You just knew that .97pence would be in tescos price somewhere!

I wonder if anyone knows what percentage of day one sales will come from the supermarkets? Would be interesting to see rather than speculate.

Tesco are also selling it online for the same price with free delivery if you are unable to make it instore

These prices are absolutely ridiculous. Something needs to be done to stop Supermarkets doing prices drops like this because it just harms Independents who have a legitimate interest in Games rather than a passing interest in dragging the parents of the kids into their stores to get them to do some shopping while they are there.

PC World price match the supermarkets. So you get 110%.

About £23.50.

Don't know how they would feel about bulk buying though.

is it on ps3 for £24.97?

Yes, all of these prices are fot both Xbox 360 and PS3.

Surely if gamestation have stated the it will match the price if the store is within a certain distance, why should the consumers have to ask about the price match? charging the same game at the same store with a £15 difference, thats ludicrious

currys and pc world are cheaper at £23.50 instore and on-line

@Anthony Sewell,

I don't think there's any harm in it. Games like FIFA and CoD (supermarket favourites) will sell well all year round, while these prices are only temporary - they'll have a very limited number of copies I'd expect. Better than £55, which is ludicrous.

Plus, the price of bread and milk is up so I'm all for saving money at the checkout!

the supermarkets kill of small shops by doing this,then when something better comes along they will stop selling games.
lucky centresoft can afford to lose custom as indies will not buy from them and compete with supermarkets.

I always see MCV report about what Game and Gamestation are selling at but why hasn't anyone mentioned that Blockbuster Games is retailing it at 34.99. Thats Cheaper than Gamestation, Game and Sainsbury

Ok sure Morrisions, Asda and Tesco are cheaper but come off it at least Blockbuster Games is worth a mention, seems like the only press Blockbuster get's off this site is about there America stores goings under.

Yes, Anthony. Something does need to be done. Games need to cost less generally. An RRP of £49.99 is absolutely ridiculous. The game developers/publishers simply need to decrease their greed levels.

Simples.

JUst rang gamestation in redhill surrey to comfrim that this was true before i make my to the shop, the manager told me that he would not price match because he would have to go tescos first before he could do that and no one can go. so does this mean that gamestation are telling us a load of ? ( i think so)

Went to Asda And Tesco last night just for a look

Asda FAreham had 300+ people but stock was tight

Tesco Portsmouth had 150 people very little left at 8am

Asda Doris's at Havant one of the biggest in the country forgot to sell any at midnight they had no staff to help sell it so they did not bother

Asda Doris's Havant started selling at 8am today - no-one knew what a Elite Bundle for £187 was

As a Whinging Indie you all love to hate we have sold 87 so far today

people still love to trade in

I just bought this game for the PS3 after reading this article! What a BARGAIN! :)

I agree with Burner ..." wonder if anyone knows what percentage of day one sales will come from the supermarkets? "

I can imagine with deals like this the percentage to be quiet high!

Can't wait for all those lovely trade-ins of Fifa 10 in 2 weeks time

I'll most likely buy Modern Warfare 2 from an indie or GAME/Gamestation as I'll want to bring that price down from the stupid £55.99 (that is unless supermakets go cheap on that too).

But when a new game is £25 I'm not going to bother trading in at indie when all I'm doing is effectively giving away games to bring the price down to what is already available at supermarkets.

A friend got his from a 24hour Asda - said there were dozens of people there already when he got there around 11:00pm! Madness! I'm looking forward to playing it but I could contain my excitement enough to wait until this morning to pick it up.

Amazon UK have joined in aswell - £24.97 + free P&P

I smell a rat here. These companies certainly didn't pay anywhere near what indies did for this game.

Whilst the marketing concepts at play here intrigue me greatly, especially with TescoEntertainment honouring the same in-store price, the fact that it is happening is hardly bothering my indy head. This has now caused Amazon to price-match them (yes, Amazon are selling it for £24.97 on P3/X3 too).

The bargain hunters will always be bargain hunters, they use comparison sites and forums to find the cheapest prices already. Indy's rely primarily on return customers, customers that trust you to stock and deliver. Supermarkets are not in our arena and never will be.

