More Video Game Publisher's Price Charts

People really seemed to enjoy the publisher's video game price charts I posted last week and I have had request for some more publishers. Here are eight more publishers and some quick comments about the charts and prices.



The big surprise in this chart is how strong Capcom's prices are during 2007. Their prices dropped almost the exact same at Atlus's, about 7 percent. Square Enix's video game prices were surprisingly weak during 2007. They publish mostly RPG's so the prices would be expected to stay higher throughout the year. Square's prices dropped about 28 percent compared to a 7 percent drop for all RPG's. Square is the largest of the RPG publishers so maybe they sell a lot more of their games than other RPG publishers do, lowering the resale value.



None of these publisher's prices show anything too surprising. They all drop at a fairly consistent rate throughout 2007. Ubisoft was down 31 percent, Sony 17 percent, Sega 25 percent, and THQ the biggest at 37 percent. THQ publishes lots of licensed video games, so it isn't very surprising their prices would drop the most. Sega and Ubisoft are in line with the average price decline of 30 percent for all video games this time of year.

I plan on posting again the end of this week with some more publisher's prices. Let me know which ones you are interested in so I can be sure to include them. Just comment below and I will be sure to see it.

Video game price data provided by VideoGamePriceCharts.com

Collecting 101: Publisher Can Determine Video Games Rarity

Readers asked me to write an article analyzing prices of games by publisher. Readers thought that certain publishers video games would keep their value longer than others. I have been on hiatus from blog posts for a while, but here are the full results of my video game price analysis by publisher.

I looked at prices for games published between 2000 and 2006 and averaged the prices for all games by a publisher during that time frame. I looked at over twenty of the largest publishers and Atlus because readers specifically asked me for that data. Then graphed the prices of all publishers indexed to 1.00 so we can see relative changes over the course of the year. The graph below only shows four publishers so the graph doesn't get too cluttered.



Of all the publishers in my dataset, Atlus kept the highest prices over the course of 2007 and EA had the biggest drop in prices. Atlus's games on average only dropped seven percent during 2007 while EA's games dropped 43 percent.

This huge price difference between the two publishers is because of their two vastly different publishing tactics. Atlus is a smaller publisher and focuses mostly on RPG's, which my last analysis showed have higher prices than other genres. Atlus's percentage drop of seven percent is almost the exact same as RPG's as a whole. Electronic Arts publishes lots of sports games, which drop in price more than any other genre. Also, a large percentage of EA's titles in during any year are yearly releases (all sports games) or almost yearly (Need for Speed or Medal of Honor).

One item to note with Atlus's prices. Because they are a smaller video game publisher they had few titles in anaylsis, making their data more volatile. The chart shows faster price drops and rises because of this. The best explanation I have for the large peak in August's prices is the release of Persona 3. One of my other posts showed that Pokemon prices increased after Diamond and Pearl came out and my guess is the same thing is happening with some Atlus games.

Microsoft and Nintendo data are in the graph too as comparison and because they are two larger publishers. Microsoft's video game prices dropped an average of 34 percent during 2007 and Nintendo's dropped 22 percent in the same time frame.

Nintendo published games seem to show a longer sales life compared to Microsoft games. I don't have solid numbers to back this up off at my finger tips, but looking at units sold per month Nintendo games seem to sell more longer after release instead of right up front like Microsoft published titles (Halo being the big exception to this). This might explain why Nintendo products keep their value longer, customers continue to look for them long after release.

Next time you plan on buying an Atlus game you can be pretty sure it will keep its resale value, but watch out for those EA games. They might be dropping faster than Pumpkin prices after Halloween. Homer Simpson had to learn the hard way, don't you make the same mistake.

PS: If there are any publishers you really want to see a chart for leave a comment and let me know. Since I have the data all calculated it should be pretty easy to get a graph together if you are interested in a certain publisher.

Video game price data provided by VideoGamePriceCharts.com

Collecting 101: Genre Is Big Factor in Video Game Resale Prices

The Genre of a video game is a major factor determining if a game's resale price will plummet, hold steady, or even increase. Sports games are notorious for losing their value very quickly after they come out and being almost worthless 4-5 years later. Which genre's have the best resale values and which have the worst?


This chart shows the average price per genre and how it changed during 2007. All genre's decreased in price, but RPG's and Fighting games had the smallest decline.

Sports, Racing, and First Person Shooters decreased the most, with an almost 35% decrease in nine months.

