The Small Scores Thread: Part 2!

[bombatomba]

Bought some games:

Gods Eater Burst - PSP - new - €7.5
Mass Effect - PC - new - €9.99
Pokémon Black - DS - new - €10

I was very surprised to see Pokémon Black at that price. Nintendo usually has very strict pricing policy, as their games never get priced down (substantially) even if they came out years ago.

Which is why I almost never mess with Nintendo games until the systems are floundering (if I touch them at all).  I mean, Super Mario 64 for DS is still being sold for $30, for goodness sakes.

Was it a chain store, Sirgin, or a small place?

[Zagnorch]

I mean, Super Mario 64 for DS is still being sold for $30, for goodness sakes.

I'm guessing Nintendo can still grab a decent profit from selling it near the original price point--which was around $35-$40 stateside if I recall correctly-- so there's little need to add it to the Selects line just yet.

They're also likely keeping the price up based on its rep of being the first remake/ expansion of a landmark Nintendo game for the DS system-- and a successful one at that, with (according to Wikipedia and its cited references) fairly high critical praise and around 10 million units sold.


Anyhoo: no garage-sale crawling for me today.

However, I did pick up a few things here 'n' there over the week, including the following CIB (unless otherwise noted) games:

Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies (DS) $5.95

Monster Hunter Freedom (PSP) $1.95

Bust-A-Move 2 Arcade Edition (PS1) $2.49

Solar Striker (Cart only) (GB) $1.99

Rebel Raiders:Operation Nighthawk (PS2) $1.95

Pryzm (PS2) $0.95

Mojo! (PS2) $0.95

Project Gotham Racing 2 / XBox Live Arcade (XBox) $0.50

Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword (sealed) (Wii) $14.99

I also found the following complete BradyGames strat guides at $1.99 each for:

Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater

Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction

GTA San Andreas

Topping things off: a sealed Halo 3 strat guide for $1.99

[img width=700 height=549]http://www.mediafire.com/conv/3bea407f6df495e6d50ff80d7910d60dfd4126c7bc8ba8771f1646c198dd6a236g.jpg[/img]

[nupoile]

Topping things off: a sealed Halo 3 strat guide for $1.99

Drop everything! I have a new hobby for us all! Collecting sealed strategy guides!

It'll be great we can.....wait, I shouldn't be telling you all this, I don't want the prices to skyrocket on my new quest. 

[Zagnorch]

Topping things off: a sealed Halo 3 strat guide for $1.99

Drop everything! I have a new hobby for us all! Collecting sealed strategy guides!

It'll be great we can.....wait, I shouldn't be telling you all this, I don't want the prices to skyrocket on my new quest. 

There were about a half-dozen of 'em at the thrift store I bought mine from.

'Course, that was about three days ago.

So ya might wanna hurry...

[Cryptid Collector]

Bought some games:

Gods Eater Burst - PSP - new - €7.5
Mass Effect - PC - new - €9.99
Pokémon Black - DS - new - €10

I was very surprised to see Pokémon Black at that price. Nintendo usually has very strict pricing policy, as their games never get priced down (substantially) even if they came out years ago.

Sometimes stores going out of business do it. I went to a closing out Pamida and got like $80 worth of Nintendo stuff for not much over $20.   

[Izret101]

Best Buy blowout sale
Bodycount
Deepak Chopra's Leela
Driver San Francisco
Family Game Night 4: The Game Show
Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole
Rayman Origins
Supremacy MMA
Wolfenstein

Rocketfish™ Kinect Starter Kit for Xbox 360 (tripod kinect mount)

All for $67.58 (would have been 87 but i had a 20$ git cert.)

EDIT
Hopefully i can grab Mayhem 3D in store. It is 4.99 but not listed on their website.

Did store pick up so i should get an 10$ gift cert emailed to me in a few days too

[BadEnoughDude]

Picked up yesterday at GameStop:

Gungnir - PSP, NIB
Persona 2 - PSP, NIB
Final Fantasy IV Complete - PSP, NIB

Also, from eBay:

Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together - PSP, CIB (black label)
Tactics Ogre: LUCT strategy guide
Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance strategy guide

[Izret101]

Was able to get
Child of Eden
Mayhem 3D
Michael Phelps: Push the Limit

Both of the "local" best buys had dozens in stock even though on line it said not available.

