this post was submitted on 15 Mar 2025
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Can someone explain videogames sales to me? How can a game be 12$ and 8.99$ the day after?
The same way your grocery can be selling something for $10 one day and put it on sale for $6 the day after.
Grocery deteriorates, when it's about to expire it goes on sales and if nobody buys they throw it away. Software doesn't rotten.
Companies often create incentives so that their customers will want to buy more of their products. Sales exist within every industry and happen for various reasons. Even with your example of grocery stores, there are other reasons for having sales. I believe it was Kmart that had the famous blue light special. Publix, a southeastern US chain has a weekly rotating sale. Costco has a similar rotating sale. Maybe items are deteriorating, maybe there is an excess of stock. Maybe an item goes on sale for the purpose of luring customers into a store in hopes that they will buy more things. Maybe the item of sale already had a huge markup and the sale brings the price down so there is only a moderate markup, which is often employed by department stores in malls. There are many more reasons for a company to put items of sale i won't get into here.
Ah, I see you're one of those basement dwellers who've never done your own grocery shopping in your life.
Can you elaborate where your confusion lies? It's a digital good, there is no marginal cost. So they can pretty much price a game however they want. So pricing is mostly about maximising revenue, i.e. get as many sales as you can at the highest possible price.
A sale is a relatively straightforward strategy where you first sell the game at a high price to all the people who are fine with paying a lot, then you lower the price to sell more copies to the people who weren't willing to pay the higher price. The result is more total profit. There is a time limit too to create a sense of urgency ("I better buy now so I don't miss the opportunity").
Real goods have a limited lifespan, they usually go on sales when they are about to reach the end of their life or when you physically have to get rid of them. Software doesn't expire.
A price is usually set to cover the initial costs and to make a reasonable profit not to squeeze how much money you can from people.
There are exceptions, but usually that is absolutely not true. Making as much money as you can is 100% the goal for the vast majority of goods produced, physical or digital.
We are talking in a platform that has not such greedy goals
Games on Steam are not usually recurring purchases, one person won't buy the same product over and over like they need to for food. This means the market of people willing to pay the full price gets saturated over time.
Sales are a way to increase the market size by lowering the "barrier to entry" (price). Sometimes a price will be permanently lowered, however usually not because a temporary sale encourages people to buy now instead of later.
Sounds like videogames sales are made to make money and the original price has not much to do with cover costs bur rather making as much profits as people are willing to pay
Of course they are made to cover costs and make money, but you can cover more costs for future games or ongoing development the game if more people are buying the game, even if it isn't at full price
yes you can also buy a billionare fleet of mega yachts
That's how sales of anything works. Everything is sold at the highest possible price that people are willing to pay.
That's not true, especially for software that has infinite supply
Its for the people that only buy when its a "good deal". Its usually for old games that are well liked or for newer games that are maybe a year old now. The non sale price is for people who can't wait for the discount. Sorta like waiting for a movie to go to video/streaming rather than go to the theater.
So what you are saying is that it is only a marketing move to appeal to poorer people?
Frugality does not imply a lack of wealth.
We cannot get it because we are not rich but rich people aren't frugal they don't wait a videogame to drop 5$ in price to buy it
I would think it usually implies the opposite
You can also view it as a strategy to extract more money from richer people, without sacrificing all the poorer customers.
I’m not rich but I’m definitely not poor. I only buy video games when they’re like $30 CAD or less. Only time I went against this rule was for Baldurs Gate.