Amazon PCDD - Important Update New Community Manager Incoming!

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Amazon DVG Deals

Amazon DVG Deals

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Hey CAGS,

I’ve got some news I’m both excited and sad to share with you at the same time. I’ll be leaving the Digital Video Games team in Mid-March to join the marketing team for Amazon.com’s Loyalty and Rewards program, Amazon Coins. My boss and I have talked extensively about how to maintain and continue our presence here and across the other communities we’ve created in the past couple of years. To that end I’d like to introduce you to Josh, who take over monitoring, updating, and responding to this thread. Josh will be ramping up over the next couple of weeks, he  will be posting shortly to introduce himself.

Now that the “what’s going on” part of the message is out of the way I want to tell you all how much I love CAG and the posters here. This was the first community I joined when I started this job (anyone still remember that first thread?) and all of you have had a huge hand in shaping how we think about and execute Community Development and Management here at Amazon, which has in turn shaped my career these last two and a half years.

I started to write out a section calling out the regular posters and realized the list would be both overly long and incomplete at the same time. Instead I’d like to thank you all again, you all have my deep and sincere gratitude. I’ll still be around and my gaming accounts aren’t going anywhere so feel free to hit me up anytime you want to chat. I’ll probably still hang out in the thread too :).

Thanks again everyone, let me or Josh know if you have any questions!

The Indie Store has launched!
Amazon.com is launching a storefront dedicated to supporting and promoting PC/Mac/Web-based Indie Games. Our Digital Video Games team is a small group of passionate gamers and we’re all really excited to help Indie developers reach more customers quickly by providing a quick and simple process for bringing their games to market. Additionally we’ll be supporting the Indie Store with a ton of promotions, both at and after launch. Many of these promotions are designed to give the developer the opportunity to maximize their revenue. For example, Amazon is forfeiting all royalties from bundle sales and passing them along directly to the developer, we’ve also created an “Indie Spotlight” program to help customers learn more about the games and developers they love. We view the Indie developers as some of the most creative in the industry and we want to help them continue to create new and innovative experience for customers.

Why we are doing this:

  • Allow customers to discover an entirely new category of games on Amazon.com
  • Help developers reach new customers quickly. Our onboarding process is straightforward and we want to sell every Indie game available
  • We want to leverage our strengths to support and help the developers who are driving forward innovation and creativity in the games industry
General Information

Hi CAGs,
I'll be posting deals we're running on Digital Games (PC/Mac, Free to Play, Sony/Microsoft Points/Subs).

I'm also here to answer questions you might have, get you closer to the developers by hosting Q&As, setting up podcasts, live streaming gameplay etc. If I don't respond to a question you have in thread please send me a PM. These ping my email address and make it more likely that I will see your question and respond more quickly.

Cheers,
Tony


FYI. EA Games sold by Amazon will not activate on Steam.
F.A.Q.S.:

1. Does the game I'm buying from Amazon Activate on Steam/Origin/Uplay? What DRM does the game use?

There are two places to identify DRM on a digital video game detail page:

At the top of the page, below the title:

16hm7a8.png


In the "Product Description" section:

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2. Note on Electronic Arts Games - For the most part, EA games sold on Amazon do not activate on Steam. Most activate on Origin.

3. Note on DRM with limited activations:

Our Policy



4. Sometimes I'll do giveaways.

5. I work with developers and publishers to get fun (or at least what I think is fun) content to share with you all. Here are some examples:

a. Check out the Pax Gameplay videos here: Xcom: Enemy Unknown I played Xcom with Jake, the Creative Director for the game, a few months before the game came out Also, on this page, check out the Q&A, also a community driven event.

b. Check out the interview on this page: Borderlands 2 we did this interview at E3 with Randy Pitchford this year.

c. We've partnered with the ++GoodGames Podcast to feature many of the games we carry. They talk to the developers about the game development process, how the games are conceptualized and managed, all kinds of fun stuff. I'm working on putting together full link list and will update when I have it.

What else do we sell?

