Wii Will Sell For More Than $400 Next Christmas

The Wii was hard to get your hands and selling online for more than retail during all of 2007. The prices shot up to almost twice retail price during November and December because it became the hot Christmas gift. Right after Thanksgiving the Wii was selling for more than $550.

Wii Price During 2008 - January 31st, 2008


I think next Christmas the Nintendo Wii will be just as hard to find and will be priced much higher than retail on places like eBay and Amazon. I'm willing to bet the price of the Wii is more than $400 next year. Let me explain why.

1. Nintendo DS Was Hard to Find in Years 3 and 4
The Nintendo DS was released at the end of 2004 so it has been on the market for 4 holidays now, 04, 05, 06, and 07. The chart below shows that the DS was hard to find during the holidays in 2007. The price online was more than retail for all three DS consoles (the DS is still hard to find) This next Christmas will be the Wii's third holiday season.

White Nintendo DS Price - January 31st, 2008


2. Nintendo Produces More DS's Than Wii's
Nintendo are only making 1.8 million Wii's a month compared to 2.5 million DS's. So there is a larger supply of DS's and Nintendo hasn't said they are increasing production of Wii's at this point.

3. WiiFit Is Coming Out This Year
WiiFit is being released in April in the US and I think it is going to be very popular. It is the number one selling game in Japan right now and I think the American media will jump all over the game talking about it. Nintendo will get so much PR it is ridiculous. Anecdotally, three of the casual gamer friends I have who own Wii's said they are excited to buy Wii Fit when it comes out. It will be popular.

4. WiiFit Will Make the Wii The Must Have Christmas Gift Again
All the PR Wii Fit will generate for Nintendo and all the people who talk at the water coolers about how they are on the "WiiFit workout plan", will make the Wii the hot Christmas gift for 2008.

All of these factors combined will make the Wii very popular again in 2008, especially during November and December. Nintendo might increase production some this year, I hope sure hope they do, but I don't think they will make enough to satisfy demand.

My final prediction: Wii will sell for more than $400 during December 2008.

Let me know what you think of this prediction. Do you agree? And go ahead and bookmark this article so we you can see how accurate my prediction was. If I am way off be sure to make fun of me.

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

Hunters Love Video Games

Every Fall across the US people start getting excited for hunting season. Hunters start practicing their calls to attract the animals. The Cabela's stores across the country fill up with people buying camouflage outfits and new shotguns. And State Wildlife Divisions start issuing hunting permits. Through all of this preparation for the new hunting season, hunters still find time to buy a bunch of video games. The prices for all the hunting video games shoot (pun intended) through the roof starting in August.

Cabela's Video Game Price Charts for 2007




In each of these historic price charts, the price of the game has decreased most of the year and then come August the price starts increasing only to accelerate in December. There are many more examples of this including Cabela's Deer Hunt 2005 for Xbox, Cabela Outdoor Adventure for Gamecube, and all the Big Game Hunter games.

Wikipedia says that hunters spent over $20.5 billion in their industry in 2001 and hunted for an average of 18 days. 18 days must not fulfill the hunting urge for most of these people because they seem to buy quite a few hunting games with this $20+ billion.

The price increases might also be due to wives buying the games for Christmas presents in hopes that their husbands won't leave on more hunting trips (I know women hunt too). This would explain the even bigger price increases right before Christmas time.

Whatever the reasons for the price increases. Hunters start paying about twice as much for their electronic hunting fix in December as they do in August. But its still a lot cheaper than a hunting license.

Britney Spears and Video Games

As you know we are a fairly new site and new sites are always looking for ways to get more traffic. After reading Yahoo's 2007 Top Searches report and seeing Britney Spears at number one, it dawned on me: We need an article about Britney Spears that is also video game related. Lucky for us Britney Spears came out with a video game called "Britney Spears Dance Beat".

While people are so busy searching for Britney Spears information are they also thinking, "I wish I could play a video game about Britney spears too instead of just reading gossip and seeing unflattering images." With the help of Google Trends and VideoGamePriceCharts.com data we can find out.

Britney Spears Dance Beat Price During 2007


Britney Spears Search Trend on Google


There were huge spikes in searches for Britney Spears in February and September related to her rehab visit and MTV embarrassment but there was no rise in the price for Britney Spears's video game.

