Sartori

Agreed.  That said, I think this is the end result of digital games.  There just isn't much incentive for retailers to order a lot of disc/cart inventory when 50%-plus of games are now being sold digitally.  Let's face it, no retailer can carry the breadth and scope of games comparable to Steam, PSN, or Xbox GamePass.  It just means retailers are seeing fewer sales/foot traffic for those items now and thus feel less compelled to order much, which results in less to no excess inventory, meaning no reason put on big sales or offer big discounts.

 

All of the above, of course, is designed to kill off stores like GameStop.  How do you run a used-games store when there are fewer and fewer used games being traded in?  The answer is, well ... you can't.  The writing is really on the wall for GameStop -- it's just a matter of when it folds now; we're way passed the if stage.

 

Anyways, publishers all want to be like Nintendo in that they want to be able to maintain high game prices for periods of time after release.   I mean, Nintendo still can get away with selling Mario Odyssey for $50 years after its release. Nintendo's customers didn't accept the fact Nintendo games don't fall in price overnight.  That behavior settled in over years and years of intentional pricing bars.

 

I suspect as the industry shifts to becoming even more (and soon almost entirely) digital (let's say 80/20), more and more first party publishers will aim towards the Nintendo model.  Infrequent to no price drops, and small discounts during the holidays/special events.

No doubt, sadly. And that's when I dip out for the vast majority of games :(. 

 
I will say that I pulled Ghost of Tsushima DC PS5 out of my backlog with all the mentions of sales on that recently, that is one of the best open world games I have played in recent memory.  It is so well done, I am completely impressed with it.  I am currently pretty far into Act 2 as best as I can tell.  If you have that game in your backlog, you should make it next on your list, I think you will be pleasantly surprised as I was.  I usually space out the open world/sandbox games a lot just because they tend to be somewhat exhausting after a while.  I recently finished Zelda BOTW and then Maglam Lord PS4, then started GoT DC, it is an awesome game.

Awesome. I heard something good about this in passing from someone I respect and impulse bought it on BF, this is further encouraging !

They gut new copies because it's fucking stupid to put live products on the floor, and it's extremely wasteful to print art for every title in stock. Don't like it? Make sure you preorder what you want or go to Walmart and wait half an hour for them to find someone with keys to the game case. Or order from Amazon and have to wait a couple of days.


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Justify it all you want. There are cheap alternatives such as printing a two-sided piece of paper to put on the shelf to advertise such a product slide it into a exchangeable case and there we go. In no way, shape, or form is that too expensive. No need to falsely advertise a new product that is no longer new.

Keep drinking that Kool-Aid.