Dear Future Gamer

I think there's another angle to this PlayStation pricing debate that people have missed. Apart from main high street retailers and independent retailers, we also have the emergence of e-commerce and mail order retailers selling their wares over the Internet or through magazines.

It would seem to me that these 'stack 'em high and sell them at practically the going rate' companies are taking advantage of the current retail climate. I would imagine that their overheads per game sold are much lower than any other retailer, and yet they weren't the driving force behind the recent price reductions in PlayStation games.

If Virgin have reduced their PlayStation games prices by £15, and if one assumes they're still making some kind of profit (say £5-10 per game), then it suggests that these new, non-conventional retailers have been skimming around £20 profit (leaving £5 for overheads, let's say) per game for the last couple of years. Is that really justifiable for a company that sell their goods from a warehouse on a massive scale? No. Can they continue to do this when more competitors using the same retail method appear? No.

I think that the emergence of this new breed of retailer will eventually be the driving force behind future price cutting/market undercutting. In the near future, the real war won't be between independents and main high street shops but between shops in general and e-commerce/mail order companies.

Finally, I believe lower prices are assured, but only if game manufacturers and retailers don't engage themselves in price fixing practices, which I believe are illegal anyway.

Olly

FG: It's a fine point, Olly. I too would assume that e-commerce is the way forward and yes, people doing this do have much lower overheads and should therefore be able to sell the games to the public at a much reduced rate. The two main factors governing the price these new retailers sell their games at are how much they can buy the games from the supplier for and how much profit they want to make on each game sold. Competition will prevail though, and the people selling games the cheapest will gain more favour with the buying public, so shop around.