Maybe its the horrible reviews the game received that stop people from buying it. A 4.1 average user review on Metacritic is not very good. I played it a bit myself once (I am kind of embarrassed to admit it) and it is a bad Dance Dance Revolution with lots of Britney Spears spread through the game.

Whatever the reason, people seem to be more enthralled with Britney in search engines and not quite as much on their Playstation 2.

PS. In case the rest of this article isn't enough to shoot us to number one on every search engine. Here is a random photo of Britney doing something funny. Yahoo number one here we come.

Make $150 by Not Playing Your Wii

If someone told you they would pay you $150 not to play your Wii for the whole month of December, would you take it? That is exactly what every Wii owner is being offered right now. Let me explain.

Wii's are selling for upwards of $590 on Amazon right now (probably even more by the time you read this, it increased $20 in the last five hours since I started this post).

After the 15% fee, I would have $501 in my pocket (even more if I sold it on ebay, thank you lower fees), but lets assume $500.

In January I buy a Wii back. In 2008, I could probably find the Wii in stores for $249 by waking up early on a Sunday and going to a Target or Best Buy. But even if I had to buy the Wii back on Amazon it would be a lot cheaper than it is now. The chart below shows that between August and October when the Wii was still hard to find, the average price on Amazon was $350.

Below is a chart of the prices from August 2007 until November 27, 2007.


So by selling my Wii now I would make $150 and all I give up is not being able to play my Wii for the rest of 2007. Think of it. Give up playing your Wii for a month and then you can buy Smash Bros Brawl, ten NES virtual console games, and still have $50 bucks left over.

You might even try and get lucky by waiting to sell you Wii until closer to Christmas. Lose less playing time and maybe get a higher price. With the Wii on the "Hot Dozen" list, Toys R Us list, and many hot toy lists for 2007 this might be a fairly safe bet.

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Madden Prices Fall Fast on Playstation 2

Every every EA Sports releases their Madden football franchise to coincide with the new NFL season starting and every year it consistently sells millions of copies. The only thing more consistent is the price drop for the Madden games after their release. From the first day the game goes on sale, the prices start dropping every single month. Its very evident with the price chart for Madden 2008 above. The video game was released in August at $49.99 and by the end of the month was selling for $36, and for $29 by November. Will this price drop continue you ask?

Madden 2007 dropped in price every single month in 2007 except for a small increase in August when people wanted to get their football fix for cheap by buying Madden 07 instead of 08. This same pattern is seen with Madden 2006, and Madden 2005 to a lesser extent because it is almost worthless, selling for $0.39.

Madden football is very consistent in its sales every year, but also consistent in the fact that it will go on sale. Wait a couple of months or even until playoffs start and you can buy the game for half the original price and still enjoy the game in the height of the current football season.

Video game price data provided by VideoGamePriceCharts.com

Halo 3 Fans Get Nostalgic for the Original

Every gamer knows that Halo 3 was released for Xbox 360 on September 25 because it was almost a holiday in the gaming community. It sold 3.3 million copies in the September alone. A large number of these millions of buyers decided to prepare themselves for Halo 3's release by playing the original again. Prices for the original Halo went up almost 30% in September, going from $7.15 in August to $9.14 in September.

Plenty of gamers must have gone nostalgic after playing Halo 3 too, because the prices just kept on increasing in October. Going up another 10% during October to almost $10. But just as quickly as the price went up, gamers appetite for the original faded and the price dropped back down in November.

Moral of the story: If you going to relive your old gaming memories, buy it before everyone else does. You'll save a few bucks.

Video game price data provided by VideoGamePriceCharts.com

Nintendo 64 Console Gets More Expensive

The Nintendo 64 Console has steadily increased in price throughout 2007. Its low for the year was around $9 in January and is now selling for $27.

The price increases have accelerated during the the past four months, increasing almost $2.00 every month. What is causing this sharp rise in prices? I don't think supply dried up, unless some warehouse stocked with Nintendo 64's caught fire that I didn't hear about. All the N64 consoles are owned by individuals hooked up to their TV's or packed away in boxes. Is there renewed interest in the Nintendo 64 because of the virtual console on Wii? Prices for Super Smash Bros, Mario Kart, and Super Mario 64 have started increasing during the past four months too. So maybe people are looking to play these games on the original system. But even they haven't increased as much as the N64 console's price..

