is going to change without huge amounts of hard evidence.

[likeaphoenixignition]

Oblivion is still 60 bucks for Xbox 360... :(