FK j00 GAME (GAME PLC pricing structure)

[Sar]

Right, this could be construed as a NWN forum question, but I wanted to see what lots of people are getting this for.

I wandered into my local GAME yesterday to buy NeverWinter Nights, and was faced with a rack full of said game, sitting unshifted, and no wonder - they were trying to flog it at an unbelievable £40. That's FORTY fucking quid!

For a standard PC CD-Rom release?

Cunt off!

It's £30 on the Game website, and is retailing at £26.99 on www.play.com - so why the huge in-store mark-up?

It's not as if it's a special edition release, a la the Tin Box version of Return to Castle Wolfenstein, it's a standard release.

What is it costing other people around the country in their local GAME shops? Is my local shop getting the arm in, or is this the start of GAME ripping loyal customers off?

PS: I neglected to buy it in GAME and went down the street to Virgin and bought it cheaper there.

/rant

 

[Shocko]

I would be surprised if Game in Nottingham wern't selling it at a rip-off price. I once bought an Intellimouse explorer off them for £50... They were proberbly banking on me being too lazy to search around in smaller and less well known/situatated shops. It worked

I have a £10 game voucher, so even if it is £40, i will get from Game, since i don't really have anything else to spend it on(It's been sitting around for the best part of 4 months allready)...

 

[Damini]

Its forty in HMV too. I had a butchers today, then went and had a look at my bank balance, and then wandered home, empty handed and lonesome

 

[Wij]

NWN is too geeky anyway for my liking. 40 squid is taking the peepee though

 

[stu]

I downloaded NWN (3 CDs), burned it, installed it, got to "Character Selection", saw the worlds 'Half-Orc' and 'Gnome' on my screen, quit, uninstalled.

So first person to call shotgun gets a free copy posted to them.

 

[stu]

hehe... of course when I say downloaded I mean bought from my local retailer

</disclaimer>

 

[Wij]

SHOTGUN !


???


:/

 

[mr.Blacky]

errrmmmm you are claiming that 40 pounds is expensive? you lucky stiffs. wish that the prices were as low as that over here.

 

[Sar]

It is when the most expensive regular PC CD-Rom release is priced at £34.99, with new games regularly retailing at £29.99, especially considering that nowhere online is retailing the game at anywhere near forty quid.

 

[Xtro]

Originally posted by Wij
NWN is too geeky anyway for my liking. 40 squid is taking the peepee though

Says the Dark Age of Camelot player eh Wij!

 

[~YuckFou~]

Don't game offer a price promise? They will match any other advertised price or something along those lines.
They also let you return games "if you don't like them" for a full refund.

 

[Xavier]

hmm, I posted the NWN prices thread in the NWN Forum to let people know where to pick up cheap copies in anticipation of the higher-than-usual RRP... there are loads of places selling it for less than £40 (which incidentally isn't the price decided on by GAME - it's the RRP set by Infogrames english distribution channel...

If you want to argue value for money, Neverwinter Nights has been five years in the making technically... and for your £40 you got the whole toolset which was originally going to be sold as a seperate product with the DM kit so as to let those who wanted to just play do so for less... the reason so many people have been excited about it is because it's both a top single player and semi-mmorpg - quite a bit above the bar set by the likes of Dungeon Siege uke:

In the US gamers are paying anything up to and over $70 (although they get a purdy cloth map) - I don't think any of it can be interpreted as a massive cash-in on behalf of the retailers, from what I've been told the buy price is horrendously high (hence why bioware are concentrating on working their arses off and releasing multiple patches per week to fix things asafp) the only places I've seen stocking it for £30 or below are either doing so because they can - e.g. etailers with low overheads and low buy prices based on quantity etc or in one case a local independant retailer to me hadn't checked the price he was getting copies in for, presumed the RRP to be £29.99, started selling for £24.99 until someone pointed out he was losing almost £5 per copy on the buy price from his distributor...

As PC games go I can think of a few others which were ~£40 but that's generally involved some kind of special edition (tin or something) heh, unless your local branch of game is under martial law they probably didn't have a shotgun to your temple forcing you to spend that much - I'm guessing that rather than wait for a delivery from the likes of play.com you decided the £39.99 was acceptable to get the game up to a week earlier... so quit bitching!!