Adam
from the Indy that'll be sold out of FIFA 10 by lunchtime

we have sold all our fifa 10 at £39.99 today. anybody who bought the game from us will get a good trade in price anybody who bought from tescos etc will get a much lower trade in price. all year we have been ordering a lot less new games and keeping just enough on the shelfs. preowned is were we indies make our money and we as a company look at new games as just away of getting more preowned games. its not going to change however much we shout about it. cover your preorders with the main distrubuters and then pop down to tescos and pick a few cheaper copys on release day if you need more stock.

how many copy's have been brought in

we were told on an email to try avoid price matching ASDA in our local town as the price they are selling it at is running at a loss for gamestation. if we priced at what asda were pricing we would be givng away stock.

as you can imagine 1 or 2 very upset customers that we wouldnt price match asda because its a 24 hour promotion.

the lady then came back to us because the que was too big at asda. lol morrals much.

will there be copy's of fifa 10 in game or gamestation around 4o'clock today ? can anybody help :S cheers .... :P lol LOCATION BEDFORD

Yes, I can categorically confirm that the Bedford branch of GAME will have exactly 11 copies of FIFA 10 in stock at 4:00pm later today. Sadly, Gamestation will have just 8 copies left by that time.

@EMPLOYEE

So, you are saying that you have been told to purposefully try and avoid honouring your own price match policy? Surely that makes you a bit of a rubbish person? If GAMESTATION has a policy which says supermarkets within 10 miles will be price-matched, how can you avoid price-matching? Tell your boss to either drop the policy altogether or always honour it. Otherwise it's just ridiculous.

By the way, I told my workmate that Gamestation would price-match the supermarkets, and he has just been and got it. So at least not all outlets are cheating.

Price matching does not apply to 'Sale' or 'Promotional' offers.

The supermarkets are doing these dumbass prices for 24hrs or until monday. This makes it a promotion. Therefore theres no need to price match.

ive just bought 20 copies from tesco, sorry csoft, but 32.99 + vat is too high i need it lower, ill only add £5 to my price, such a shame, can someone tell me if tesco are paying the same price as me ?as mcv ran a story from a supermarket manager who says they never sell anything without profit, we have had so many kids in wanting cash for trade ins so thy can go up tesco, we wont do cash only trade ins.

That's fine. So if there is a clear definition of the Gamestation price-match policy and this excludes promotional offers, my mate shouldn't have just received a price-match at Gamestation. Correct?

The point I am making is, if promotional price-matching is not in the policy, then the poster named EMPLOYEE shouldn't have been told by his boss to 'try and avoid price-matching', as there would be no need to make any effort to not price-match something that is already excluded by the price-match policy. If a customer asks for the price-match, you simply refer them to the price-match policy which states that these promotional prices are excluded. Correct? Ah no, I assume there is no actual written policy in existence. He was obviously told to 'try and avoid price-matching' as it is the case that they do sometimes price-match these promotional prices. This is unfair and as far as I am aware, borderline illegal.

Do you see my point? If not, forget it. If so, apologise for not seeing it in the first place and then stop typing. You're just an silly person who can't accept that a supermarket is selling things for better prices, and that these so-called policies on price-matching are just infact equivalent to this: If you fancy price-matching something, do it. If not, don't. That isn't a policy, mate. A clearly-defined policy won't allow customer one to receive and price-match and customer two to not receive a price-match.

Simples.

Yeah, great work Henry - how clever of you to force the locals to pay extra just so your balcne sheet looks a little healthier. Everyone, quick, get behind the indies! What a decent bunch of caring folk!

Tesco will be getting it cheaper, but not much. There's no way they're making a profit at £24.99. If they where why would they be moving the price up on monday?

In all honesty store managers (in supermarkets) have no idea of what margins they're making. That statement from the store manager should be takien with a pinch of salt.

Surely Tesco must be making a loss. The reason the food prices are going up in these places is because they're discounting games, books, and electrical goods to compensate. This game cost me, as an indie, £36.80! I sold it at £39.95...that's why indies are dropping like flies.

arent you intelligent ! this is a big game alot of people want this game, alot of people cant pay for it in cash, if we dont stock it people cant trade in for it, its nothing to do with a balance sheet, if you were in business i guess you would buy from csoft for 32.33 + vat and you would sell it for £39.99 with a profit of about a £1 nice but you wont sell any as tesco etc are selling for below your cost price, what would you do genius ?? we are a games specialist thats all we sell if we dont sell games, people lose jobs, mortgages are at risk seriously,
supermarkets make profit on the other 2 billion products they sell, just think about it, i would love to sell items as low as possible, you cant sell a game at below cost price and still pay your employees, bills etc.
we try to give the best service we can, the best trade in prices, we even go to customers houses to set up wireless networks anything we can to provide a service, you cant just slag off al indies, try running a business for week see how much hassle there really is.

Just for the record I don't work for Gamestation. However I have worked for retailers who offer a price match and have the fore mentioned caviat. Otherwise whenever anyone does a clearout sale you stand to lose a lot of cash.

If Game group don't have this policy in place they've dropped a ball somewhere down the line.

No need for apologies or point scoring

It's like (some of) you indies simply don't get it.

