Saturday, April 18, 2009

Rarity Factors: New Releases In Series

New releases tend to increase the price for older games in the same series. Gamers are excited for the new game coming out so they buy the older ones too.

A very good example of this is the Resident Evil franchise right before the release of Resident Evil 5 for Xbox 360 and PS3. The chart below shows the resale price of Resident Evil 1 for PS1. There is a very obvious increase in price prior to RE5's release.
Resident Evil 1 Prices Before Resident Evil 5 Release
The same can be seen with Resident Evil 2, Resident Evil 3, RE Code Veronica, and Resident Evil 4 before March 2009.

In past articles I've analyzed the same price increases in Pokemon games after the DS games launched. And you can see a few more examples below.
Street Fighter Anniversary
Street Fighter Resale Prices Before SFIV Releases
Call of Duty Finest Hour (when both CoD 4 and CoD World at War came out).
Call of Duty Finest Hour Prices Before CoD5 Releases
This same general pattern holds true for many other games. Sometimes the price increase happens more before the new game. While other times it happens more afterwards. But within a month or two of a big release, the past games in that series will almost always see a resale price increase.

How Long Does The Price Spike Last


After a few months the prices usually come back down to normal levels. The chart above for Call of Duty Finest Hour shows the resale prices quickly coming back down in the second month. Metal Gear Solid for PS1 shows the same pattern.
Metal Gear Solid Price After MGS 4 Releases
Other games show different patterns. Super Smash Bros Melee starts dropping in price immediately after Brawl launches.
Smash Bros. Melee Resale Price After Brawl Launches
Persona 2 on the other hand only had a small increase in price the month after Persona 4 released and then went back to the same exact price range as before.
Persona 2 Prices After Persona 4 Launches

How to Use This New Releases Information


Gamers can save some money when shopping for their games or make more money selling some of their collection if they take advantage of this information. If you want to play a game before a new game in the series is released, buy it a couple months early. If you want to sell a game in your collection you can generally get more money for it by selling it the within a month of a new release.

Leave a comment below if you know any other good examples. Or maybe a game that bucks the trend.

4 comments :

Anonymous said...

another great post.

Anonymous said...

Strange you mentioned the release of Persona 4, but not 3 (Aug 07) and 3 FES (Apr 08) as well, which both saw massive jumps in the Persona 2 price shortly after release.

JJ Hendricks said...

Very good point about Persona 3 and Persona 3 FES. There are big price increases for Persona 2 right around the release dates for both those titles.

video game accessories said...

Just like a TV series or a movie sequel. It takes the first part to appreciate the second:)

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