I've just found out Game/Gamestation have halved the price of Skyrim in the UK to ￡22.49. Is anyone else getting the feeling this is because of an expected surge in irate gamers rushing to trade in their copies of the game?

Imagine going in store and being told your trade in value of a game you bought three weeks ago is ￡10...and then to find out, when they've bumped the price back up again, that their selling said (patched and workng) game for ￡30 pre-owned.

Cynical I know. But I've never had a good experience with either of these stores since they "merged"...

As much as i hate this, i still would have payed that knowing this would happen.

Might want to look at a calender.
Theres something coming up that usually has stores offer deals on products.
Something that used to be about families and peace on earth but is now about gifts and decorations.

This isn't the first thread about this today, but something just struck me...

Skyrim has sold phenomenally well. According to what I found on a five second search, Bethesda shipped 7 million units and, something that by now most everyone around here is aware of, they sold 3.4 million in the first two days. Sales figures are what determine things like Gold and Platinum editions.

Skyrim has also got phenomenally good reviews and is well and truly in the running for Game of the Year.

It isn't unusual these days to see some DLC as little as a few weeks after release (in fact, I can think of one title that had DLC within a few days of release).

Games always drop in price before a new edition is released.

It is not beyond the realms of possibility that Bethesda has planned for the accolades and sales figures and will release a Game of the Year/Platinum Edition that includes the first DLC just in time for Christmas.

I'm not saying that this is going to happen, just that it could happen. Given that best-sellers almost always stay at, or near, release price for a long time (and when I say long time I mean it... The Sims 3 is still $90 several years after release and Diablo II is still $40 more than a decade after release) something is going on. At the very least, they can easily ship copies with new box art now that they have got 10/10 from just about every reviewer.

The idea that people are returning the game in droves is ludicrous. There has never been a game released that was perfect out of the box and didn't need patching, let alone something of this scale released simultaneously on three platforms. The whining on these forums is a minority.

[censored] man, now that you think about it, that's pretty damn true.

I worked in retail for over 15 years and this happens all the time, these are called "Loss Leaders" usually with a retail sale the stuff in the sale is discounted for the store so the retailer makes as much money on the sale items as they usually do. Unsold stock is then returned to the wholesaler and the full price stuff which actually does belong to the store is put back on the shelf. The sale items are sold on a sale or return basis.

But what the retailer also does is choose what they believe are good "Loss Leaders" if you did some research you would also find a couple of big titles in each category. HMV for example will have big titles in CD's and big films in DVD and in each game format. The idea of course is to get the customers in by losing money on a few items that they think will get the customers in.

So Skyrim being on sale isn't because no one is buying it or people are bringing it back it's because it's one of the biggest and best titles out there, hence a great Loss Leader!