How Black Friday is killing the retail video game market

25 November 2016

Black Friday have actually been responsible for poor video game sales, reports MCV.

Despite a number of great discounts and offerings, retailers say that Black Friday is a major factor in the UK software market being down.

“This is due to consumers holding off spending until Black Friday. Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare, Watch Dogs 2 and Titanfall 2 have been among the games that have underperformed in their first weeks on shelves.”

The situation was so bad this year that publishers may reportedly begin launching their games after the “shopping holiday” so that game sales are not so negatively affected.

That means next year new games won’t see the same heavy discounts they did in 2016, although it could ensure the survival of some fan-favourite franchises.

“The market cannot turn around now. Pre-orders and the first couple of weeks sales are enormously important to both publishers and retailers but there have been some appalling results this year due to Black Friday, and customers waiting to see if the games are broken or if the scores are decent.”

“It’s hard to see why publishers would release games in November going forward. Black Friday is the worst thing to happen to UK retail.”


Now read: Awesome Black Friday gaming specials

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  1. Lupus
    25.11.2016 at 17:18

    Perhaps it’s because the price of gaming is getting ridiculous, I mean 80 dollars for a new release, which translates to a lot of money.

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