EBGames - Buy Haze, take it back in 7 days - get money back? :S
Deusfaux
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Registered User regular
http://www.redflagdeals.com/deals/main.php/alldeals/#e30788
huh?
Well, this is certainly an interesting one. EBGames, in their March promotions, is advertising that you can pre-purchase Haze for Playstation 3 (which should be released on March 18), play it for a week (7 days) when it is released, and trade it in for the its full pre-tax purchase value in store credit. You can see this promotion here (scroll down) or in much larger PDF form here. The caveats are that the game must go back within 7 days of pick up, and that it's a trade in, so you won't get the taxed amount back. Note that the game must be returned in good condition along with the manual and case.
huh?
Deusfaux on
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This is..
What?!
I never asked for this!
Also, this is how EB used to do things, now they do it with certain titles. They'll just go ahead and sell it as new again, which is precisely why they stopped doing this in the first place.
I think what they're going for is a really high number of sold games. regardless of whether people actually keep them. Kind of a retarded strategy, but hey, whatever works, gang.
You guys really shouldn't be surprised by this.
http://www.penny-arcade.com/2008/03/12
Of course, the offer undermines the game itself... "we don't expect this game to last you more than a week, so we'll buy it back."
> turn on light
Good start to the day. Pity it's going to be the worst one of your life. The light is now on.
I never asked for this!
yeah really
And like randombattle said, why the devs of haze aren't pissed is the real question here. EB is turning one sale into multiple sales, and even though this is pretty much their business model anyway, they're more aggressively promoting it with this.
Australia too.
At least I've never seen them go "PREORDER THIS GAME! IT SUCKS BUT HEY YOU CAN RETURN IT FOR FREEEE"
I never asked for this!
Steam: abunchofdaftpunk | PSN: noautomobilesgo | Lastfm: sjchszeppelin | Backloggery: colincummings | 3DS FC: 1392-6019-0219 |
actually it seems Free Radical wants to be done and get away from Haze ASAP
It's like they signed a deal with the devil or something. It's very weird.
Yeah, was about to say, they make a big thing of it over here, 'if you don't like the game man, just bring it back within seven days, full refund no problems'.
Nice people at my local EB actually...
So... i might actually pick this up, if i have my PS3 by then...
hey you might be lucky and grab the very copy you had all along!
that said, i'm pretty sure they resell returned games as new, right?
If by "dirt-cheap" you mean "5 dollars less than retail," then yeah, that's the best idea. There's no supply-and-demand scale with EB's used prices; it's typically more time-based. Also, most people seem to have noticed but in case you didn't: It's not a refund, it's a return in store credit, which means every single person who opts into this deal is dedicated to spending the Canadian equivalent of $60 US at EBGames one way or another. Not a bad business move, especially since GTA IV is coming up.
With new games or just with used? In the States you have a 7-day return policy on all used games, but not new ones.
There is no supply and demand scale?
Seriously?
If they got 20 times more of Haze in stock than any other used game, and they were selling at the same rate as other games, they would almost certainly have to drop the price at some point.
They way I see it, they are banking on the following -
Profit made from selling it to people that wouldn't have bought it without this promotion > Profit lost from people who return this game and get something else with the store credit (essentially they are exchanging a free rental for being tied into spending the price of Haze at EB)
They are probably right, people are lazy and forgetful, I bet a bunch of people will buy it intending to return it, and treat it as a free rental, but end up just keeping it. The same people who put $5 on a preorder they never collect. And there will be people who are just impressed with Haze and decide to keep it.
Either way, if this scheme is taken up enough, the resell value of Haze on the 2nd hand market will be reduced as an artificially large number of preowned copies of the game will exist.
No, they wouldn't, because idiots will buy it for $55 when the new price is $60 and then trade it in for $20 less than a month later.
Man, I hate EBStop.
Not that I've seen, though I usually only pick up used games when they hit the under-$25 mark. I've seen dozens of copies of Gears of War still selling for as much as $40 to $45 used today, and even after the Halo 3 Beta ended and EB was swarmed with copies of Crackdown it kept the game at $40 used for months.
