To be honest...I think everyone knew they were selling below cost. It doesn't bother me too much as it's on the releases which we make no money anyway due to high trade prices. I'd rather sell something which i can make a few quid on...not a few pence

A sensible response! well done theone. before you all start - selling below cost is NOT illegal. it might be an unfavourable business practice but ASDA are well within their rights to sell games for any price they see fit. lets hope they sell Modern Warfare 2 really cheap too as there's now way I'm paying £55.

@Simon

Stopping bleating that "there's now way I'm paying 55" its ridiculous, firstly your spelling, secondly who is selling the game for more than 44.99?!

To the original article, how much marketing support did EA pay Asda for this title?

I don't think ASDA sell below cost to try and be clever. I doubt when the idea was pitched at boardroom level folk piped up saying "but hang on thats not very clever, is it? my mum could do that". And I doubt that picture was taken as he wrote about FIFA on his blog, making the presense or absence of smugness redundant. and i dont think its wrong of me to want heavy discounting on modern warfare 2. even if its not 54.99, i still don't really want to pay 44.99 either. 25-30 sounds a lot more like it.

We're all (readers included) getting a bit tired of it. If you want to make your opinion heard about an article, please feel free - we encourage it... Healthy debate is what MCVUK.com's messageboards are all about.

However, personal attacks will not be tolerated - and deleted immediately. Them's the rules.

Tim

Guys he's admitted he's sold at a loss. There's no way marketing will have made up the shortfall, especially with the Press Ad's etc.

Loss leaders are the way which supermarkets have worked for years. It's a land grab (for market share etc.) and an announcement that they sell Games to the general public and the industry (to an extent).

It's nothing new and it isn't going to go away unfortunately.

He's sold at a loss, grown share. End of story

errr, these guys are selling below what they pay there suppliers, they buy in such volume they will be buying slightly cheaper than most indies.

why exactly are you indies not going out to the supermarket and buying there rediculously slashed stock. makes you better margin, and there price cut is normally only for the weekend or launch day anyway! meaning they will put there price back up and you can price beat them.... THINK! THEY ARE HELPING YOU! NOT DESTROYING YOU! JUST BUY THERE STOCK AND SELL IT!

Don't they limit the item to 1 per customer?
I can understand them selling the game below cost if to entice people into the shop to make other purchases. I welcome these prices especially when the economy is as it is. The less I can pay the better

at customers taking up a great offer...

go guys!

The thing about this is it does actually cause them pain to sell games at a loss. Given the cost of pouring/investing money into Fifa, WWE and Flashpoint I hear from someone in the know that they can't go any cheaper than £37 for Modern Warfare...

My personal opinion on all this though is that the cost of gaming does need to come down and whilst there is considerable fallout for indies, it's about time that other Multi's (I'm looking at you GAME group) stop charging full for everything.

Indies need to start being more creative on their offer (not talking price here) and find their own niche in the market.

Phil: Why should Game throw away margin?

Game don't charge full price. Publishers sell in full price titles at £49.99 RRP. Therefore Game are genarally £10 below RRP (as are most retailers).

Your comments are laughable.

I could spiel on about this forever but I won't. My personal experience as a consumer is that Game tend to price things higher than most other places which is odd given their size and clear high street dominance (especially as they now own Gamestation). Again my experience is that most games I look to purchase from Game are priced at either £45 or £50 whereas other places go for £35 - £40 for the same games.

Now again my opinion is that Games as a whole NEED to come down in price and that is overall good for the industry and the customers.

Frankly I don't care on the margin of Game or ASDA or any other retailer for that matter but I do care about the developers getting their game out to more folk and customers getting the chance to play more games, something that would fuel growth of the entire industry. I'm thinking long term here.

If retail prices don't come down, you're also going to see a much faster transition to download-only services and games which will really hurt retail. Ultimately, customers will decide when but it will happen and we all know that is a fact.

Call it laughable if you will I'm not really caring - I don't know you and you don't know me, but I'm only scratching the surface in explaining why this is what I think. I'm very passionate about this industry and I think that retail overall needs to get a little smarter and start thinking long term.

'I do care about the developers getting their game out to more folk and customers getting the chance to play more games, something that would fuel growth of the entire industry. I'm thinking long term here'

If the developers/publishers reduced the cost of games the prices would drop to the levels you want.

Why should the retailer take the pain?

Downloading is coming, we all know that. But do you really think download prices will be cheap? They'll be no competition and dev's will be free to charge whatever price they wish. This will leave the gamer/consumer with no option but to pay full price for everything. Or as we're already seeing, Torrent sites fueling a pirate market.

