Product ID in Price Guide Files

We've added an optional additional column to our daily data downloads (aka Price Guides) to help you better link our data with yours. The new column provides a unique identifier for each product in our database. Before this change, you had to link our data to yours by comparing the UPCs or product names. The programming for that technique was more complicated than it needed to be. Now, you can simply correlate our product identifiers with your own product IDs to easily and consistently update your database from the daily downloads.

If you already have your system configured to use the older file format, don't worry. The old format is still available at the same URL you've been using and you don't need to make any changes. If you do want the new column, replace today.csv in your Price Guide URL with today-v1.csv

We've updated the Basic and Premium sample files to reflect the new format. If you have any questions, please email us.

Search by UPC or ASIN

You can now search for products on VGPC by UPC or ASIN. Just type one or the other into the search box and hit Enter. A moment later, you'll be at the price chart page for that product. If you find any UPCs or ASINs that don't appear to be working correctly, please let us know.

GTA IV Raises Classic GTA Prices on Xbox & PS2

Most of the world has heard by now that Grand Theft Auto IV came out April 29th and it was just announced that in the first week the game sold 6 million copies worldwide. The number of games sold for the 360 and PS3 hasn't been announced yet but so far Xbox 360 owners have been buying more of the classic GTA games than Playstation 3 owners. Prices for Grand Theft Auto San Andreas, GTA Double Pak, and GTA Trilogy have increased more on Xbox than Playstation 2.


Buying all three older Grand Theft Auto games released on Xbox would cost $76 now instead of $64 in March, an 18% increase. Buying the same Playstation 2 GTA games would cost $33 now and were $30 in March, which is an 10% increase. If you look at all the PS2 GTA games, including the ones that were not released on the Xbox, you see only a 3% increase from March to May. During this time of year video game prices usually go down.

This difference is either caused by increased demand, limited supply, or a combination of the two.

On the supply side the Xbox game supply is limited while the PS2 supply can increase. The Playstation 2 is still around and retailers are continuing to sell new games. You could find many of these PS2 GTA games brand new at stores. This stops the used prices from increasing very much because the supply can increase too. Xbox games on the other hand are not as easy to find new. Many retailers stopped selling them so the supply of these games is static.

In terms of demand, the Xbox 360 has sold more consoles than the Playstation 3. Assuming the game sells the same proportionally on both systems there are more GTA IV 360 owners. Which means there are more 360 owners who are looking to play the classic GTA games.

Below are the side by side price comparisons for each Grand Theft Auto game on Xbox and PS2. Click the charts to see the most recent prices.

Grand Theft Auto San Andreas Comparison

Grand Theft Auto Double Pak Comparison

Grand Theft Auto Trilogy Comparison

The Xbox prices are more expensive than the PS2 for every Grand Theft Auto game. And Xbox Trilogy for Xbox is somewhat of a rare game now, selling for more than the initial retail price.

Playstation 2 Grand Theft Auto Games Not Released on Xbox

Rare Games and 90-day Prices

Thanks to an astute visitor (hi Troy), we discovered that the console pages,
such as the one for NES, were displaying a blank space in the "90-day Price" column if we had no price points for a game during the previous 90 days. It was quite unclear what the blank space meant. For such low volume games, the 90-day Price column now shows "none" and hovering your mouse over that link explains that there are no price points
for the game during the last 90 days, but you can still click the link to see the historic prices.

We have some changes in the works which should prevent this kind of thing from happening, even for low volume games, but those changes aren't quite ready. Thanks for the feedback and keep it coming.