Jeff Gerstmann Senior Editor

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Everything Must Go

Everybody loves a good deal. Good deals in the game industry used to be few and far between. Games came out for $49.99 and pretty much stayed that way for quite some time. Budget-minded titles or "greatest hits" rereleases didn't really take off until fairly recently. Now they've taken off quite a lot, but there's another trend in game prices that seems a little more disturbing.

With more and more regularity, game retailers have turned to blowout prices in order to clear stock off of their shelves. It's usually just an underpublicized sale of one or two games. For example, as of this writing, EB is selling copies of Namco's passable but unexciting racing game R: Racing Evolution for about 11 bucks. Originally shipping in December of last year, R is around half a year old, and it's already been dramatically discounted, even if it's only a temporary sale.

Now you can invite Chris Berman into your home for the low, low price of a twin.

Temporary sales have also spread to some of the larger chain stores that primarily deal in electronics, like Best Buy and Circuit City. Both chains have recently had multiday sales where some games sold for as little as 99 cents, though most games dropped to around the $5-to-$15 range. Now, I'm all for sales, and I certainly went to both places and bought a bunch of random, cheap games, but this is starting to feel a little dangerous.

Should someone really be able to get a new copy of Soul Calibur II for $14.99 less than a year after its release? Granted, you could make the argument that everyone who cared at all about that game has probably already purchased it, but $14.99 is still a pretty steep discount. Who makes money when a game intended to sell for $40 or $50 drops that low? Who makes money when copies of Superman: Shadow of Apokolips sell at Best Buy for 99 cents? Not Best Buy, that's for sure. Not Atari. Not even DC Comics.

So why does this happen? In most cases, it's because these games aren't selling. Let's focus on that Superman game a little more. According to NPD sales data, it looks like the PS2 version of the game, released in September of 2002, has sold around 160,000 copies to date. Not exactly a barn-burner. The GameCube version hit shelves in March of 2003, but Nintendo fans weren't biting either. That version appears to clock in at around 46,000 copies sold. I'm no retail wizard, but that probably leaves a lot of copies of that game sitting around in warehouses at various retailers and distributors across the land. Eventually, it makes more sense to just get rid of that stuff at any price rather than having it clutter up a warehouse forever. So the price takes a serious dunk. Most places are selling the game for $15 now--the Best Buy thing was a temporary offer. I bought a copy for 99 cents. Hell, I almost bought 10 copies, just because the price was so outrageous.

For the guys and gals out there buying games, these sales and the general trend of quick game discounts for games that aren't the absolute top tier are fantastic. But how long is this sort of thing sustainable? Game development certainly isn't getting any cheaper. Are these blowout sales the first sign of impending doom? Is there going to be a landfill right next to the E.T. 2600 landfill filled with copies of, say, WWE Crush Hour for the GameCube?

OK, so perhaps it's a bit premature to start talking all doom and gloom about game sales. The big games are still doing great numbers, and from a dollar perspective, things seem like they're going well, I guess. But here's a more recent and, to me, a more startling development.

You probably already saw that Sega's new football game, ESPN NFL 2K5, is going to retail for $19.99 when it's released this August. That is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. The NFL games from Visual Concepts have been the best in the business for several years now. Forget what you read in the sales columns. Year after year, it's been a better overall game than its main competition, the Madden series. So how, exactly, is it a good business move to cut the price down to the budget range? With less money coming in, will this have a negative impact on the development of ESPN NFL 2K6? How much money could Visual Concepts possibly be getting per game, considering that some of the money from those sales probably has to go to, maybe, the NFL, or ESPN, or David Arquette? And if this does gain a little market share for the series, are people going to stick around if next year's game is back up to full price? Or will any potential converts run right back to Madden? This, more than anything, seems like a very dangerous game for Sega, Take-Two (who will be handling distribution of the game), and Visual Concepts to be playing.

At the very least, all of this football drama will certainly be interesting to watch. And the constant game sales are also something worth keeping tabs on. I just hope that deep discounts today don't end up translating into a smaller industry tomorrow.