I do agree that games are over priced but this isn't driven by retail. Selling at a loss isn't a very good long term strategy for any business. The movement must come from the other side of the fence.

I remember paying £59.99 for street fighter 2 turbo on the snes back in the day. Games back then were very exspensive but people who wanted them would still buy them. I'm not say games should go up, I would like to see games become more afordable and they could (what's the cost of a blank disc?). Games priced at £30 - £40 for a triple a title are cheap compared to 15 years ago but discounting game to below cost is very worrying. If prices are low it devalues the game and to customers they think it should be that price all the time. Games have become just another product to cheapen due to mass Market. Supermarkets need to be stopped making games look worthless. If the game is worth the money it will sell , why don't supermarkets discount crap games insted? Going to buy dj hero renegade edition £139.99

I'm more for the make good games more affordable for all so that more people can play them. Movies are cheap with far higher initial production costs and far higher marketing costs etc yes some make a lot of that back at cinema but the principle is the same.

I'm not saying just the retailers take a hit on prices, publishers also need to follow suit.

Yes some games on the SNES etc were more expensive, but that was due to manufacture cost and certain cartridges having extra chips/memory which bumped the cost up dramatically.

On the same point, around 1999 - 2001 we saw new games retailing at £29.99 on the Playstation...

What I'm saying is that I'd aim for a £30 - £40 price on new titles. Ideally some time in the future I'm thinking games need to retail at the equivalent of £15 - £20 in order to compete with direct download. I think we'll see that download will end up being cheaper than retail because it can be. What we'll see is an initial high price whilst pricing is tested, but once the sales don't come in as high as expected the prices will drop. We saw it with Xbox Live and we'll see it again. The amount of game that you get on download for the price will be much better value as time goes along.

Question to retailers though... what are you doing to get in on download? At the moment I don't see anyone trying, but surely some out of the box thinking could allow for some market share on it..?

As an Indie Retailler I would love to see all Triple AAA games priced at £25-£30 as I believe that the public would buy more as shown by FIFA 10 at £25 sold huge amounts because of the price.

How can we when the Publishers and Distributors charge retail so much for their games.

Fifa 10 costs us £32 + VAt = £36.80

Forza 3 costs us £33.18 + VAT = £38.16

Modern Warfare 2 will cost us £35.57 + VAT = £40.90

All the time Asda sell at a loss the publishers are rubbing their hands because they still get their high wedge and then tell retaillers go sell it for what you want.

If Asda or any other retailler want to sell products at a loss then that is their choice. They see this as offering a certain customer value but at what cost.

How many of you have seen vast increases in the price of bread Milk and groceries. This is because they have spread the losses across the board. All shoppers are paying the price for cheap games whether they buy them or not.

I applaude GAME, HMV, GAMESTATION and INDIES for keeping there prices high as most our the customers who buy from these shops almost always TRADEIN and pay £10 - £20 for a NEW AAA title.

So we have 2 sides to our industry those customers who have little money who buy new games from supermarkets at £25-£30.

And thos who have less money and TRADEIN

Both sets of customers enjoy the benefits of both parties

2nd hand kills development... if this went away then all would benefit. Although I can't see many people agreeing with this short term

mmmm second hand killing developement but retailers should sell at a loss to grow the market.

note to self: ignore Phil in future.

Look this is pointless , for one last time, we the retailers ie game indies whatever, buy new titles eg 100 units fifa 10, knowing that say 40 of those games will be sold as part of a traded in. If we cant or dont let people trade in thier old games then we want be ordering 100 copies becouse we wont sell them all, so we buy in 60 units .. where's that helping, less sales all round...

If everyone upheld the prices of the games it would be problem solved but at the same time I in my opinon £39.99 would be the absolute most I would want to pay for a marquee title.

I must admit I was one of the ones that purchased Fifa 10 for 24.97 at Tesco when it first launched and I was grateful. The way I see it with games like that (updated versions or sequels) the publisher should launch an initiative for consumers that bought the previous version. i.e. a promo code when registering their purchase that would allow people like me to purchase say the next Fifa at £5 - £10 cheaper as a loyalty initiative. This could be done on titles like PES, Fight Night and dare I say it Modern Warfare etc. This could be something that retailers across the board could sign up to on certain titles. I am not sure of the mechanics but it could be something that's tried on a title as a test case. Just an idea

As a retailer and a distributor within the uk I see it from both sides. Indies have to think out of the box and not buy from the official distributors and source elsewhere - like the supermarket. No way you can buy at high price from one place. Have to even out the price somehow. Buy after launch when price drops but remains fairly stable. Publishers have their own price structure depending who they sell to. That will never change as publishers get their money.

