charlequin said:
Not true at all. Player's Choice/Greatest Hits games, even completely "core"-focused ones, sell tons of copies. Lots of games actually sell better at GH than they do at full price -- the original God of War did more than half its LTD at $20. These are the games people who buy a console late (or just don't spend as much money on games) are seeing on the big endcap at Wal-Mart or picking up along with the system.
One of the biggest disservices Nintendo's new direction (and the industry response to it) has done for gaming discussion is creating the idea that "dedicated/core" and "casual" describe what kinds of games people play rather than how often they play them. Before this generation, most people would correctly understand that a "casual gamer" was often (maybe even "mostly") someone who played more or less the same types of games as other gamers but did so less frequently and paid less attention to "gaming" as a hobby.
Eh, I disagree. The way I used "core" was correct. I was saying the game appeals to the core demographic, which has X buying habit. That has existed long before Nintendo's new direction. The core demographic of game purchasers is less interested in older games as a rule. I wasn't referring to the type of game, I was saying that a console Zelda appeals to the core demo of 12-34 y/o males. The expanded market (say, my mother, who has bought around 6 Wii games now) isn't going to buy a Zelda game.
I know a lot of games sell better at GH than their original price, but I question whether that would happen for Nintendo's titles in particular. It might not take much to outsell Excite Truck, but for Nintendo it might be a question of whether it's worth the cost to bother with it again. God of War was a big budget title that had a gameplay style with a lot broader appeal than Excite Truck. It sold well at the GH price because it reduced the risk for interested parties who would like to try it but wouldn't bite at the full price. I don't think Excite Truck even has the pool of interested parties to make the price drop mean anything.
No, nobody is going to do this. People only wait out price drops on games they'd otherwise pay full price for when they're fast.
Oh, I guess I'm the only one who does it, perhaps.
Personally, as many do, I hit a point where I really can't afford every game I want. When I hit a point where I want both Game A and Game B to pretty much the same extent, and I know Game A is going to drop in price eventually while Game B will stay at its current price, it makes sense for me to buy Game B now and play it while waiting for Game A to drop in price eventually.
I agree with comments that I think you made before (not bothering to recheck now) that not all games should be priced at the $50/$60 price. I bought Katamari mostly because it was at a discount price and I was willing to take the risk. I think that's what we're dealing with a lot when we talk about price -- risk for the consumer. But before that we have to consider the total pool of interested consumers for whom price is keeping them from purchasing. With a quirky racing game like Excite Truck, how big is that group?
Those are unrelated issues. Big box stores will go out of their way to order lines like Player's Choice and fill endcaps with them because having as many $20 "impulse purchases" as they can catching people's eyes as they shop is beneficial to them. Stores like Gamestop will naturally devote space to titles like this as a system matures because they make easy "adds" for someone purchasing a console -- it's easier to convince someone to put a $20 extra game on top of their console purchase than a $50 one.
And you don't advertise Greatest Hits games, you just put them out there and let the price do the talking.
True, many stores will go out of their way to populate their shelves with the lower-priced games. But at this point, probably at the cost of shelf space for third-party titles, I'd imagine.
GameStop is more interested in sales of used titles. Selling a used game at $18 will often be more beneficial to them than the Player's Choice title at $20. I could see the argument that the Player's Choice line would get more consumers to come in and seek out those titles which makes it easier for GameStop to sell them, but that doesn't really help Nintendo.
GameStop is already using their used games as adds for their console sales. That's what they like.
Errr... right, which means that instead of getting no money for these games being sold they can make some money? This is a good thing.
I'm sorry if my answers are a little curt, but, like, these might have been sensible questions to ask in, like, 1997 before anyone had ever tried this sort of promotional structure, but at this point we've had thirteen years of all three current hardware companies using these systems and it's not really in question whether or how well they work anymore.
The reason I said that was because they can't really beat the prices of the used market. Right now you can get Excite Truck EASILY for $12-$15. Why pick up Excite Truck at $20 when it's so easy to get it cheaper? Will Excite Truck have any appeal to people outside of those who already purchased it? I think Nintendo realizes that not many more are really going to care about the game, and if they do get interested in the game due to the PC branding, they will also see the used price version right next to it.
I don't mind you being curt about it. I'll admit that to some degree (not entirely) I'm playing devil's advocate for the sake of discussion. I've found that you and I generally echo the same sentiments in threads so I'm taking this opportunity to explore some territory from the other side
Moving on, I think the recent history of this stuff is actually what has made Nintendo so hesitant to do it again. I'll get into this more in a moment.
I think this is kind of an overblown concern, though. Nintendo of Japan remind me of an immigrant Depression-era grandmother a lot of the time, making bullheaded decisions out of a poverty mentality that usually just doesn't apply to the actual situation they're in. None of the titles I'd propose for first-party Player's Choice selections really compete with any of the evergreen titles since they'd all either be purely single-player (SMG, TP) or feature-light multiplayer "arcade" games (Excite Truck).
I think we can safely say that these titles are evergreen because of the expanded market that Wii is appealing to, where people are buying the console fresh and looking to these titles, or simply buying games "whenever" as opposed to at release.
Do you think that an officially branded Nintendo "Player's Choice" line, however, would make the expanded market consumers think twice about paying full price for NSMB Wii? This other Mario game (Galaxy) is $20. Why is NSMB Wii so expensive?
I think that Nintendo does make bullheaded decisions a lot of the time, but let's also consider that they're coming off of a generation where, with the GameCube, they resorted to almost firesale tactics with frequent price drops that I think ended up hurting the brand image. Nintendo at this point, I think, wants to position themselves as a "premier quality" brand as opposed to the "budget" brand.
Lastly, I think a Player's Choice line at this point would actually hurt third-parties by calling more attention and requiring more shelf space for the PC titles, and also drawing more consumers into purchasing the discounted PC titles than the "risky" third-party titles.
Here's something that I've been thinking about recently:
What I would be more in favor of at this point would be something closer to a PC line that highlighted only high-quality third-party titles that have passed their initial "big sales" run. This could have the effect of improving third-party sales and be a goodwill gesture to some publishers and developers. When the game purchaser comes in for their high-quality, "safe" Nintendo software, they may consider these Nintendo-approved third-party titles because Nintendo is sort of giving them their nod of approval. It would be a low-cost way for Nintendo to promote third-party efforts as well as improve the overall image of their library while not discounting their own "premier" software.
I think something else to consider is the major expansion of the used games market and how prevalent it is becoming, even outside of Gamestop now. It's possible that as it has grown, it has and will continue to limit the effectiveness of Player's Choice lines.