Xbox Live Points and Subscriptions:

1600 Microsoft Live Points
4000 Microsoft Live Points
12 Month XBOX Live Subscription
3 Month XBOX Live Subscription]
12 Month + 1 XBOX Live Subscription

PSN+ Subscriptions and PSN Points:

$20 PSN Points
$50 PSN Points
12 Month PSN+ Subscription
3 Month PSN+ Subscription

We also have a Free-2-Play store supported by our GameConnect technology. Gameconnect allows you to link your Amazon.com account with free-2-play and MMO accounts so that you can buy things like in game currency, premium game time/subscriptions, in game items, etc. on Amazon.com using your Amazon.com payment options and have this content delivered directly into your game.

5. Price Matching notes: Generally we do not match international retailers (GMG, Gamersgate, etc) or physical retailers (Best Buy, Newegg.com, etc.)
To check out the Free-2-Play games we offer you can visit our storefront here: Free-2-Play Store

 
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Amazon DVG Deals said:
Lol sorry guys, upcoming deals:

8/22-8/23:

Call of Duty Black Ops II: $29.99

8/22-8/28:

Call of Duty: World at War - $14.99
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare - $14.99
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 - $19.99
Call of Duty War Chest - $19.99
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 - $14.99
Modern Warfare Bundle - $39.99
Call of Duty: Black Ops II Digital Deluxe Edition - $51.99

Call of Duty - $14.99

Call of Duty 2 - $14.99

Call of Duty: United Offensive - $14.99

Call of Duty: Black Ops - $19.99

Rooks Keep - $7.49

Tales From Space: Mutant Blobs Attack - $3.99

Guacamelee! Gold Edition - $13.49

Chronicles of a Dark Lord: Episode 1 Tides of Fate - $1.99

Lucius - $7.99

No Time to Explain - $3.99

Jack Keane - $4.99

Cheers,

Tony
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crying-cat1.gif


Oh Activision... where did thou go wrong?

 
heya tony.

any chance to a "normal" price for command and conquer ultimate ?

origin have it on sale for 9.99, gamestop have it on sale for 8.99 ...

thanks.

 
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Activision business model is puzzling to me. While I understand that the newer COD games are very popular and would sell at any price, other games in their library that are either old (COD 2, COD 1), niche( Transformers), or flopped (Gun, Singularity) still have a rather high asking price which i bet doesn't sell well at those price.

I wonder what the actual sell figures looks like for those games. Would be an interesting case study.

 
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xamon said:
Activision business model is puzzling to me. While I understand that the newer COD games are very popular and would sell for any price, other games in their library that are either old (COD 2, COD 1), niche( Transformers), or flopped (Gun, Singularity) still have a rather high asking price which i bet still doesn't sell well at that price.

I wonder what the actual sell figures looks like for those games. Would be an interesting case study.
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But even more confusing is this: Just two weeks ago, Microcenter was selling BlOps2 hard copies for $9.99 - Cheaper than almost every game in this so-called sale. I understand that hard copies take up warehouse/shelf space that could be used for other, more profitable items, but that's still the newest game on the list... for 10 bucks. Also, you have to register the game on Steam to play it.

 
Amazon DVG Deals said:
Lol sorry guys, upcoming deals:

8/22-8/23:

Call of Duty Black Ops II: $29.99

8/22-8/28:

Call of Duty: World at War - $14.99
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare - $14.99
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 - $19.99
Call of Duty War Chest - $19.99
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 - $14.99
Modern Warfare Bundle - $39.99
Call of Duty: Black Ops II Digital Deluxe Edition - $51.99

Call of Duty - $14.99

Call of Duty 2 - $14.99

Call of Duty: United Offensive - $14.99

Call of Duty: Black Ops - $19.99

Rooks Keep - $7.49

Tales From Space: Mutant Blobs Attack - $3.99

Guacamelee! Gold Edition - $13.49

Chronicles of a Dark Lord: Episode 1 Tides of Fate - $1.99

Lucius - $7.99

No Time to Explain - $3.99

Jack Keane - $4.99

Cheers,

Tony
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we need another gooncave code or something to make these a little better!

 
Necrotron said:
Yeah, how come that game is never on sale?
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for singularity it has been on sale on jun 3 for 7.49 that was the best activiosn dotw sale but since not much. tony magic needs rebooting for sure. idiot needs to do his job and mind link needs to do his work of getting the real tony to wake up

Bruticis said:
Amazon hasn't been trying for months now....What happened?
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who knows maybe tony make magic starting labor day till christmas ? or his hamsters been too much work or paddlington has take over his soul

 
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Bruticis said:
Amazon hasn't been trying for months now....What happened?
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It happened right about the time Tony showed us pictures of himself.... I have a feeling that is not the real Tony, I have a feeling that Gabe put a hit out on Tony for beating his deals and now we are left with fake Tony!