The only thing I've seen affect used prices are 1) The full retail price, so a regular ol' price drop will bring the used price down a corresponding amount, and 2) A general sense of how old the game is once the game is no longer stocked as new. And I'm a cheapass like you, Lewie, so I typically keep tabs on when games become affordable.
To be perfectly honest, I wouldn't be surprised if EB was doing this solely to gauge individual stores' preorder "capabilities" for a high-end PS3 title like GTA IV or Metal Gear Solid IV.
When EB was swarmed with Crackdown they just dropped the Trade-In value, they still kept selling at the same pre-owned price. I think it is still down to like, 5 bucks or something today.
Steam: abunchofdaftpunk | PSN: noautomobilesgo | Lastfm: sjchszeppelin | Backloggery: colincummings | 3DS FC: 1392-6019-0219 |
And they're selling it used for $20 to $25! Also for reference, EB offers $8 credit for a trade-in of the PS2 version of Rez.
I would guess though, that with games with a low 'trade in rate' people will end up buying a new copy when they would have bought a (slightly) cheaper used copy, but there are none. That will be less likely to happen with Haze now, as there will be a ton of used copies about. Less demand for new version = price drops.
This is all of course speculation, maybe not enough people will take up this offer to have any noticeable impact on the retail price, but it is entirely plausible that it might.
Hi5
That is almost certainly true, but probably not 'solely', I don't know what their PS3 software sales are like, but just getting a bunch of PS3 owners in their stores (and away from competitors) will be beneficial too.
Ah, that makes sense. The imaginary equation in my head is balanced.
Even then, use Goozex or Ebay or something. A little effort is worth not getting ripped off.
Why would you hate a store for making money off people who are idiots anyway? It sounds like you're more angry at the idiots.
Because there are no other game stores in my area, that's why. It's either 'stop or a big box store.
I went on a road trip up to Syracuse and inside this massive fucking mall they've got up there, tucked away in a corner, is an independently-owned used game shop that had used games for reasonable prices going all the way back to the Atari. I almost wept. Then I bought some Dreamcast stuff.
Where I am, the only reasonable option for used game trading is mail-in services like Goozex, which is awesome on prices and trade-in value but takes a long time to get anywhere with.
Ok, so you hate EB because dumb people are willing to pay the 55$ for used games and if they didn't EB wouldn't charge those prices, yes? That still seems to point that you should hate dumb people tho.
I'm not questionsing, mind, just sorting out. I'm not sure how we're getting from A to B is all.
A person buys Haze and turns it back in for full credit. Net gain for Gamestop = $0.
What's the motivation for this? How does Gamestop benefit? Some possibilities:
1. They want to get people in the store so they impulse-buy other crap.
2. They want to rely on people who impulse-buy Haze, then forget to trade it in within a week. This makes sense, as something like 25% of people never pick up their pre-orders, even though they've put money down on it.
3. They figure Haze will be popular, so they want tons of used copies so they make more money. Even though Gamestop gives you store credit for the game, the publisher is already paid off when they buy it new. When it comes back to Gamestop, they can sell it again and keep 100% of the money.
4. They want to generate more sales even if it doesn't generate profits to inflate their numbers and impress their investors.
Gamestop is such a damned odd company.
Edit: And Lewie P, Lunker is going by history. Gamestop is NOTORIOUS for keeping their used sales prices ludicrously high for as long as possible (i.e., the publisher drops the new price or a loooong time elapses). This is why many of us aren't fans of the company.
Yeah, having never shopped there, I was analysing the situation from a purely economical standpoint, which apparently doesn't apply to Gamestop's logic of -
Supply/Demand = Screw over consumer
Well, you have to remember that this converts "$60 in ca$h money" into "$60 in GameStop funbucks." (Using US figures.) It's essentially selling gift cards, only in one increment, and it forces people to shop at their chain instead of turning around to spend that $60 at Best Buy. Which will help their sales figures, leading to your point about padding the books/impressing investors.
It is an amazingly strange move, and honestly as a person who wants to buy a game I would see this poster and, even if I had never heard of the game, think to myself, "If they're expecting that many people to return the game, it must be terrible."
Ah yes, the whole gift card gambit. Keep people shopping there, after all.