What f*cking right do YOU have to ditate where I should or should not choose to get my games from? What if I don't WANT to trade in any games? Or don't have games to trade? What if I wanted to buy it new but had to pay more from your turgid little outlet that I would from Tesco because you'd bought up all the copies?

IF I wanted to trade in some games at your shop I'm free to do so. But that's my decision. Not yours.

Also, any trade in price I got from you would simply be off-setting the inflated price you'd added on to the Tesco price!

Honestly - I've heard people on this site calling for comments/forum to be closed to the public and to be for trade only. Not sure what that would solve as tw*ts like you would still be posting on there.

I've got every right, despite not being a retailer, to comment on here. That point is proven all the more by self-ritious mis-jedged outbursts from selfish little scrotes like you.

I honestly hope your business folds and you lose everything.

Come on chaps - we're fascinated reading the debate on here, but please, less of the name calling. Though the use of the word 'scrote' certainly commands a certain level of merit, let's try and remain civil.

It's obviously an issue that people on both sides of the counter feel passionate about, but can we please try and maintain a certain level of respect for one another.

Thanks

Well said Henry. These people haven't got a clue how hard it is to compete against these supermarkets. The customer is just another face to them.

Theres no need for that sort outburst Mr Cleft.

let's all play nice now.

wow glad your not one of my customers i dont think you get it,
we will buy from supermarkets but we never clear then out, you can only buy a certain ammounts and even then you have to take some friends up with you to tesco. when has anyone said you have to shop with me ? i treat all customers like friends as i appreciate their custom, would you prefer all indies close so you cant trade in any games anywhere just sell on ebay for a few quid ?
if you only come on here to welcome the close of peoples business, lose of earnings for families and plain name calling maybe you should go back to n4g

OK Ben, fair enough.

But as for Henry and Jez - don't insult my intelligence. I understand how tough it is for you indies to compete against the ludicrously low prices, of course. If you'd read the comments on here you'd see that we understand.

But what you don't understand is that, as a consumer (and as one of your potential customers) I'm interested in one thing - getting the lowest price possible. That's how capitalism works. I'm sorry your trade price is higher that what Tesco is selling the game for, I genuinely am. But do I care enough for that to alter my shopping habits? Clearly not.

And the thought that one of you would buy up all the supermarket stock and thus force me to pay a higher price makes my blood boil. What gives you the right? That's the onyl scandal in this thread.

Simon can i ask if you work in the games industry and if so what is your line of work as i am sure this price discounting may effect your job in some way.

people here are not forcing customers to buy from there shops they are trying to offer as best they can with a difficult situation.

running a business is about making profit it would be great to please all your customers by selling at a loss but how does that make sense - bills need paying.

so go enjoy FIFA you got it cheap well done so stop bitching.

last time i checked this was my business, so of course im selfish, im trying to keep myself in business, feed my child and my employees,
this business is hard work, i wish all games were 29.99 make things alot easier, there is little profit and supermarkets squeeze it even more, i wouldnt force anyone to shop here, there were plenty of fifa 10 left after i restocked, £30 is better than £40 which is the price i would have to charge buying from my supplier, i love you too simon, see you tonight at the resturant xx xx

As you ask, I used to work in games development back in the 8/16bit era but am know a freelance web designer. One of my regular clients is a consumer rights body - hence my interest in that field.

I don't wish indies any ill - I can only imagine how frustrating it is trying to compete with a retail superpower like Tesco. Several indies I've shopped at over the years have been and gone and it's sad.

But what gets on my goat is that notion that
A) I should feel in some way morally obliged to shop at an indie
B) I might be forced to pay a higher price because an indie has bought the stock from a public outlet and then inflated the price.

The injustices that you all complian of are nothing but inherent aspects of a capitalist system. There's no escaping them. Furthermore, they all work in the consumer's favour! That's why the bitching really grates.

Never thought I'd be siding with Game but I'd rather buy from them than ASDA etc. I would pick an independent but I don't know of any in Leeds.

Also, how much do people want to save £10? I live in the city centre so going to ASDA etc at midnight isn't on the cards and I know if I had done I'd have been caught in a massive queue and by the sound of these comments there might not have been any left or staff forgot to put them out.

£40 is fine by me. Love FIFA and will play it all year! Throw in my 800 game card points and I guess it is even a bit lower.

Real deal of the day is all the Elite packages with FIFA and ODST for like £200. If they are £75 for the paid, that's a £125 elite! The damn hard drive is nearly that much.