Who Wants to be a Millionaire sadly was at neither.

[Sirgin]

Which is why I almost never mess with Nintendo games until the systems are floundering (if I touch them at all).  I mean, Super Mario 64 for DS is still being sold for $30, for goodness sakes.

Was it a chain store, Sirgin, or a small place?

It was a chain store. The game was priced down twice (you could still see the previous stickers) from €35 and then from €25. It was the only version that was priced down like that though. A Pokémon White version was still selling for like €30 and sitting right beside it. There were also older Pokémon games (SoulSilver, Diamond, etc...) at their regular €30-35 prices.

I don't understand Nintendo though. I think they're loosing customers by being this strict on their prices. I can walk into the same chain store and walk out with 20+ great PSP games, brand new, at €9.99 each. Atleast Sony's or Microsoft's budget lines are exactly that: budget. But almost every Nintendo game stays the same price regardless if it was released two months or four years ago. Nintendo Selects is a joke here in Belgium. Selling a 2-4 year old game for just €5-10 off the original price and including the "Select" branding isn't a good deal to me. Super Mario Galaxy must've been €40 when it came out almost 5 years ago and now, 5 years later, the "Nintendo Select" version is still €30! Fuck that!

This has its effect on the used market here in Belgium/Europe, too. Whenever I see Wii/Nintendo games that aren't Dance/Kids games the seller wants €20+ for it. No thanks.

GameCube wasn't a popular platform here back in the day, so relatively few people bought the system/games when they were released. And of course Nintendo games are never cheap at retail. There's probably 10-20 GameCube games I'd love to play, but I never see them in the wild and they all go for absurd prices on eBay.

It's stupid, because like I said, Nintendo is loosing customers over not pricing down their games properly. I'm sure all the people who wanted to pay full retail for Super Mario Galaxy have done so 3+ years ago.

[Crabmaster2000]

Which is why I almost never mess with Nintendo games until the systems are floundering (if I touch them at all).  I mean, Super Mario 64 for DS is still being sold for $30, for goodness sakes.

Was it a chain store, Sirgin, or a small place?

It was a chain store. The game was priced down twice (you could still see the previous stickers) from €35 and then from €25. It was the only version that was priced down like that though. A Pokémon White version was still selling for like €30 and sitting right beside it. There were also older Pokémon games (SoulSilver, Diamond, etc...) at their regular €30-35 prices.

I don't understand Nintendo though. I think they're loosing customers by being this strict on their prices. I can walk into the same chain store and walk out with 20+ great PSP games, brand new, at €9.99 each. Atleast Sony's or Microsoft's budget lines are exactly that: budget. But almost every Nintendo game stays the same price regardless if it was released two months or four years ago. Nintendo Selects is a joke here in Belgium. Selling a 2-4 year old game for just €5-10 off the original price and including the "Select" branding isn't a good deal to me. Super Mario Galaxy must've been €40 when it came out almost 5 years ago and now, 5 years later, the "Nintendo Select" version is still €30! Fuck that!

This has its effect on the used market here in Belgium/Europe, too. Whenever I see Wii/Nintendo games that aren't Dance/Kids games the seller wants €20+ for it. No thanks.

GameCube wasn't a popular platform here back in the day, so relatively few people bought the system/games when they were released. And of course Nintendo games are never cheap at retail. There's probably 10-20 GameCube games I'd love to play, but I never see them in the wild and they all go for absurd prices on eBay.

It's stupid, because like I said, Nintendo is loosing customers over not pricing down their games properly. I'm sure all the people who wanted to pay full retail for Super Mario Galaxy have done so 3+ years ago.