 
Eldredpe said:
$5 Singularity is the only thing I want out of Activision.

And they don't want to give that to me.
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The game went on sale on February for $7.5, using the 20% promo code from that month the price was only $6. Cause Activison games were going to be on sale for almost the whole promotion i decided to wait if there was another better deal to use the code with, sadly nothing i was interested into showed and when i decided to pull the trigger on Singularity Craptivision upped the price to $15 when the deal on their games was't even over.

 
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Still hoping for a price match on the Gamestop/Impulse $8.99 C&C Ultimate Collection. Saw that questioned asked before and haven't seen a response to price matching Gamestop/Impulse.

 
thepcgameguy said:
It happened right about the time Tony showed us pictures of himself.... I have a feeling that is not the real Tony, I have a feeling that Gabe put a hit out on Tony for beating his deals and now we are left with fake Tony!
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Fony?!

facepalm-puppet.gif


DarenDF said:
Wow those prices are just bad. Activision doesn't want me to buy their games yet again.
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Your avatar depicts an anime robot. They give 0 fucks about you.

 
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xamon said:
Activision business model is puzzling to me. While I understand that the newer COD games are very popular and would sell at any price, other games in their library that are either old (COD 2, COD 1), niche( Transformers), or flopped (Gun, Singularity) still have a rather high asking price which i bet doesn't sell well at those price.

I wonder what the actual sell figures looks like for those games. Would be an interesting case study.
Click to expand...
I feel like Activision's strategy consists of "Lowest discounts possible so we make more money.", which obviously is BS since their discounts are so terrible that they're not going to move as many sales as they would with reasonable discounts.

But they're making fortunes on CoD games, so I don't think it really matters what they do.

 
Idiotekque said:
I feel like Activision's strategy consists of "Lowest discounts possible so we make more money.", which obviously is BS since their discounts are so terrible that they're not going to move as many sales as they would with reasonable discounts.

But they're making fortunes on CoD games, so I don't think it really matters what they do.
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Yeah, it almost seems like they're going for the most profit per sale rather than most profit overall.

 
Idiotekque said:
I feel like Activision's strategy consists of "Lowest discounts possible so we make more money.", which obviously is BS since their discounts are so terrible that they're not going to move as many sales as they would with reasonable discounts.

But they're making fortunes on CoD games, so I don't think it really matters what they do.
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Complacency'll bite 'em and it'll probably be on the region of the body that includes the ass. Not that the C-Suite cares -- they might be set for life.

Bob is, at least.

 
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Idiotekque said:
I feel like Activision's strategy consists of "Lowest discounts possible so we make more money.", which obviously is BS since their discounts are so terrible that they're not going to move as many sales as they would with reasonable discounts.

But they're making fortunes on CoD games, so I don't think it really matters what they do.
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Having your entire business rest on one pillar is a recipe for disaster. Even with Blizzard having a fairly stable (but declining) revenue stream, having CoD sell moderately (8-14 million copies) could be a disaster for the company. I just can't imagine anyone that is in their right mind wanted to invest in a one trick pony company like Activision.

To be fair in the last 10 years they have been able to survive on one franchise at a time fairly well (Tony Hawk, Guitar Hero). Its too bad that those franchise have to be run to the ground without ever reaching their full potential.

 
xamon said:
Having your entire business rest on one pillar is a recipe for disaster. Even with Blizzard having a fairly stable (but declining) revenue stream, having CoD sell moderately (8-14 million copies) could be a disaster for the company. I just can't imagine anyone that is in their right mind wanted to invest in a one trick pony company like Activision.

To be fair in the last 10 years they have been able to survive on one franchise at a time fairly well (Tony Hawk, Guitar Hero). Its too bad that those franchise have to be run to the ground without ever reaching their full potential.
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All very true, I just can't see CoD ever selling "moderately". People will eat that shit up until the end of time.

(Even I bought Black Ops 2 for too much.)

 
xamon said:
To be fair in the last 10 years they have been able to survive on one franchise at a time fairly well (Tony Hawk, Guitar Hero). Its too bad that those franchise have to be run to the ground without ever reaching their full potential.
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Tony Hawk reached its full potential with THPS3.

