Talking about price depression

[Backov]

http://store.steampowered.com/sub/1764/

Holy frigging crap.

I have about 1/3rd of those games, but that's just unprecedented. I bought it.

[Junkyard Sam]

Wow, that IS quite a deal.

Popcap has similar deals if you search for them - where you can buy their entire catalog for under $100...

This whole industry relies on consumers buying into the marketing and wanting it "now" instead of later. Consumers that want the latest-and-greatest games are what make the high $ titles possible.

Things could change drastically if consumers figure out how much money they can save if they just wait for the games to reduce in prices. There's such a flood of good titles that eventually come down in prices that a person might as well just wait.

Waiting for Xbox360 games to drop to $19.99 is sort of like what I've done on iPhone (my platform of choice) --- all games eventually hit $.99

I paid $5.99 for Tower Bloxx Deluxe 3d and today it's $.99 ... So I've learned my lesson. It all drops, so I just wait... and by waiting I have a steady stream of great $.99 titles to play. It's amazing. (as a consumer, anyway.) And don't even get me started about buying games on Ebay. WOW.

I just hope the mass of consumers don't catch on to this, but I think they are. Consider the state of the economy... Hundreds of thousands of job cuts every month, month after month after month for the last year. Entry level jobs are flooded with hundreds and hundreds of resumes... This HAS to have an effect on people's purchases (sure they'll always buy the A titles, but the less $ they have, the less chances they'll take with B and C titles.)

I know the guys that made Gears of War 2 were surprised by the number of people who rented-instead-of-bought. I don't think they saw the royalties they were expecting, and the game dropped to the lower price quicker than expected.

Times are changing. More competition at every level. This talk and these threads appear here all the time (I just did a search and they go back to 2004, hehe!) - but I read a lot of underground economic news (i.e. NOT what you see on CNN/Fox or other mainstream media) and the fact is --- EVERYTHING is changing - and faster than ever. Most of us are just so tuned into their own industries that we don't realize the enormity of it all. Not to mention some real significant things have happened at the Fed level to our currency that we've yet to feel...

Hopefully games will evolve to some kind of online-play-only scheme. Too much is lost from rentals and resales. That's a huge plus of digital delivery. I can't just transfer my Steam purchases to someone else!

But back to the original post:
All those games for less of the cost of Bioshock when it first came out! Wow.

[PoV]

Yikes! I wish I still actually cared about playing games. I have about a quarter of those (CIV!!), but that's still a bargain.

Speaking of pricing WTF, I bought Toki Tori for a buck today (iPhone), and I never buy iPhone games. Hmm.

I just hope the mass of consumers don't catch on to this, but I think they are.

Oh, they know. Looking at my sales, they totally know. Yet I still avoid it since I have proxy products I can 99 cent (Smiles Zen and Smiles Drop, 2 halfs of the full game Smiles).

[Bad Sector]

While i would like to buy some of these (especially BioShock - i forgot my DVD in Athens and i want to finish this game!), i don't really like most of them so i don't see it as something very interesting.

Which makes me wonder if this would be more successful if these deals included games which are likely to be liked by the same person. Or would it be less successful because it drives sales to less selling games?

[puddinlover]

By the looks they are just selling older games with the bioshock hype, but regardless they are great games at an even better price, so stock up now before this deal is gone! (or by gone I mean till it comes back after xmas next year with more games and a cheaper price)

[PoV]

My brother keeps borrowing my Civ discs, so I bite. I've been meaning to reinstall Steam anyways. Sid's Pirates is one I've wanted to try for a while, as well as the XCom's. Not a lot I can complain about.

[Backov]

My brother keeps borrowing my Civ discs, so I bite. I've been meaning to reinstall Steam anyways. Sid's Pirates is one I've wanted to try for a while, as well as the XCom's. Not a lot I can complain about.

That's pretty much my thought - I owned Civ IV and the expansions already (Steam), and I used to own Bioshock until I lent the disk to someone, but the rest is all goodness. Some of them I wanted to play at the time but never got around to buying, like Shattered Union and Freedom Force (which is really hard).

[PoV]

I did a quick check of all the other major publishers on the service. Seems 2k was the only one that had a list of titles I wanted to get my hands on. There were a couple others (Settlers), but pretty much every other title I cared about I already own. Telltale, I can wait for cheaper bundles.

Not a lot of notable non FPS PC exclusives.

[blinkok]

i just end up at the front page. is there something in particular i should look for

[PoV]

Unless it's unavailable in your area, that link should take you to the "Huge 2K Games" bundle pack, with like 20 games in it for $53.99 US.

[blinkok]

"unavailable in my area" apparently so. so much for the internet huh

[Jack Norton]

Unless it's unavailable in your area, that link should take you to the "Huge 2K Games" bundle pack, with like 20 games in it for $53.99 US.

Or if you're so stupid to live in europe, 53,99€ !!
I'm tempted not to buy just for that... 53,99€ = 75.64 usd!
Still a good deal, of course.
I actually own/played almost all of those games except bioshock otherwise I might be tempted to buy on steam for the first time (and probably last, since they keep charging europeans more without any reason).

[PoV]

Yeah seriously, I don't envy you guys that have a dollar that doesn't look like this "$".

[vjvj]

Steam generally does lots of "Get everything from such and such publisher for a low price" deals. They've already done it with id, Epic, THQ, Ubisoft, and Relic, among others. They also do lots of theme packs and series packs. The strategy seems to be to take a pack of old games that don't sell and anchor them to something still new or relevant (in this case, Bioshock and Civ IV). Of course, we all know that the best game in the 2k pack is REALLY X-Com

I just hope the mass of consumers don't catch on to this, but I think they are.

I don't know, I think the divide between early adopters/coupon hunters/relatedness (me-too) spenders/impulse buyers/etc. is plain old business 101 to the marketing/business guys out there and I'm not really sure the percentages are changing in any significant way. The 2k pack doesn't contradict this paradigm at all... Bioshock and Civ IV are WELL out of their early adopter/normal price window (Bioshock in particular has been available for $20 on Steam for a very long time now). I'm sure Bioshock 2 will still launch at full price, and sales will be in the same ballpark as Bioshock 1.