Why doesn't anybody bother to find out how much asda and tesco pay for fifa 10 at trade? how can they work out its good business if they sell it at a loss!! games sell regardless of price and if theres a triple a title released it will sell even if its £39.99 or £44.99!

thanks Simon Cleft i just wanted to know :D lol but it dont matter now i got it from tesco today for about £25

cheers

I have read all the comments so far on this thread and I find it unneccesary for people to slag off other people on this MCV board.
Its the monopolies commission that needs to be brought in quickly to stop these silly low low prices. Over the last few years Fifa has always been a £39.99 game, how have EA managed to make any kind of money this year with Fifa10, it beggers belief.

The Invoice price to Tescos and Asda is ofset against the marketing budget they get back from the publisher to stock there product hence allowing them to sell the games at cost-allocated marketing budget as they have already had there profit from that publisher this year.

As long as all the units leave the building there job is done.

Yoda: EA have made loads of cash with Fifa. They haven't discounted anymore than they normally do. The only companies losing on this are the retailers selling at a loss. Why should EA care what people retail at? They've got their cash thank you very much. All the price war does is increase week 1 sales. So EA are happy as larry.

Earl: I can't see the marketing pot making up the short fall of selling a game at £25. Its a market share grab/loss leader.

I think this all points to an absolute blood bath this xmas.

Thats a lie

Whats a Lie?

If the supermarkets have started this already with FIFA10 Im wondering what mad prices they will come out with for Unchartered2, Borderlands, Operation Flashpoint Dragon Rising and the most anticipated game this year that is Modern Warfare 2!!

A blood bath.................more like a complete massacre!

@40, Jon:
I work as a developer and yes this price cutting does affect people like me.

It makes us immensely happy that the thousands of gamers out there are playing this game without getting ripped off for it.

It makes us immensely happy that the sales figures of this game will be massive, encouraging the devs to keep on producing and improving something people obviously want to buy.

It makes us immensely happy that these sales figures will pacify publishers and give them encouragement in the fact that the right game will sell, thus not forcing them to cut more jobs.

Because lets not forget, however much the retailers cut the price, the publishers have got their desired cut, hence they are happy. The games industry is about gamers, not retailers profits, it's about time some of you remembered that. We don't make games for retailers to make a living out of, we make them for gamers to play, simple fact. When a game doesn't sell, we lose our jobs, we don't have the option of exploiting the gamer to keep us in business.

If you don't like the profit you are making, then there are thousands of alternate products for you to sell. I hear christmas goods are selling well this time of year.

I've already heard of some Tescos turning away people with more than 2 copies of the game, I am hoping this trend spreads and it becomes a standard policy.

@Yoda: EA don't make their money based on the game being £39.99. The developer/publisher cut is way below that figure, any price shennanigans that goes on above the developer/publisher cut, is neither here nor there. At £25, EA are making the amount of money they were probably expecting, thus are making no less than the game being £40. Don't get confused between what the gamer pays and what the publisher sells for, they are very different figures.

wat a gr8 comment really interesting to hear an alterative perspectie, and one that makes a lot of sense

Thats the attitude.

'The games industry is about gamers, not retailers profits' how do you propose to sell your games without retailers?

'When a game doesn't sell, we lose our jobs' well stop making shit games then you won't have that issue.

'thousands of gamers out there are playing this game without getting ripped off for it.' mmmm RRPs set by publishers state a retail price of £49.99. Retail don't sell at this. They sell at £10 below this as a standard. How is this a rip off?

Have you been to the pub for lunch or just not been laid for a while?

Not an impressive comeback, Warick. It would obviously be sad if you and other indies lost their jobs, but the industry would go on. We'd just get our games from supermarkets and the internet.

And the fact that games sell below RRP is nothing - the PSPgo's RRP is £225. That's a rip off. Cut £25 off that and that's still a rip off.

LeeC makes a very, very fair point.

1 I aint an Indie
2 By retail I mean retail. That includes supermarkets/internet etc. You need them to sell the product.
3 The buy price to retailers reflects the RRP set by the publishers. Why should retail take a huge hit in margin? They already make sub par margins selling £39.99.

Now stop being silly

Just before I start - thank God for people like LeeC that actually make sense.

I want to comment on the early argument between the indie retailer and the web designer. I have enjoyed the last 5 minutes reading through the war of words!!

Can I just ask the big capitalist fan what on Earth is wrong with the indie buying the stock from Tesco? It is what is known as a free market, he is more than within his rights to buy as many copies as Tesco will allow him to buy. He then sells it at £30 making £5 profit. On the other hand, he could buy it from the supplier and pay £36 + VAT and sell for £1 profit.

Surely in a capitalist society the word "profit" isn't a dirty word?

What gives you the right to hae a go at him for stopping other people buying FIFA for £25? If they were on the ball - they would have been there before he bought all the copies. I assume that the indie sells at £30, making 5 times the margin, and for his regular customers who CHOOSE not to buy from the supermarket they get the game £10 less than they would buying it from somewhere like HMV or GAME. (afterall - who is anyone to tell us we HAVE to buy the game at the lowest price?)

