Biggest CAG Shopping News 2009

ECA debacle. Secondary nomination: CAGs getting to $42,000+ for Child's Play in the last 24 hours. That isn't really shopping news though :)
 
PS3 Slim for sure. $600-$700 release price to $299.99 = awesome. And against popular belief, I think they look nice.
 
Circuit City closing .. yeah what ECA did was just plain rotten .. but Circuit City had a major impact on brick and mortar deals .. right after they closed, Best Buy among other stores just went on a rape fest on price matching policies and honoring warranties fiasco. Circuit City closing marks the long slow death of brick and mortar "deals".
 
Circuit City closing pretty much coffin-nailed any good competition out of Best Buy or Target.

Target's change to allow PMing against other competitors.

Amazon's constant undercutting all the B&M retailers on pretty much any printed ads they put out there. Wait 1-2 days after the BB or Target ads go live for the week and Amazon matches them.

The whole ECA mess, of course.
 
Microsoft's Games on Demand and the high prices they expect people to pay for them.

Also, Activision's dedication to high-priced games and special editions (Tony Hawk Ride, DJ Hero, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Prestige Edition, Modern Warfare 2's price increase in the UK) and comments about raising prices even more if they could.
 
Steam this year was just the year of PC games now being sold online with a major force and the prices where all bananas. Add on to that so many other online stores followed Steams push for digital distribution.

Circuit City, its was sad to see this store chain go away. So many stores I remember Crazy Eddie, The Wiz and now Circuit City. I can see why Best Buy is not playing around cause with trying to stay as a dominant force in the retail market.
 
ECA was nothing anyways. The Amazon codes were bait, we all bit, some got god use then they went away!

Circuit City was a huge blow to B&M. I always used to get some good deals there and it sucks having one less physical store option. Best Buys deals have suffered as a result.
 
Last year's winner was Circuit City Bankruptcy & Fall. It would be pretty lame if it won again.

Also, the ECA did affect many users of this community, but I think the PS3 Slim and pricedrop had a bigger effect on the industry as a whole.
 
[quote name='oyla10']Wow, ECA is huge, but I think by far the biggest impact was left by Circuit City closing. 10% off of a $60 game is only $6, and Circuit City had a lot of sales that Amazon was forced to match. ECA was crappy because people took advantage of it by stacking codes among other things. Circuit City closing has and will have the biggest effect on anyone despite what anyone says about the ECA situation.[/QUOTE]

You just don't understand how good the deal actually was if played right. Because ECA codes were stackable with ALL other discounts.

ECA + Gold Box discount + whatever discount is already on the game = 20% or more off on most occassions even for brand new games or preorders. And that's completely legitimate, without the abusive code stacking that happened.

As for CC, well, I can only ever remember buying 2-3 games from them, ever. Amazon has dominated for years for me.
 
I'll have to go with:

PS3 Price Drop
Microsoft coming out with 250 GB Model
Amazon and TRU accepting Video Game trade ins
 
Last edited by a moderator:
[quote name='Darknyss']Last year's winner was Circuit City Bankruptcy & Fall. It would be pretty lame if it won again.

[/QUOTE]

I don't think so. Big news is big news, even if it takes place two years in a row. Even though CC was run by idiots, the deals that chain had made the other B&M stores work harder. I used to pm at Best Buy all of the time.
 
[quote name='FriskyTanuki']Microsoft's Games on Demand and the high prices they expect people to pay for them.

Also, Activision's dedication to high-priced games and special editions (Tony Hawk Ride, DJ Hero, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Prestige Edition, Modern Warfare 2's price increase in the UK) and comments about raising prices even more if they could.[/QUOTE]


To be fair to MS, I've read that they were bullied by retailers to keep their direct downloads at the same MSRP as retail, because retailers were worried that they wouldn't be able to compete. Basically, several retailers were going to refuse to stock physical games if they were undercut.

Eventually, things will get better.
 
CC officially closing because after that, weekly game deals were crap until TRU started competing hard for gamer dollars in the fall with their weekly gift card deals/annual B2G1 sale.
 
B&M - I have to go with CC closing it's doors. For a while there, we didn't see any good deals at BB because of it. Luckily, TRU has recently stepped up with decent GC deals.

Online - Amazon PMing and the whole ECA fiasco.
 
Like I said in one of the other poll threads, the ECA thread is what riled me up the most. Hal Halpin and the ECA are a bunch of tools.

"Consumer Association"...hah.
 
**** ECA. Their news wasn't the biggest. It was the stupidest and most disappointing.

The biggest news for me was the PS3 price drop, as well as the PS3 Slim. Practically everyone I know has one now.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
bread's done
Back
Top