Quote Originally Posted by j_factor View Post
I'm not sure what this has to do with the post you quoted, I didn't say anything about retail prices.

But since you brought it up. I think games were more likely to vary in price a decade ago. $50 was the most common MSRP, but it was far from universal. There were lots of $20, $30, and $40 games back then. There were even a few $10 games like The Italian Job and Ball Breakers. $10 in 2002 is equal to $12.80 in 2012 and I'm not seeing any new releases for $12.99. Nowadays, there are very few exceptions to the $60 rule, aside from new editions of previously existing games.

NES and SNES games were more expensive because they were on cartridge. Computer games during that time were certainly not nearly that much.



The merger with EB expanded the name "Gamestop" only. It didn't expand the business, if anything it slightly shrunk it as some locations were closed, being deemed too close to each other.



I guess this is a regional thing, because out here, the number of Gamestops today is definitely not greater than the former number of Babbages + EB Games + Funcoland + whatever else.



Yeah, well, so are lots of things. *shrug*



I don't remember that happening, they cost about the same as they always have.
There is actually quite a bit of price variation in MSRP on modern console games. For example, Anarchy Reigns just came out at $30 yesterday. There are also a number of other games released in the past year on 360 and PS3 that had MSRPs of $30, $40 and $50. When you add in all of the full games being released exclusively on XBL and PSN at $5-$20, you have plenty of price choices, it's simply that the lower end MSRP games aren't being released on retail discs anymore. That doesn't change the fact that they are readily available and at those price points.

I've been a computer gamer since the early 80s and I have quite a large collection of computer games in their original packaging including price stickers. There were $50-$60 games as early as the 1980s (although there were also plenty of games with an MSRP of $20, $30 or $40) and many, many $50-$60 PC releases in the 90s. In fact, I'm looking at my Sierra collection and most of those have $50 price stickers on them from Software Etc.

Your facts on the various Gamestop mergers are just plain inaccurate. Gamestop is actually the product of the 1994 merger of Babbage's and Software Etc. in 1994 which at the time had a combined 700 stores. They reached 800 stores in the US before they declined down to 600 by 1996. At the time of the merger in 2005, after various sales and acquisitions, including Funcoland, Gamestop and EB had about 4000 stores combined. Today they have over 6700 stores with an average of 400 new stores opening per year since 2009. So, they are clearly in an expansion mode. I now have four GS locations within six miles of my home where five years ago there was only one. Other than the closure of local Hollywood Video, we never had any other used game stores in the area previous to this. While it's anecdotal, I'm sure my area isn't isolated in the transformation GS has made in providing a ready venue to trade-in and buy used games.

Three years ago, as sales were collapsing on both DVDs and CDs, the music industry and studios tried various pricing experiments with $10 new release CDs and DVDs. It turned out that sales were just as flat as they were at $15-$20. The same thing is going on with Blu Rays right now and the average movie sells for $20 when a few years ago it was closer to $30.

You're right that lots of things are causing the video game industry to have financial issues. That doesn't change the fact that used sales are a big and growing part of that problem and it is very likely that the business model will change, perhaps into something more akin to Steam with its efforts at allowing consumers to resell digital content licenses.