Capitalism is here, and sometimes it's good for consumers. I very occasionally shop around for the best price on a high-end electrical item. However, I bought FIFA 10 today from my local GAME store, fully aware I could drive a few more miles to Tesco and save myself £15. But I CHOSE not to. I have built up a great rapport with the staff and the manager in GAME, they always look after me and genuinely seem happy to see me. The manager always makes a minute available to ask me how I am getting on with whatever game I bought last. For me, that is WORTH spending my money on. And, to be fair, they work for GAME - they don't see a fraction of the companies profits in their salaries, I'm sure.

The indies are trying to run a business in a very tough environment. It seems to me that the supermarkets are selling at a loss, simply to get people in their stores to sell them groceries. That must be hard to swallow for a specialist retailer who can't sell a game for a loss, but then make a 400% mark-up on a chocolate bar. But he CAN take advantage of a situation to benefit himself and his regular customers.

If the GAME chap had offered me FIFA for £30, I would have been over the moon. He didn't - but he did give me £30 back for Batman which I paid £35 from him a week ago. I can't argue with that. As a consumer, to ME, service is always just as, and in moast cases MORE, important than price. If you don't like what the shrewd indie has done, then run along back to your price comparison websites and see if you can find somewhere selling it for £23.99 - then you've saved ANOTHER POUND!!!!!

Ok so as a developer you are happy at the initial burst of customers buying the game for £25 but when that has ended i am sure a lot of retailers will refuse to restock at the trade price of £32+VAT unless the price drops.

so long term less copies may be sold and what happens to your developer job when the game does achieve the same profits from the trade as it could have if the price was kept at a sensible level.

did you work on FIFA 10?

or some random title that only specialist will stock?

come on we all need to support each other in this industry from the game developers to publishers to retail.

i would love to sell games with an RRP of £25 but from what i have read in MCV the costs involved in making and marketing a game require a RRP of around £49.99 to make money.

www.mcvuk.com/news/31882/publishers-plead-stop-the-price-wars

interesting article from last year^

My local Gamestation in Southend wouldnt price match so i got it from Tesco for £24.97 why would I pay £39,99 when I can get at £25 only a fool would pay the extra £15. To me that is £15 towards another game.

Firstly supermarkets can up the price on food and clothng etc, they will be making the money elsewhere that is how it is so cheap. Also supermarkets dont trade in games like GAME and gamestation who are the same company which is what most people do nowadays they are giving £30 for certain games which makes fifa 10 9.99 that is a bargain like the batman game for example you get £30 for it so you dont loose much..i would buy from GAME anyday over a supermarket regardless of price as they are the expets of gaming and a specialist retailer

The way I see it is that it is one thing to ADVERTISE a game at £25, and another to SELL it. Asda ect make a big deal in the press, and sell out by 12.10am. They then continue to advertise the low price until it goes up on Monday. People flock to the store, but are accepting when told it has sold out. Then by some magic, more stock arrives on monday morning, just in time for the price increase! Why would Game/Gamestation worry about that? One store today was telling customers that they will be selling it at £25 when they have also sold out!!!

You all seem to be missing the point.. Game publishers, need retail be it indies, supermakers or online retailers to sell their games, so while price wars are good for customers, it is bad for bussines as they need to pay staff, bills and buy more stock. so less profit will make this much harder. this is especially true for small indies, and will also effect the larger chains in time, who only sell games (and not milk and veg). So why should publishers and the customer worry, after all the publishers are still getting the games out there to the customers via the supermarkets, who are now every where and at prices that customers want.
this is why.. farmers used to sell their goods to wholesale and then to green grocers, (publishers to wholesale umm Centersoft, indies) then they they started to sell to supermarkets becouse they brought more goods and it was less hassel, one customer is easyer the 10. however this was all good until the farmers woke up one day and saw that the supermakets had forced out of the green grocer on price, and now they where telling the farmers what they would and wouldnt take and how much the supermaket was going to pay them for the goods. Publishers beware, supermarkets want to grow their market share and their proft NOT yours, as indies fall and the likes of Zavvi, woolworths close becouse they cant match on price where will that leave you trying to sell your non AAA tiltes,or cod mw 6 when tesco offer you a £10 for it, who else is left to sell it to? and the consomer you will now have to pay want tesco want you to pay, as we all know,what green groccers are left are much cheaper than tesco and alike if you can find one.
think on

Having read 90% of the comments I got bored. People saying their point or slagging off someone elses. Overall the different sides of the counter aren't actually reading. There was a massive argument where an Indie said one thing, a angry person said another and then they argued for several posts not on the same topic. Good one.

