This article potentially sheds more light on the GCU situation. Mainly, it could be the game publishers pushing BB to kill it off, as it’s competing with selling new games full price digitally. This also might explain why we’re not seeing certain games available on Amazon.
To make matters worse, it appears certain game distributors have recently begun taking issue with Amazon’s discount strategy. In order to combat the lower price, high-profile titles like Star Wars Battlefront II, Detroit: Become Human and Marvel’s Spider-Man weren’t or are no longer available for pre-order at all. In some cases digital pre-orders are still being offered, but the 20 percent discount doesn’t apply to digital goods.
I think they are going to find that those buyers (i.e., the price-sensitive ones) aren’t the ones itching for digital copies anyway. Good luck convincing those guys to pony up full MSRP for a limited-use product.
My response come October will be waiting for a sale or buying used rather than ponying up $60. Regarding digital sales, diminished usage and diminished value mean waiting for the diminished price.
This is very short-sighted of them. I don’t typically purchase new games on release, digital or physical. Due to Amazon’s discount, I saw no reason not to buy Monster Hunter at release. Full price, I might have waited until it was even cheaper than that, and I prefer to have a disc for console anyway.
I think this is not going to work out the way they think it is.
With GCU gone and Amazon 20% preorder gone (though it’s rare I buy games pre-release these days) it seems like Gamestop’s Elite is the next best thing for 20% off used once my GCU expires.
I’m not surprised though, 20% off used games seems like a much more sustainable business model than 20% off new games. This just means that publishers will no longer get get direct revenue from me.
Amazon started the 20% pre-order to compete with GCU. Amazon has already started lessening the amount of games that could be pre-ordered (thus not giving the discount), then stopped allowing the 20% discount for the two weeks after release, so now that GCU is over that probably seals it’s fate.
I can understand your concern, but I don’t know why you would get a pre-order discount after a game is released, and I’ve yet to see a game that doesn’t have it, at least for console. If they pull out due to GCU going down, well that will be wide news but right now, it’s still there. Vampyr, Jurassic World Evolution, The Crew 2 and even Mario Tennis Aces all have the pre-order discount.
Two of the three titles named in the linked article as examples of Amazon not offering preorders are Sony-published, in case anyone wants to know where to lay the blame for publisher pressure.
And yes, cutting off physical discounts to try to push full-priced digital versions is just going to lead to fewer sales overall, not to people shrugging and spending the extra money on copies they can’t resell or lend to friends and family.
What do you mean you don’t know why I would get a pre-order discount after a game has released? Amazon’s 20% discount was active for games up to 2 weeks AFTER release. I don’t pre-order games (especially since companies have gotten stingy with reviews) so being able to see the release feedback in the first week was crucial to my buying decision. Now that it’s not there I don’t order new releases from Amazon, and ended up being what pointed out GCU to me and why I signed up there.
So since I never preorder games Amazon’s discount is worthless to me. So instead of buying the game for $48 from amazon a week from release (and getting 5% cash back with my amazon card) I’ll instead just get gamestop elite pro (once my GCU expires) and buy the game used for $44 ($5 off for used, then 20% off for elite).
Yeah, it was only super useful as a discount when it allowed you do it for 2 weeks after release. Once they got rid of that, I never used that discount again.
Wow, that’s nuts. I never knew it did 2 weeks after! I would just go to Best Buy after release. Oh well, hard to be upset about something I never knew about haha
Let me rephrase. I know why it would be useful to be able to order a new game at a discount within the two weeks of release, I just don’t think the label pre-order implies you should be able to get the discount after release.
My initial point is Amazon’s pre-order discount remains in place and is not gone, at least today, if you actually pre-order the game, as in before release. As for specific studio spats, well I didn’t try and order every upcoming games, so yeah there could be a select few it’s not available with.
And of course none of the invalidates any disappointmens for any changes they’ve made over the years.
Sounds like KallDrexx just didn’t realize the pre-order portion of Amazon’s discount program was still around since he rarely pre-orders. I don’t think he was truly arguing that the term “pre-order” should apply beyond the release date.
It’s not just the fact you can’t use Amazon’s pre-order discount on everything that’s a problem, it’s also that they can’t seem to ship the games so you’ll receive them on release day either.
With the escalation in the price of Prime and their inability to ship me games on time, I’m out when Prime needs to be renewed next year. I won’t pay $120 a year for their crap.
Gamer’s Club Unlocked was an excellent program because ALL new games are 20% off. You also get rewards points that result in further discounts at a later date when you’ve got enough points. If the publishers are forcing Best Buy to stop, they’re only slitting their own throats and will ultimately help put Best Buy out of business too.
Between this and the way they f— with Gamestop all the time, It’s like the game publishers want there to be no retail for videogames anymore. They just don’t understand that once there’s nobody selling games, consumers will forget about gaming! Retailers aren’t going to sell a console at cost for them out of the goodness of their hearts.
That is obviously going to happen. It’s inevitable. Physical videogame stores are on their way out. Every year an increasing number of sales are online.
Notwithstanding DLC, used game sales make developers and publishers zero dollars so they couldn’t care less if that market evaporated, even if that means fewer total players. In fact, the DLC/preorder bonus/etc bonanza started specifically to try to kill used game sales in an indirect way because they were too scared to challenge GameStop and co at the time.