 

[Embattle]

Serious Sam over again.

 

[Ono]

......... and people complain about piracy.

 

[Wazzerphuk]

Lesson of the day: don't buy shit games.

 

[Scouse]

......... and people complain about piracy.

Aye - and at the same time the games industry admits that it's bigger than the movie/music industries and is raking in record profits......

 

[Munkey-]

you do know that GAME have a price matching policy?

buy it in virgin, then take proof of purchase to GAME and they'll refund the difference.....or something.....you need proof that its cheaper (has to be a high street retail shop i.e. VIRGIN, HMV etc.) and they'll let you have the game at cheaper price. so dont buy it........if that makes sense

 

[stu]

They also have a 10 day returns policy. A more cynical man would suggest that you could blatantly abuse it, buying games, ripping them, and returning them for a refund within the 10 days.

But given I am totally devoid of cynicism, I'll just say that they give you plenty of time to return it should you think you are being "ripped off" and find it cheaper elsewhere.

 

[Xavier]

Originally posted by stu
They also have a 10 day returns policy. A more cynical man would suggest that you could blatantly abuse it, buying games, ripping them, and returning them for a refund within the 10 days.

But given I am totally devoid of cynicism, I'll just say that they give you plenty of time to return it should you think you are being "ripped off" and find it cheaper elsewhere.

yes - and that's all good and well with offline games... but for instance with games like Dark Ages of Camelot which require a cd key it's a total no-no... certain people who bought DAoC from GAME, copied it and kept the legit cd key got a visit from the plod with allegations to fraud when they had to supply their home address and card details to continue playing after their first free month...


anyhow, I dunno why you're all moaning - 98% of XBOX/PS2 games are £39.99+ and have been for f*ckin ages... we've had better pricing for a long time (and imo far better games) so who gives a sh*t if a really outstanding game is priced in-line with what other formats regularly pay?

Oh, btw - after the CD key issue in the states with NwN infogrames are blocking CD keys which have been misused which means anyone planning to buy burn and return will find their online accounts dead after a matter of weeks

I don't begrudge shelling out for quality games - sure there are a lot of POS out there but with quality games like NwN and UT2003 I think anything up to £45 is acceptable...

 

[Xavier]

Originally posted by Munkey-
you do know that GAME have a price matching policy?

buy it in virgin, then take proof of purchase to GAME and they'll refund the difference.....or something.....you need proof that its cheaper (has to be a high street retail shop i.e. VIRGIN, HMV etc.) and they'll let you have the game at cheaper price. so dont buy it........if that makes sense

other way around

walk into GAME and tell them that you've seen X for £whatever elsewhere and if it's within 5 miles and they have stock (verified by a phonecall in my experience) they'll offer the price match...

they still have the right to refuse however - after all if you aren't willing to pay the going price for a game you'll find thousands of other gamers who are...

Xav

 

[Embattle]

This is all kind of a moot point since if you want it cheaper buy it online but if you want it now you'll have to pay extra, it's nothing new and certainly isn't going to change unfortunately.

 

[Xavier]

it's a myth that retail chains like GAME are making 'FAT wedge' from their clientele... look at products like gamecube that have nil markup and therefore nil profit... doesn't go a long way to paying off the running costs incurred for 200 odd retail stores (or however many game have)

little independant shops with maybe two staff in a shopping arcade or sideroad... and e-tailers on industrial parks pay diddly squat in comparison in the way of staffing and location... the money GAME/EB shell out for a prime-location store with anything up to 15 staff is pretty scary...


if you consider yourself clued up and able to get it for less elsewhere then just do it!

 

[stu]

Originally posted by Xavier


yes - and that's all good and well with offline games... but for instance with games like Dark Ages of Camelot which require a cd key it's a total no-no...