The jist of it is that customers want the "best price" - well selling everything at a loss ever wouldn't work would it, so why should it be any different with games?

Here's how I see it:

Indies pay x
Nationals/Supermarkets pay y
Indies sell at best price they can.
Nationals sell at whatever they want (like in this case some matched supermarkets and made a loss).
Supermarkets sell at loss temporarily.
Customer thinks Indies make loads of money. "Why should Indie charge so much" and buys from Supermarket over Indies/Nationals.

Then what happens is all Indies/National game specialists go bust. Distributors go bust. Publishers have to sell games to Supermarkets direct. Supermarkets then HAVE the market. They then cant sell at a loss all the time so they have to sell at what the Indies were selling at.

Summary: Customer gains short term. Loses long term.

OR Publishers get pressured just like lettuce growers and games get sold to Supermarkets for much less and much lower prices are achieved for customers. Customers gain short term. Publishers lose out on massive revenues. Costs are cut. Jobs go. Less games are made. Customers lose long term.

I reckon thats it there or there abouts.

I am fairly sure running a business at a loss to gain market share is illegal. I am curious as to whether selling a product at a loss for the same purpose is also illegal? Perhaps this is why the Supermarkets make it clear the price is a "promotion".

Off to bed for me, I might play some of my £37 Fifa.

Henry Ford pretty much sums up my feelings towards the indies. In his own words: Selfish.

And thanks to Tescos for my copy of FIFA 10 at the bargain price of £25. Nice that someone thinks of their customers first-unlike some.

Just noticed in my local Asda Walmart they have price labels stating Fifa 09 was £37.71 now £26.71

How can they have ever put these out at £37.71 when they sold it at midnight launch at £26.71

Surely stating that they were selling this at £37.71 makes the customer think it is a genuine sale or promotionla offer

MISLEADING and I believe high ly Illegal

I know I cacked up it should have read Fifa 10

I hate to say it guys I would much prefer to buy from a game shop and have worked one for 2 years but as customer would you buy something more expensive somewhere because they arn't a supermarket?? and if you owned a bank would you give a buisness loan to somebody who said my idea is to sell games and do trade in's in a shop?? the market is over saturated and my advice to you is if your still making profit then good luck to you but start developing an exit strategy now to make sure you don't end up bankcrupt.

The government arn't going to step in because if indies and game shops all folded overnight then there would still be compitition between supermarkets and online. The compitition watchdog only has to ensure that there is compitition they don't have to ensure what sort of compitition.

Technically it is against the law this sort of pricing
(compitition act 1998)
"Chapter II deals with the abuse of a dominant position by a firm who uses practices such as predatory pricing"
but...."Generally if a firm is found to have a market share in excess of 40% then it is considered a threat to competition"
and I don't think any supermarket is anywhere near that becuase remember that is whole market share not just one game

Not directly in the games industry myself, but I dont understand why indies purchase all the supermarket stock in the one hand, yet moan about them in the other. I aware it's about survival, but surely nothing will change if you continue this activity? Surely there's some sort of governing body to whom you can complain; government, competition watchdog etc?

Why do the indies buy up the supermarket stock? Simple.

They do it to force consumers to buy from them at a higher price. They feel its their right, which is a complete crock of shit.

Indies dont want to buy from the supermarkets in the first place, but as they sell games and normally only games , if stock is cheaper at tesco than centersoft gem ect, what would you do, seeing as you need to stock it.....

the comment by David is a good one, the only help for the indies and game alike, can only come from the publishers, they need to take the step of not selling their games to the supermarkets, to keep the value in their products, just like other sectors on the high street, eg fashion, when was the last time you saw, animal, Dc, prada ect in tesco, its becouse they want sell to the supermakets, becouse it not the market that will grow or benifit the labels. and its not about fixing prices, its about protecting the retailers, and making sure the labels can continue to bring new things to the market. prices will still be competitve, as they still need to clear bulk ..

Your issue is with the suppliers, youve got no right to force consumers to pay twice the price for stock because you cleaned out the supermarkets.

Reading the comments here at MCV from the indies its clear that you feel theres nothing wrong with robbing the consumer of a bargain just so you can line your pockets. Thats why Im totally for more indies going down the swany-consumers deserve the right get games at a lower price, not be ripped of.

I don't know why my follow indie complain about those price, the offer is just for the weekend and give us better margin £5 rather £1 from centresoft, we have whole year to sell this game, our customer sill bought the game from us even if they knew their prices some of them had to trade their old games, other didn't had the money we were happy let them pay it next them
for me those silly price benefit first my custome rfirst and me as shop as we pass the offer

Whats the big problem you have with games specialists?

go buy 3 chickens for a fiver at tesco and have a feast while playing your £25 copy of FIFA 10.

