World Ends With You Shortage

Joystiq posted an article today about the shortage for the World Ends With You for Nintendo DS. The article says the game has been in short supply for quite a while but Square Enix has shipped the game to retailers and is in stock now. I thought this would be an interesting game to check on to see how severe the shortage has been and if the restock lowers the resale price. The chart below shows that World Ends With You has been selling at retail price since it's release.

The game must be relatively hard to find because most games start dropping in price right after they are released. The resale price also increased a little in June to be above retail, about $40.36 when retail price is $39.99.

The current price on vgpc is $36.00 so the game has come down almost $4 already from retail price. If Joystiq is right and the game has been restocked at most retailers, I expect the price will keep coming down in the next couple of days.

Nintendo DS Still In Short Supply

The Nintendo DS sold almost 2.5 million units in December 2007 and there were reports of shortages of the console all over the US. It is nearing the end of January and there are still shortages of all Nintendo DS colors.

The best way to determine if an item is in short supply is to check the prices people are paying. If people are willing to pay more than retail value of $129.99 then the Nintendo DS is hard to find at retail so people will pay more to get it. The Black, Pink, and even White DS's are all selling for more than retail price. Below are the charts of the Nintendo DS prices for the past year.

Black Nintendo DS Price - January 25th, 2008

Pink Nintendo DS Price - January 25th, 2008

White Nintendo DS Price - January 25th, 2008


Prices in January are actually higher than December for all three consoles so the console is harder to find in January than in December. They are starting to come down in price some so maybe Nintendo is finally shipping some systems into stores.

Anecdotally, I haven't seen a Nintendo DS near me for the past week. Are you noticing the same shortages where you live? Or are they easy to find? Let me know in the comments section below.

Prices come from VideoGamePriceCharts.com

Pokemon DS Games Raise All Pokemon Prices

Pokemon Diamond and Pearl were released April 22nd for the Nintendo DS and prices for all the older Pokemon portable games shot through the roof in anticipation. Apparently, the slogan “gotta catch’em all” refers to the games as well as pokemon themselves.


The graph above shows the average price of all portable pokemon games on a seven day moving average vs. the price for all video games during that same time. The data starts in early February, almost three months before the DS games were released, and goes until the end of June 2007.

The blue section shows the prices stay relatively even with the overall video game index initially. From the end of February until Pokemon Diamond and Pearl were released on April 22nd (the yellow section) prices start rising and don’t follow the same trends as the rest of video game prices. For the next month after the release prices fall back into the overall trend and steadily decline at roughly the same pace as the index prices. Starting in the green section though, prices for Pokemon games start increasing again and are nearly 50 percent higher than other video games at that point and 23 percent higher than when they started back in February.

What accounts for these big differences in prices and the three separate price increases? Generally, people want to collect all 493 pokemon, which requires them to buy the older games as well as the new one. Or, they enjoy the new ones so much they want to play the older games, too. Whatever the reason, people seem to really increase their buying at three separate times shown on the graph below.


The first increase is about two months before the new DS games release and prices increase about 20 percent in 30 days. The second increase is shorter and not as big, about 11 percent in two weeks. The third price spike starts the day kids get out of school for the summer, May 25, the Friday before Memorial Day. Parents start buying games for their kids once they are out of school and have more time to play. What better way to entertain your kids all summer than a collection quest that requires you to beat at least three different games?

The time between the three price spikes are generally decreasing about the same as the overall video game market. Showing that supply and demand for pokemon games and all video game are about the same during these time periods.

I plan to continue looking at pricing trends for other old games after the new ones come out to see if this same phenomenon occurs. Does it happen to Spiderman 1 and 2 when the third game came out? What about Final Fantasy X and X-2 when Final Fantasy XII came out? I’m guessing all games show a spike to some degree when a new one in the series arrives, but by how much? Back to the data I go to find out.

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