Oh, btw - after the CD key issue in the states with NwN infogrames are blocking CD keys which have been misused which means anyone planning to buy burn and return will find their online accounts dead after a matter of weeks

True, for exclusively online games it can't be done, given that the key has a 100% chance of being used online. But for any other game it's fine, even one with a large multiplayer element, because the vast majority of game sales in this country are to people who don't play online.

Hence I don't know how Infogrammes plan to block "misued" cd keys - if I (for instance) went to a branch of EB, bought NWN, wrote down the CD key and burned it, then returned it, and someone then subsequently bought that copy, it would be pretty unlikely that they'd use it online. And if they did, how would Infogrammes know which of us legitimately owned the cd key?

Added to which, if that happened, there's nothing to stop you just going and getting/returning another copy, for a fresh new cd key.

 

[Durzel]

Originally posted by Xavier
it's a myth that retail chains like GAME are making 'FAT wedge' from their clientele... look at products like gamecube that have nil markup and therefore nil profit... doesn't go a long way to paying off the running costs incurred for 200 odd retail stores (or however many game have)

Consoles have pretty much always worked on the "loss leader" formula, otherwise known as the "razor and razorblades" formula. Sell the hardware at a loss, recoup the losses on the software.

 

[Xavier]

Originally posted by stu


True, for exclusively online games it can't be done, given that the key has a 100% chance of being used online. But for any other game it's fine, even one with a large multiplayer element, because the vast majority of game sales in this country are to people who don't play online.

Hence I don't know how Infogrammes plan to block "misued" cd keys - if I (for instance) went to a branch of EB, bought NWN, wrote down the CD key and burned it, then returned it, and someone then subsequently bought that copy, it would be pretty unlikely that they'd use it online. And if they did, how would Infogrammes know which of us legitimately owned the cd key?

Added to which, if that happened, there's nothing to stop you just going and getting/returning another copy, for a fresh new cd key.

heh - bioware released and validated only 25% of the possible results of the algorythm as cd keys. With each patch release a list of warezed keys are blacklisted within the binaries, at the same time any keysets they decide not to use are deactivated...

every time infogrames recieve a complaint that a key has stopped working they request proof of purchase and the back page of the manual (bearing the key) are posted off to the local support office and are apparently aiming to get new keys to the gamers next-day... that way they can deactivate keys and only let the legitimate owners continue to play...

think of it as a primative form of product activation, heh

as the patcher is an online process (manual is possible but v. buggy) that will slap a lot of warez monkeys around...

neverwinter nights is designed to be a game that you learn in singleplayer but ultimately play online/group based - sure the single player is quite large (60 odd hours) but many will get ten times more from the multiplayer elements... not only does the game appeal to masses of rpg-fans but all the dice rollers are buying it too because it's the first true representation of the ad&d ruleset...

anyhoo - must dash... got to write loads before tomorrow... erk!

 

[Embattle]

Proof of purchase would be a problem for me...I only keep the receipt for a short period of time although I guess I could use my statement etc although this shouldn't be a problem for genuine cases any how, well not often.

Might get NwN when I get better just to see what the fuss is about.

WinDVD system is good.

 

[Sar]

Originally posted by Xavier
As PC games go I can think of a few others which were ~£40 but that's generally involved some kind of special edition (tin or something) heh, unless your local branch of game is under martial law they probably didn't have a shotgun to your temple forcing you to spend that much - I'm guessing that rather than wait for a delivery from the likes of play.com you decided the £39.99 was acceptable to get the game up to a week earlier... so quit bitching!!

Well, dunno if that was in reply to my initial post, but I did in fact go elsewhere and buy it cheaper - I was just pissed off that the place I usually go to to get my games seemed to be charging an arm and a leg.

And I mentioned about the Tin Box Ed. of RtCW as an example of certain games retailing higher than the norm - shit game but nm eh?

 

[xane]

Originally posted by Durzel
Consoles have pretty much always worked on the "loss leader" formula, otherwise known as the "razor and razorblades" formula. Sell the hardware at a loss, recoup the losses on the software.