"Scrote"

How can the official distributor (you know who you are!) justify ounting these out at £32 to he indies when they know full well the pricing in the supermarkets will be like this. Shame on you

JB,

How dare you wish business failings to "more indies". YOU are a penny-pinching little man, who I dare say is in the habit of complaining for complaining's sake - just incase you have the chance to get something discounted. People like you are ten-a-penny, always going into shops and asking for a discount, then coming onto games trade websites and embarassing yourself by slating the indies for trying to make a living.

How dare you criticise them for, effectively, price fixing by buying stock from a supermarket. If you were in business, you would do EXACTLY the same. So who the hell are you to criticise them.

Take a deep breath and relax. You got your copy of FIFA 10 for £25. Congratulations. No, I mean really. CONGRATULATIONS. I really am delighted for you. No, honestly, I'm absoooooluuuuuutely THRILLED and ECSTATIC that you got the game for so cheap. Well done, bravo.

Now you HAVE your FIFA for £25 (not that it's even WORTH £25 - the game itself is as crap as last years version), can you please go away and do whatever you do, and leave the indies alone to discuss the practice of selling video games on what is supposed to be a trade forum.

"Scrote".

@66 - I'm fairly sure that in order to discount a product from a previous selling price, it had to be on sale for 28 days previous at the higher price. I might be wrong - but I'm pretty certain that's the rule.

In the long run this isnt about indies or specilists going under, and know one has the right to discus the inteligence of anyone they dont really know.

What this is really about is perceptions, if the public percieve the price of a game to be unreasonable at anything more than £25 then they simply wont buy the game until it drops. If the publishers cant make money because the supermarkets killed off all their other retailers before moving onto the next product they will be forced then to drop their cost price to the supermarkets and remaining resellers. They will have no money to pay the developers of your beloved games and ultimately distroy your pass time.

So well done all those bargain hunters out there when it all goes belly up then maybe you will realise you were cutting off your nose to spite your face.

I work for a major specilist chain and do you know who people call when they cant connect their Wii remotes or set up their guiatar hero band in a box? Us because "Janet" at ASDA has never used a console in her life! When the specialists and indies are gone and you need advice on your new gaming purchase, do you think ASDA / TESCO will employ someone to advise you on your 2% margin £30 purchase? Of course not because otherwise they will be charging you the same as we are now. Or maybe they will and will rack the price back up within their monopoly to lets say ohh £39.99 if your lucky.

Oh and what of the download market....let me paint this picture for you. This sort of activity will just push the publishers to move to download only even quicker.....guess who controls the price then? No more supermarkets undercuting, no more trading in your old games, no more returning the game becausre you dont like it and no more selling it to your mate because you need some cash.

Enjoy, the future is bright for the shrewd consumer getting something cheap is one thing but you know what they say "if it's too good to be true"

What amazes me is that the indies refuse to take any respnsibility themselves. Instead of blaming the supermarkets or the consumer why not unite, grow some balls and challenge the suppliers? No much easier to blame everyone else.

How dare I? No, how dare you for laying the blame of your failing business at the feet of the consumer.

...no one owes you a living. Get over it.

Challenge the suppliers. What, not buy the game from them and get from the supermarkets? The blame does not lie at the consumer but at the publisher and the suppliers. The publishers know too well that the supermarkets will knock it out cheap to get people in the door. Do you really think the publishers do not know? If the publisher says to Tesco et al that you cant sell at x price then Tesco would say OK - bye bye. The publishers want to get their units sold at whatever cost. This means everyone else gets bumped. What will happen is that the indies will no longer stock the games at launch and wait for the cheap console bundles where the price for the game will be around the £20 mark anyway.

All the Supermarkets I visited from Friday evening onwards had no FIFA left! What's the betting that these stores don't get replenished until after these "promotions" have finished?

JB, you are right that the consumer is not wrong, it is the publisher and distributor. As a consumer i would buy from the cheapest place.
Problem is indies have been challanging the distributors for years and we get the following response:
- they ignore
- they stop calling us and informing us of new releases and offers
- they give us less allocation of stock

Its a sad position. Its only right that the big nationals and supermarkets get stock cheaper due to the quantity they buy in. Indies dont disagree with this, what we want is that everyone holds to a certain price point, ie, between £34.99-£39.99, so if asda sells at £34.99 and indies at £39.99 , £5 is not a major issue. Selling so low not only hurts but also de-values the game and consumers think it is the norm for a game to be sold at £25.