But the more I think about it, the more my scenario 3 makes sense. Retailer profit margins on new games are very small after all, so Gamestop is gambling they can give that up for the possibility of making 100% profit later. Then again, the gambit could fail and they could drown in huge piles of Haze that never sell again. Especially if, as you say, the ad trains people to expect the game to suck.
Lewie P, I hate to say it, but Gamestop's policy of selling used games for high prices DOES make economic sense. Because uninformed people buy them. For far too many people it seems like a good deal, when even the barest minimum of research on ebay or Amazon's used section will show you that you can generally get it for cheaper. This is why their profits are skyrocketing.
Slightly off topic, but I'm constantly amazed that so many people have the Internet, an extremely powerful informational tool, at their fingertips, and flat-out don't use it to double-check things or even answer questions they already have.
Net gain is NOT $0, though, it's $60. It's $0 *right now*, but they're guaranteed $60 eventually (it's in-store credit). Though some people will use that store credit on things they would have bought at EB anyway, many of them will buy things they wouldn't have (store credit does that to people, it doesn't seem like it's your money) or else they'll buy things they would have bought elsewhere at EB instead. Add to that the fact that some people will buy it only intending to return it and miss the 7-day deadline, and it's definitely a win for EB.
Also I don't know where you got "25% of people never pick up their pre-orders", but I had a friend who worked at EB for a while and he said it was extremely rare for people not to pick them up... he said it "basically never" happened.
Steam / Bus Blog / Goozex Referral
Yeah, I meant that flooding the market with used copies of Haze should drop the price of it, but if enough people use the trade in system, even at really low prices, that would cancel it out.
I think your math is a bit off.... with this deal, it's $60 *right now*, and drops back to 0 when they pick something else up with their credit. Then again, that assumes they pick something else up that costs exactly $60, instead of buying a couple of games for, say, a combined $80 and throwing in an extra $20 from their pocket. So you do have a point.
And the 25% figure came from back when we used to have an Employee Lounge thread, and many Gamestoppers constantly said lots of people didn't pick up the games. Also that the company itself has assumed in the past that people won't pick up their pre-orders, and have sold off games that were reserved to other customers.
Canadians have short memories. This is not a new deal. It was first implemented with Godfather the Game, and done again for God of War II. So it's not a question of "Oh, this is a crap game, everyone will want to get rid of it!"
Anyway, here's how this deal worked with God of War II and how it will likely work with Haze.
People pre-order Haze--a five dollar deposit should be all that is necessary.
It is put aside and you are called.
You pick up Haze and you play it. If you like it, great!
If any part of you is like "Sixty dollars? Haze? Really? I don't know." you take it back within one week and you get that sixty dollars in store credit (Store credit includes tax, as well--and I'm surprised that people took that for granted and no one bitched about it.)
EB will only give sixty dollars for Haze to pre-order customers so you need to keep your receipt and this will no doubt result in Haze having a much lower than average trade value (Maybe in the 22 dollar range for non pre-order customer trade-ins)
The copies of Haze will be held in the back until such time as enough copies are taken in at the non-promo trade in value, at which point they will be put out at doubtless 54.99. That can take up to two weeks though.
And this deal has been around for a looong time because it was introduced when Haze was expected in February. Now it looks like a May release.
The copies don't get resold as new.
The copies won't be immediately available.
I dunno though -- for example I've been thinking of dumping FFXII Revenant Wings. Bought for $35; EBStop offers 15 funbucks; Ebay as far as I can tell will be unlikely to net me much more than $20 (minus what, 5%?). So it's a lot more trouble and I get peanuts regardless, the main benefit being I guess that if I wanted to buy something else used at a low price I could then do so.
I guess it depends. Selling FFT, for example, you'd definitely never get anywhere near EBG.
they're using haze to turn your money into eb funbux!
But that's what I was saying, it doesn't drop to $0 later. It's only $0 later if that $60 is spent by somebody buying something that they were going to buy anyway and they were going to buy at EBGames. If somebody buys something they wouldn't have otherwise (because store credit clouds peoples' judgement, heh) or buys something at EB that they would have bought elsewhere they've turned that $0 into a profit. I guess they're counting on accidental sales (people not returning it in 7 days) and the $60 credit ploy to give them more profit than the 7 free days of Haze will take.