This has also been the policy on Inkjet Printers and Cartridges for ages, in fact one manufacturer is now chipping cartridges to prevent clones and refilling

 

[Xavier]

Originally posted by camazotz


This has also been the policy on Inkjet Printers and Cartridges for ages, in fact one manufacturer is now chipping cartridges to prevent clones and refilling

would you prefer they made a loss selling you the printer and then didn't sell any ink to recoup the lost $$$. ?

Of course they could always take the subsidy off, triple the prices of some printers and then you'd be moaning about the fact you can't afford the latest printer. it's just like prepay mobiles - the four network subsidised the handsets and recouped money on talktime...


I can't believe the bunch of whining freeloaders people in general seem to be turning into... the world isn't out to get you, nor are evil capitalists at the top of every company grubbing their hands at the thought of the 1000% markups they've managed to slip onto the latest pc title... the internet, broadband specifically seems to have made many of us pretty greedy, why pay for your games if you can download them? and when the price is slightly more than expected, threads like this appear moaning at Game for a price they've had passed down by their distributor...

the buyers at the likes of GAME/EB have probably never heard of NeverWinter Nights, they just get response figures based on marketing to determine how big a seller it's likely to be and add a standard (pretty minute) markup on their buy price (which is based on Development, Marketing, Testing, Publishing and distribution costs...) the game costs £39.99 because that's what they've been told to charge - hence RRP. Companies like virgin and HMV are primarily music retailers and can afford to make less on their games as the markup on audio cd's is far bigger... if you don't agree with paying so much the only way it will ever change is for game to shift more copies, hence buy in greater volume and negotiate lower buying costs - which require your support (and therefore custom) not for you to nip round the corner to a music shop and then make derogatory comments at the wrong party...

With regards to the loss-leader methodology the simple truth is that companies make these subsidies and charge what they do because they're the prices the market will bear - likewise if people didn't want to spend £40 on neverwinter nights then it wouldn't sell - incidentally after visiting my local GAME on Saturday I noticed that NwN had totally sold out... so much for any consumer disgust or uprising...

Working on TechNation we get to play with a lot of free kit and some poeple think that none of us pay for hardware anymore, we get the usual expeced jibes about being freeloaders and lucky b*sts, but it simply isn't true, alongside the test machines we run we each have a personal machine which we've shelled out for, and in some instances I've dropped my own $$$ on parts and components needed for test machines... overall I'm quite out of pocket but I enjoy what I do so that's ok... One of the things I've learned writing for T|N, and the magazines is that in all but a few cases the prices are easily justified... I regularly get emails moaning about the prices of the top graphics cards - for these people the slower offerings are no option, and in their own little world I'm sure they feel quite hard done by. In reality they're asking for products which account for less than 2% of the turnover for the likes of nVIDIA for 'mainstream' prices which just isn't realistic... again in some cases these manufacturers make a loss on their GPU's, but the exposure through the press is what sells their mainstream parts and makes the money...

Consider a game like NwN, it has between 60-100 hours of gameplay in single player depending on how much of the subplots u get involved in.. and no subscription to pay. You'll still be playing it in 6+ months time with one charge of £40, which is about half of the amount you'd be paying for the likes of DAoC... couple that fact with the ability to design, host and DM your own worlds and I really can't see any reason to kick off, let alone post a thread just because a game that's been developed for half a decade costed £10 more in GAME than you'd have expected to pay...

 

[xane]

Originally posted by Xavier
would you prefer they made a loss selling you the printer and then didn't sell any ink to recoup the lost $$$. ?

I'd prefer to pay slightly more than £50 for a cheap Inkjet and then NOT pay £25 to refill the f*cker. In fact I'd prefer not to pay £30 a shot to refill my old Inkjet I paid over £300 for !

The situation with Inkjets has reached a serious "obvious rip off" point, you have to consider who is doing the freeloading here, plus the fact that all printer manufacturers are doing this stinks of a "cabal mentality".

Example: (prices from d*bs all incl. VAT)

Epson C20UX USB £51.69
"an affordable color printer, boasting all the latest EPSON technologies for the first time buyer"

Black Cartridge £10.57
Colour Catridge £15.27

Total cost £25.84, almost exactly 50% of initial cost

"affordable printer" ? maybe, not "affordable ink" tho.