Could sales be a bad thing in the long run?

[Briton]

I don't think so. As has been pointed out, many are old games and some people are even buying them even though they already have owned them.

These sales are not just Steam BTW.

 

[AGD]

They don't make as good games.

If we all paid £100 for games then maybe the quality of games would go up. Do we want that to happen? I don't think so.

In regards to sales only being on games older than one year, you're wrong there. Both Dragon Age and L4D2 were 25% off under a month after release, which means you would have been better off waiting a few weeks after release before buying the game, which is what i'm trying to get at.

These companies make decisions based on figures from market data. Once you have spent the production costs you just want to maximise revenue (especially for digital distribution where unit costs are very low). Clearly the companies looked at the elasticity of demand and decided they could get more revenue by selling at a lower price. Doing this temporarily also gives publicity for the game and gets more people interested. Other games with more inelastic demand can afford to keep prices high for a longer time e.g. cod4.

 

[Limenote]

what a ridiculous notion, its obvious that certain games have a certain gaming market, by having sales like this it breaks down that point of entry for people that are not in the target market, thus claiming a small amount of revenue from gamers that otherwise would not have paid a penny

 

[MeMeMeMe]

I agree with the people saying you are over-reacting.
Sales get people to buy the game who have overlooked it, or who would otherwise not buy it. Sales have long been known in all markets, and businesses know how to exploit them to maximise revenue.

Regarding your comments about the apple store: the simple case there is that the store is saturated. Price has fallen because the market has exploded, and there is simply too much choice. The market is finding its level, and those apps that stand out and are worth buying will still be able to charge a higher price (assuming the incompetent way the store is run doesn't drive all decent developers away, which has already started).

 

[thecremeegg]

What the sales do is persuade people who were most likely never going to buy the game to buy it because they feel they shouldn't miss out on a good deal.

This applies to me tbh, the games I buy in the sale are games that I normally wouldnt have bought......ie today GTA 4 and Braid