Seems that this JB is hated all over the MCV forums. I have read diffrent artciles and in the forum bit this JB has more enemies than Hitler. LOL.
MCV, keep this site for trade as it used to be. This is becoming silly now.

Yes, keep this site for trade only, that way the consumer-that feeds you profits-has no say and you lot can bury your heads in the sand and continue to point the finger at everyone else without any worry of comeback.

Not only are the indies underhanded ikn their business practice, theyre cowards.

No JB this should be for trade only because you are moaning and insulting people on a subject you know nothing about, you have no idea how the industry works and therefore most of your suggestions are laughable at best.

The trade are not wanting to talk secretly to try and get one over on the consumer (we are all consumers remember) we are trying to save a industry that we are pationate about to ensure that it still produce quality and entertainment and a good price and that it continues to develop and inovate.

Do you really think that we would have no competition and would not still compete with each other if the supermarkets were out of the equation? We still compete with each other and a little thing caled the internet except we do it on a level playing field where certain bussiness do not abuse a mountain of power they have obtained through other markets to destroy each other and the industry.

Go away and play your £25 Fifa, while the big boys and girls talk about a bussiness we know a lot about and how to save it.

Please leave JB alone, I sure once he's left school/moved out of his mums, or developed his mental age above 7 he will be just fine and i sure he will be able to form an idear, that isnt just shouting alot...

I work for GAME and Game group have made more money by selling fifa at £39.99 than supermarkets have at these cheap prices so just goes to show people would rather buy from the specialists

Great discussion here.. However, I have to disagree the developer guy who thought it was OK for the supermarkets to cut prices like this.

More volume sales does not does not always equal more profit for the publisher.

In another life I worked with supermarkets on DVD's and they screwed the studios to the floor, massive price wars followed and the DVD market is now f*cked. No one makes any money and many supermarkets have pulled back from selling DvD's.

Lets get one thing straight, Supermarkets dont care about this industry. They will use it to drive footfall, but as soon as it stops being profitable for them, they will drop it and leave the rest of us to pick up the pieces.

Get real.

anyone else see the electronic arts advert with the asda logo at the end stated the price of the game as £26.71.

this is how EA treats games retailers i look forward to customers coming in expecting the game for that price???

so how can they justify selling the game at a trade price at £32 + VAT

as a store we may decide not to stock any smaller titles EA release and i would like to see them try to sell games like dragon age in bulk to the supermarkets.

its in the GAME (no actually the supermarket)

As expected Fifa offered at £20 with console from disti today. Bloody piss take

If you want to get the customer viewpoint check here...

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/retailers-furious-at-price-slaughtering-by-supermarkets_5/comments

As I understand it the law on this has changed. Previously prices that stated 'was/now' had to have been on sale at the higher price for a period of time. Now retailers have the right to essentially say "This is worth x and we're selling it for y" So the 'was/now' no longer requires to have been sold at the 'was' it only needs to be reasonable to say that it could have been expected to be sold at that price.

I do think the supermarkets are dirty selling games really cheap, Tesco is the ring leader and the worst. The others just copy. With supermarkets they sell cheap for about a week, then the prices go back up to normal. Its just a cheap "DHS" sale trick to get the numbers in. Example I brought Street Fighter when it came out, at ASDA it was £27.99 and GAME £34.99. I brought it from GAME as they wouldn't do a price match, and I couldn't be arsed to walk the other side of town to ASDA. A week later ASDA's price had gone up to £37.99, making it more expensive than GAME.

Same thing also happened with Shrek the Third. It was £8.99 when released and shortly later £14.99. Just a cheap sales pop to get in the numbers and benefit from new releases.

Only thing that low prices will attract will be hardcore players who want it now and kids who whinge on at their parents. Really, what parent is going to go and get a game at 11p at night or 8a the morning. I think some people who are about those times getting games are obssessed.

Remember we are in a credit crunch, ok its more of a benefit to buy it now while cheaper but not every one can afford it now, even though £25.00. So like I said, only the hardcore I want it now players will get it at the lower price. It will soon go back up.

However, flip side to the coin. Supermarkets may get a cheaper buy in price because buying in bulk, they maybe under cutting themselves with sales tactics, but they do not do pre-owned. I know the cash and buy in prices of games and I can say a lot of money is made on them, more than in comparsion to what the supermarket would buy in possibly a cheaper price and sell cheap. When pre-owned games are brought in for £7 and sold for £14, £20 and making 100% nearly 200% profit I think the supermarkets aren't too bad. They are just cheap short term sales tactics. I know indies need to make money, but buy in games for low and sell for double will send customers away and force them to buy from supermarkets when they don't need to sacrifice one of there already owned games to purchase a new one gaining peanuts in return off the RRP of the new product they're purchasing.