Anyone have other theories why the Nintendo 64's price is rising almost as much as Nintendo's stock price?

Video game price data provided by VideoGamePriceCharts.com

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

Atlus Published Video Games Keep Their Value

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

Sport Games Drop 35% in 2007, RPG's only 7%

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

Video Game Prices Drop 60% in First Eight Months

I tracked the prices of video games released in October and November of 2006, 2004, 2002, and 2000 to see how their prices behave after a game has been on the market eight months, two years, four years, and six years. The average game released in 2006 dropped 60% between it's release and July 1st. The games released in 2004, 2002, and 2000 had dropped an average of 20% in this same time period.

The graph below shows the relative price changes from February 1st to July 1st on a daily basis for each release year.

Video games are obviously a depreciating asset. Every single year they drop in price over time. Like cars, computers, and most other equipment, the prices drop the fastest the first year. Games released in 2006 depreciated an average of 32% from their release date until February 1st, going from $42.08 to $28.66 in three months (not shown on graph). And then drop another 38% in the following five months from February until July 1st, going from $28.66 down to $17.70. The average video game released in 2004, 2002, and 2000 only dropped 20% during this same time frame going from an average of $9.61 to $7.70.

By the second, fourth, and sixth year after a video game's release, the prices follow almost the exact same pattern in their price depreciation. This also is very close to the Overall Video Game Index as you can see in the graph below.

This information won't stop me from buying the Halo 3's, Mario Galaxy's, and Metal Gear 4's of the world, because they are worth every penny and I don't want to wait six months. But for all those marginal games that I might like but can't quite decide if I want to buy them, I'll wait a few months and save myself some money. If I wait six months, I can buy two games for the price of one.

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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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Buy Video Games in November

If you want to save money on your video game purchases, buy used games the first week of November when the prices are the lowest they will be the entire year.

Before I get into any analysis, I want to go over what this graph represents. I randomly chose 50 used video games for PS2, Gamecube, Xbox, and Gameboy Advanced and tracked their prices on a daily basis for the past 18 months. Each price point on the graph represents the average of all 50 games on that particular day. The graph was indexed so January 2nd 2006 is defined as 100% and every other day is a percent of that value. For example, November 4th is 60.3% of the January 2nd price and also happens to be the lowest point of the year. (If you want to know how I get the prices for each of the 50 games read my "How do I get the Prices" post)

The prices throughout the year seem to break up into four distinct groups better illustrated below.

The blue segment is January through the end of May and prices are decreasing for the most part. Yellow is the summer months, June through the end of August and prices are fairly steady during this time period. Then there is a drop in September and October represented by the pink region. And finally a sharp rise in prices starting in November and ending at the end of December shown in green.

I think some major events are responsible for the general trends. Christmas is obviously responsible for the big upswing in the green region. Video game prices increase more than 30% from their November lows to the December peak and this makes sense because everyone and their mother (literally) are buying video games for gifts. The prices in the blue region are the inevitable decline in prices after the Christmas rush is over, but why is there a distinct leveling out of prices starting in June? From my experience and from what the data shows, I think people start buying games again once kids are out of school. I know, I know, they should be playing outside on their bikes, but the prices stop declining right after Memorial Day and stay steady up until Labor Day. I think video games are used as a cheap way to entertain the kids while they are home during the summer. After Labor Day the pink region starts and prices decline again until November when Christmas shopping takes over.

So what can you do with the data? If you get a bunch of games for Christmas that you decide you don't want or you beat in two days and you decide to sell them online. Be sure to sell them as quickly as possible because they depreciate pretty fast. Or if you are looking to buy some used video games as gifts for Christmas or Hanukah, buy them in November. Procrastination will cost you quite a bit of money.

Just as you compare an individual stock's return vs. the SP 500 to know how it behaved relative to the market; I will be using this baseline seasonality graph in all my future posts. Individual games prices will be compared against the overall used game market to see how they compare. I will start using it in my next blog post about Pokemon game prices before and after Pokemon Diamond and Pearl released for DS this past April.

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