Here's a hypothetical scenario...
A large and cash rich retail organisation corners a market by selling 'loss-leaders' on a range of very popular products. As time progresses the organisation's competitors gradually die off, unable to compete at the same level. Initially the suppliers are generally happy for this to take place because they are still shifting product and keeping their margins.
Then a sea-change happens. The retail organisation has succeeded in cornering the market and the next time the suppliers go into the board room they are told that their prices are too high and those that bring anything that is not "a sure fire seller" are simply told to go away. The infrastructure of the industry has been eroded to the point where the sellers have nowhere else reasonably viable to go so they have to take the squeeze, and this filters back down the chain.
Variety and originality are eroded away, sellers are squeezed, producers are squeezed and an industry is 'rationalised'. Most actual production is moved to countries where costs can be kept to an absolute minimum, jobs are lost, careers are ended and companies die out.
The retailer goes from strength to strength, moving into new market areas to keep its 'portfolio' strong, spreading the cost of its loss-leaders throughout its established ranges. Pretty soon the whole affair is relegated to history and a few muttered complaints of 'remember when....' and ‘I told you so...’

This is not hypothetical, its happening now. The only caveat is that products like FIFA, the consumer wants regardless. They will find a way to get hold of these products. As for the non-sure fire hits well lets just say they die, creativity is sucked out from the industry. Life becomes mundane me to products and sequels. People look on as ROME burns... as they are doing as we speak.

The creativity has been sucked out for years, look at the amount of sequels, the 07,08,09,10 for x,y,z.

The problem imo has come from the large size publishers churning out the same recycled game year after year.

Very little is new and fresh, and i dont see this changing, if fact its going to get worse, the smaller publishing house either go out of business or get eaten up, they cant compete with the big boys anyhow.

But saying all that I WANT MY COD 6 !!!

"I do agree that games are over priced but this isn't driven by retail."

HA HA!
UK major retail margin = 40%+
US major retail margin = 12-22%

@BH

Please tell me which game titles are currently selling with 40% Margin at retail, I want to stock some of these titles.

DJ Hero Cost 76 Sainsbury selling at 79.99
Tekken 6 Cost 34.50 Asda selling at 37.71

Where is the 40% margin?!

Asda are probly selling the modernware 2 cheaper then outher retailers to make the store look more benefitial then the outhers and when a new game comes out they will go to asda, in the process of the modernware 2 people could still shop at asda for outher stuff

Asda are probably the best retailer for new games. there cheaper than any other game retailers. I am defianatly not paying £45 for a disk! im sorry but no!

Yep - fingers crossed for a £30 Modern Warfare deal from Asda/Tesco on Tuesday.

to( 25)

If you think any video game retailer makes 40% margin, then you are blinded by the light!!!!!

As a indie overall we make between 20-25% margin!

I worked for the Game group for 10 years and no for a fact they make between 25/30% margin which will be the best avalible due to buying power.

Supermarkets will bring the whole market down!

RRP's are still 49.99...................

so 10 quid is knocked of the price straight away which benifits no one apart from the customer.

Why do you think mvc/virgin/zavvi/woolworths/rise etc have all gone down the pan??!!!

Exactly daz - "which benifits no one apart from the customer"

That's what its all about. in a capitalist system success will always be driven by the customer. as gaming gets more popular the lowering of prices is inevitable. supermarkets have cleverly positioned themsleves to be able to do this. indies have no one to blame aprt from themselves if they have'nt.

It just ticks another box to try to win the consumer over on one more item consumers believe THEY can buy in a supermarket for a lot less than anywhere else! to try and change the public's perception that the smaller chains out there are just not needed due to the high prices they demand for the same product.

Supermarkets know you are more likely to buy more than one item, due to there choice in clothes, food, entertainment, hardware, toys and electronics etc. So they are not worried about the loss because gaining public/consumer perception and secondary sales is more important in the overall picture.

They might be selling it for less than they are buying it, but we all know it is not leaving them much out of pocket. It's a good argument from Cross, but hey you cant kid a nation of kidders!

I'll be round next week for my cheap copy of Modern Warfare 2 thanks, but my overall perception will still be the same about large chain Supermarkets. Just buy the bargains and leave, don't get sucked in.

This system does work really well for the consumer right now, that's if your quick and are able to get a cheap copy for the week promotion period. As all the supermarkets don't like handing out too many cheap copies, there not that generous.