Everything after that was just trying too hard.

 
@Idiot I think the only way for CoD to decline is for games like Titanfall and Destiny to do what Cod 4 did for the multiplayer market when it came out which is to redefine what people expect from a multi player experience. If those games succeed in doing so, i hardly doubt people over at Activision will have enough time to properly counter those game. They would have to play catch up but also have a brand to fight. By that I mean that people define fast paced, twitch shooter as CoD-like but if Titanfall or Destiny becomes the new standard, people will start comparing every games to those two which can become hard even for a behemoth like CoD.

@Eldredpe I don't think it did. It definitely had room for improvements. Seeing some feature in Skate and Tony Hawk Project 8 could have really add a lot to the franchise. Not the way those games were but features in them. Its too bad Skate came out when people were seriously burned out on skating games.

 
Hi Tony,

I'd like to first thank you for all the hard work you do and my following response is in no way reflective of you as a person or as an employee.   This is just feedback.  I am disappointed in the amazon pre-order system and the follow-up customer service.  I pre-ordered XCOM: The Bureau and I initially only got a code for the $5 digital promotional credit, but after two days I didn't get the $10 amazon credit or the XCOM Collection promotional code.  So I emailed customer service and asked for the credit and the xcom code, for which I got an email response that $10 has been added to my account but no word on the Xcom collection.  I tried to use the $10 on a physical item and it didn’t work, so it was probably added as a digital credit.  So I called customer service a couple hours ago and talked to a young lady that then added $10 in amazon credit (which when I try to check out, shows up as being applied, so I assume it worked).  She said she sent me the code for the Xcom Collection in my email.  When I tried to use the code to get the Xcom Collection, it said the code was already used.  So I called customer service back and talked to a young man and after a fair amount of back and forth with his bosses, he came back and said that I am one of the few that didn’t get a code and it might be days till I get it.  I’m not in a tremendous hurry, but I am worried that I wait for days while nothing happens, then I will have to call back up and explain everything over again.  I am hesitant to purchase anything because I don’t want to confuse the issue by using credit that was accidentally added to my account.  This is my first pre-order from amazon and I probably won’t do another one.

Thanks

Austin

 
xamon said:
@Idiot I think the only way for CoD to decline is for games like Titanfall and Destiny to do what Cod 4 did for the multiplayer market when it came out which is to redefine what people expect from a multi player experience. If those games succeed in doing so, i hardly doubt people over at Activision will have enough time to properly counter those game. They would have to play catch up but also have a brand to fight. By that I mean that people define fast paced, twitch shooter as CoD-like but if Titanfall or Destiny becomes the new standard, people will start comparing every games to those two which can become hard even for a behemoth like CoD.

@Eldredpe I don't think it did. It definitely had room for improvements. Seeing some feature in Skate and Tony Hawk Project 8 could have really add a lot to the franchise. Not the way those games were but features in them. Its too bad Skate came out when people were seriously burned out on skating games.
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Titanfall, Destiny and The Division are, more or less, mixing elements of a SP and MMO together. As long as there is NO offline component, I hope to God that the success of those doesn't start an "always online" to become a huge new trend.

Now, if a game can figure out how to have SP offline work solo and also allow players the option to hop online to deal w/ the persistent MMO part does (think like say TDU2 does), I'll be VERY interesting in a seeing a hybrid like that.

 
Activision doesn't understand what a deal is (especially with the CoD series).

Not that I'm complaining, I have plenty to tide me over until next week.   :)

 
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xamon said:
Having your entire business rest on one pillar is a recipe for disaster. Even with Blizzard having a fairly stable (but declining) revenue stream, having CoD sell moderately (8-14 million copies) could be a disaster for the company. I just can't imagine anyone that is in their right mind wanted to invest in a one trick pony company like Activision.

To be fair in the last 10 years they have been able to survive on one franchise at a time fairly well (Tony Hawk, Guitar Hero). Its too bad that those franchise have to be run to the ground without ever reaching their full potential.
Click to expand...

