What’s mean, green, and a consummate retail killing machine? No, it’s not an inflatable Hulk cupcake dispenser (although that could work), it’s Infinity Ward’s Modern Warfare 2. Furious boycotts be damned, the game disdainfully shoved its way to launch day sales exceeding 4.7 million in the UK and US, tactically nuking the previous record of 3.6 million units shifted by Grand Theft Auto IV. That’s a lot of money in Bobby Kotick’s piggy bank, not least of all, the imperious cynic might claim, because the game debuted a recommended retail price point at $10 / £10 over regular AAA releases in those regions.
Here’s the thing, though. Just prior to the game’s release in the UK, a price war erupted between retailers. Now, gaming is massive business in the UK. Okay, it’s massive business pretty much everywhere in the first world these days, but you can walk into a supermarket in London and browse the latest releases while you’re shopping for toilet paper and Jaffa Cakes and other stuff that English people buy. Keep this in mind for a few minutes.
While high street franchises like Game and HMV knocked just £10 off the Xbox and PS3 RRP to £44.99, supermarket chains Asda and Sainsbury’s (Checkers and Pick ‘n’ Pay, basically) aggressively undercut the other guys at a frankly predatory £32 and £26 respectively (R393, R319 at an approximate exchange rate of about R12.30 to the pound), while online retailer Amazon UK promptly responded with their own price cut to £32.
Within 24 hours of launch, the game had pushed 1.23 million copies in the UK, almost doubling GTAIV’s record 631 000. So while the overall launch sales increase from GTAIV to Modern Warfare 2 across both regions was 30.5%*, it was a overwhelming 94.9% increase in the UK. So back to those people shopping for toilet paper and Jaffa Cakes then, and how many of those Modern Warfare 2 sales were impulse buys? Or perhaps, if Asda and Sainbury’s hadn’t been screwing over everyone else, how many of those 1.23 million sales would never have happened?
Scientists have proven that humans are genetically hardwired to blow cash on good deals. Well, maybe they haven’t actually technically proven it, but it would be like proving that humans are genetically hardwired to like cupcakes – an egregious waste of time, in other words. Anyway, point is that people are very likely to buy stuff if it’s cheap. I don’t know about the rest of you (actually, NPD does), but I’d buy a brand new Xbox or PS3 release for R319 if I saw it**.
Modern Warfare 2 was always going to sell by the container shipload, but it’s absolutely safe to say that UK sales were inflated (perhaps quite substantially) by the stupefyingly low prices offered. Of course, that’s not exactly a divine epiphany or anything, but maybe it’s time publishers and distributors reexamined their pricing strategies. Why wait for the budget reissue two years down the way, when you can sell all those copies now instead? Not only would this likely reduce early piracy somewhat (there are probably a few people who, when they say they’ll get around to buying it when the price comes down, might actually mean it), but it also means a quick install base, and consequently a larger market up front, for incoming DLC – people who will spend that money on the DLC, because they saved it on the price of the game. Bobby Kotick still gets to fund his exotic dinosaur theme park (or whatever it is he needs so much money for), and gamers are happy.
* Inconveniently, at the time of writing, the sales figures for the US alone are not yet available.
** Unless it was Ninja Blade 2.***
*** Which would never happen, anyway, because nobody would be stupid enough to finance a sequel to such an abominable game.
Discuss Modern Warfare 2 pricing in the forums
Loading ...
