Wii games fastest to bargain bin

The practice, known as ‘price protection’ in the US, describes a publisher lowering the trade price of a title if it is underperforming in the marketplace.

“Over 7.5 per cent of Xbox 360 and 9.09 per cent PS3 third-party published titles go into price protection early,” EEDAR analyst Jesse Divnich stated. “The Wii, however, nearly doubles the Xbox 360 and PS3's average at 15.1 per cent.

“Aside from the often congested holiday release schedule, most publishers typically avoid releasing their big triple-A core targeted titles against other triple-A titles, whereas it is common to see many mainstream/casual titles, targeting similar markets, released in the same week.”

EEDAR also added that a high average review score is the safest way to fend off the bargain bins: “What is most astonishing from this dataset is that games that achieve quality scores above 91 per cent have never been price protected early on PS3, Wii or Xbox 360.”

Source: Blend Games