The Wii was Nintendo's most successful console ever. How do you figure they are losing customers? Just look at the sales for many of the games your complaining about. People will keep buying Mario Kart, Smash Bro, Mario Party, Super Mario, Zelda, Donkey Kong even at a price close to its original MSRP. I agree that it can be annoying and I've seen Mario Party 8 priced at $50 in one store with Mario Party 9 next to it at $40 which is frustrating. But they are making money like crazy by being able sell their games for so long at a relatively high price. You can pretty much guarantee that if ANY other game company could do that, they would.

[Sirgin]

The Wii was Nintendo's most successful console ever. How do you figure they are losing customers? Just look at the sales for many of the games your complaining about. People will keep buying Mario Kart, Smash Bro, Mario Party, Super Mario, Zelda, Donkey Kong even at a price close to its original MSRP. I agree that it can be annoying and I've seen Mario Party 8 priced at $50 in one store with Mario Party 9 next to it at $40 which is frustrating. But they are making money like crazy by being able sell their games for so long at a relatively high price. You can pretty much guarantee that if ANY other game company could do that, they would.

I thought Nintendo made money by selling hardware? If not, then they should try to make some more games. A lot of people bought a Wii, but it wasn't selling tons of games for each unit sold compared to the PS3/360.

Yes, many people will keep buying Mario, Zelda and Donkey Kong at full price. But do you not think that nearly 5 years after Super Mario Galaxy was released, everyone who wanted to pay full price have already done so? After all, if you're going to pay that kind of money on a game there's no point in waiting for the price to drop. So why not now, nearly 5 years later, price the game down to €10-15 and attract perhaps a bunch of new customers?

[Crabmaster2000]

The Wii was Nintendo's most successful console ever. How do you figure they are losing customers? Just look at the sales for many of the games your complaining about. People will keep buying Mario Kart, Smash Bro, Mario Party, Super Mario, Zelda, Donkey Kong even at a price close to its original MSRP. I agree that it can be annoying and I've seen Mario Party 8 priced at $50 in one store with Mario Party 9 next to it at $40 which is frustrating. But they are making money like crazy by being able sell their games for so long at a relatively high price. You can pretty much guarantee that if ANY other game company could do that, they would.

I thought Nintendo made money by selling hardware? If not, then they should try to make some more games. A lot of people bought a Wii, but it wasn't selling tons of games for each unit sold compared to the PS3/360.

Yes, many people will keep buying Mario, Zelda and Donkey Kong at full price. But do you not think that nearly 5 years after Super Mario Galaxy was released, everyone who wanted to pay full price have already done so? After all, if you're going to pay that kind of money on a game there's no point in waiting for the price to drop. So why not now, nearly 5 years later, price the game down to €10-15 and attract perhaps a bunch of new customers?

Nintendo typically doesnt sell its hardware at a loss, but I doubt they make more profit off their hardware than their software. Sure the attach rate isnt quite as high as other systems, but their profits were threw the roof and I'm sure a large part of that was being able to sell their games at a fairly high price for a long period of time.

Wiis are still selling, albeit not very fast, but with each X-mas at the least you get a whole slew of new Wii owners who are going to be dishing out for those games I mentioned in the last post. If you have to sell 3-4 games at the drastically reduced price to make the same profit as the copy at $50 why would you bother when you can still sell them high? I have a hunch it would cut down a bit on second hand sales too. If the MSRP is $50, gamestop/eb games $40-$45 dollar copy isnt going to be that much more appealing. If a games MSRP is $20, gamestop/eb games $5-$15 price point is going to be much more attractive.

[Duke.Togo]

A few items I've grabbed over the last week. Good prices all around

[img width=576 height=768]http://i1023.photobucket.com/albums/af356/jackcrow2000/f9f2c529.jpg[/img]

[Crabmaster2000]

A sealed game Duke! I knew you had it in you

That Xenogears is sexy as usual too.

[Duke.Togo]

A sealed game Duke! I knew you had it in you

That Xenogears is sexy as usual too.

Don't get your hopes up, it is a reseal. But cheap!

Xenogears was only $15, and they had 2 more left. Also had quite a few other PS1 RPG's for about the same price.