Even though the average game decreases, individual games within each genre do increase or hold steady. Below are charts show the distribution of price changes for each genre.







For Action, Sports, and Racing games the largest percentage of games decrease in price 50% or more. Almost a third of sports games decrease in price 50% or more.

Then there is a steady drop in the distribution until only 1.8% of games from all genres show a price increase of more than 50%.

RPG and Fighting games are different. Their peak distributions are closer to the middle of the range. 31% of RPG's actually increased in price, while 52% dropped. Only 16% of games in other genre's increased.

RPG's are two times more likely to increase in price

RPG's Compared to All Other Genres

Below is the table with actual distribution percentages for all genres.



All genre's have some games with price increases of 50 percent or more. And the percentage is roughly the same for all genres, between 1-3%. If you were to randomly buy a video game, it wouldn't matter what genre it was; you would have pretty much the same chance of hitting a home run and the price shooting up more than 50 percent.

The biggest difference is on the up side at the 10-20% ranges. 18% percent of RPG's increase between 10-20%, while all other genres have a 10% chances of increasing the same percentage.

How to Use Genre Information When Collecting Games

How can you use this data? If you decide to collect some video games you should probably focus on RPG's because they have the best chance of increasing in price, but be sure to choose selectively. Most RPG's still drop in price, you just have a better chance of not getting burnt.

Methodology: The charts show the number of games for each genre and how much they dropped in price from January 1st 2007 to August 16th 2007. Video game price data from PriceCharting.com.

Used Video Game Price Changes By Genre

Madden 08 and NCAA 08 are coming out in less than a month for about $50 a piece, but the prices will be dropping fast. Persona 3 on PS2 or Luminous Arc for DS on the other hand might not drop much in price at all. Sports games dropped an average of 35 percent in 2007 while RPG's only dropped seven percent. Below is a graph of the price changes for 2007 by genre.



A graph of only RPG's, Sports, and Action/Adventure games



As discussed in an earlier article, prices drop 25 percent on average by this time of year. So it is no surprise that every genre shows a fairly steady decline in price throughout 2007. Different genre's perform quite differently though. RPG's and Fighting games hold their prices the best throughout the year with only seven and sixteen percent drops respectively. Action and Adventure games are almost exactly the same as the average video game with a price drop of 25 percent during 2007. (This make sense action and adventure is the largest genre and weighs the overall average to behave similarly) Sports, First Person Shooters, and Racing games dropped in price the most during 2007 with decreases of 35, 32, and 33 percent respectively.

It is fairly obvious why sports games drop in price the most of any genre. New games are released annually and most people who play the games want the updated rosters and new features. The prices drop on older sports games faster than other genres because the new versions come out so often.

It is not quite as obvious why FPS and racing games would drop in price more than the other genre's and almost as much as sports. Maybe FPS and racer fans are similar to sports fans and they want the newest game available. They don't want Project Gotham 3 when they can buy Forza 2 or Gears of War when they can buy Halo 3 soon. The sheer number of units sold for these games weighs on the prices too. FPS and Racing games are two of the most popular genres so the new games sell lots of units; making used copies easier to find when the person moves onto the next game.

RPG's hold their value the best because many RPG's never sold very many new copies to begin with. Atlus is great example of this using limited production runs on many of their releases. Games like Persona, Ogre Battle, Disgaea, and other RPG's didn't sell very many copies initially and are hard to find now because of this. Other RPG developers are similar because RPG's are not as popular as other genres in the US. Another possible factor is RPG's generally take longer to play giving more 'value' for the money so people are willing to pay more for older games.

Fighting games are similar to RPG's production and sales wise which explains their higher prices. Fighters are more of a niche genre compared to Sports, Action, and Racing so not as many are produced. Fighter's might also keep their value longer because not as many titles are released so their isn't as much competition driving down prices.

Don't expect to get much money back when you go sell your Madden 2005 on ebay or at your local game store. But the RPG you found hidden away behind stacks of movie tie-ins and FPS could very well be worth the same as what you paid for it initially. And maybe more if you bought the next Earthbound, Suikoden II, or Digital Devil Saga.

Technical: The prices shown are seven day moving averages of the average price of games in a particular genre. The prices have also been indexed to all start at 1 in order to show relative price changes over time. Games used in this study were released between 2000 and 2006 for all major systems available during this time period. Genres without enough data points, at least 100 games, are not shown because one game could have too much sway on prices in smaller genres.

Video game price data provided by VideoGamePriceCharts.com