I'm not sure if I am in the right mind, but I have invested in Activision, (the company stock) off and on throughout my investing life. I don't buy Activision games because I am a cheap ass gamer (I did get that prototype pack from Amazon last year), but as a company, people here really don't have much of a clue as to how they have done. The digital games market has made games insanely cheap, but Activision seems to have held the line and is generating good profits and revenues. As much as we'd like to think everyone is a CAG, this is clearly not the case as there are plenty of "mostly" 16-35 year old men willing to shell out big bucks to get the latest games. I obviously think that's a waste of money, but Activision is rocking as a stock/company so far.

To dispute the 1 trick pony, they also have their "Skylanders" toys and games which generated over 1 billion in revenues alone last year:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-02-07/activision-net-soars-on-skylanders-call-of-duty-sales-1-.html

Another trick:

http://www.statisticbrain.com/blizzard-entertainment-statistics/

Here's a stock chart btw:

http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=ATVI&t=my&l=on&z=l&q=l&c=

Video game companies left and right have been going under and Activision, as a company/stock has been on fire and generally the only gaming company I've had good returns on.

Here's the atvi vs. ea chart:

http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?t=my&s=ATVI&l=on&z=l&q=l&c=ea&ql=1

Been invested early 2000s and had to sell for various reasons (after up 1000%) and finally just bought some late last year again...

All this said, I'd say just avoid buying anything from them if the sale isn't good. Their sales suck, play something else on the backlog or do what I do, never buy anything they own (never played WoW, SC, Diablo 3 (did buy 1 and 2 though).

 
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I haven't been on here in a while but I remember that Tony from Amazon used to price match a lot of stuff. Any chance we can get a price match on the big origins sale right now, especially the Tomb Raider sale.

 
yangwenli said:
Video game companies left and right have been going under and Activision, as a company/stock has been on fire and generally the only gaming company I've had good returns on.
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Much of Activision's strength seems to come from building upon their existing franchises (a strategy loudly supported by Kotick), and marketing to people who only buy one or two games per year.

From a business perspective, this works great for Activision. It's arguably bad for the industry as a whole, but that's an entirely different discussion.

I do wonder, however, just how long this strategy will work for Activision. There's already some blowback related to the Infinity Ward drama, and I have a feeling there's more to come...

 
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@yangwenli I stand corrected, i forgot about Skylander. I have to admit that activision is not my area of focus and I should probably do a bit more research outside of basing my whole evaluation of the company on outdated sources (mainly when Vivendi tried to sell their stake in the company a year or two ago). At that point the company was still and still is very profitable but the outlook for its future was very conservative due to the state of the economic and the landscape of the gaming industry. 

@MysterD I am with you on that one. I am mainly a SP player and would be pretty annoyed if all games become multi focused.

 
Activision has a built in/dedicated fanbase for their games.  They don't really need to attract more people with massive sales.

 
Mooby said:
Activision has a built in/dedicated fanbase for their games. They don't really need to attract more people with massive sales.
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Pretty much this. Seems kinda obvious. Until the demand diminishes, what reason does Activision have to change its ongoing (and seemingly successful) pricing strategies. They're like the anti-Squeenix and we all know about the Squeenix pricing model and what it does to the perceived monetary value of their games.

 
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60fps said:
I'm going to hope that Tony won't match it, then surpass it with a sweet 75% off for $3.75. Maybe he'll even go overboard with 80% or a coupon on top of the 75% and just blow our minds away.

Please make our heads explode, Tony.
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I'm in, if it goes to 75%

 
Neuro5i5 said:
Pretty much this. Seems kinda obvious. Until the demand diminishes, what reason does Activision have to change its ongoing (and seemingly successful) pricing strategies. They're like the anti-Squeenix and we all know about the Squeenix pricing model and what it does to the perceived monetary value of their games.
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Yeah, I use to be ok buying games in physical boxes for 19.99. With digital games distribution, I'm surprised many of these games get made/companies stick around. As many people state here, "I paid xxx or xxx for this last year and it was totally worth it!" so there's certainly early adopters who are willing to pay more for many games in addition to the Activision fan base.

Maybe it's also the consoles keeping them alive, but < $5.00 for AAA titles? In a way, I'm happy and sad that games are that cheap, but concerned good stuff won't be made.

It's now pretty much 75% off for stuff I HAVE to play now and 85%+ probably to put stuff in the backlog. Add in the humblebundle options and I'm so hesitant to buy anything anymore unless it's in a bundle.

 
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