And yes, that number includes video games.
Today JB Hi-Fi revealed its annual results. The good news? Overall, sales are up, carried in part by a fairly significant increase in hardware sales, driven by a large amount of growth in various different categories (which weren’t specified). Hardware sales increased by 8.6%, which resulted in an overall sales growth of 4.8%.
But the bad news is that software sales are essentially in freefall, having decreased again. This year the drop is a fairly large one of 8.8%. Last year the drop was 8.9%.
Software sales in this case encompass music and movies in addition to games, so this drop doesn’t necessarily mean that sales of video games are in decline. In fact, I’d argue that DVD/Blu-ray/CD sales are far more likely to be the source of the decline. That being said, it wouldn’t surprise me if video games retail was struggling either, given the growth of digital in this sector.
But it’s an interesting set of figures nonetheless. It appears that consumers are far less likely to buy hard copies of media nowadays. I suspect this is a bit of an irreversible trend.
Comments
112 responses to “JB Hi-Fi Software Sales Decreasing By A Significant Margin”
When JB first started selling software (almost 10 years or so ago now) – they just stocked PS2 and XBOX titles at VERY competitive prices.. now they stock shovelware for everything under the sun
Perhaps time to refocus their strategy?
And while they’re at it, how about they look at those prices…?
I think one the main factor is that they are not trying to compete on game prices anymore. DS is the one leading the price cuts at the moment. Even Target / Big W are offering better deals then JB.
I’m not sure on all the games, but I remember when I tried to get Watch Dogs and called JB to try price match and they said no.
I strongly suspect from the rumours that Big W/Target only compete briefly on the pricing as a means to get people into the store to buy something else that has higher margins. So I guess it’ll only continue as long as it works as a gimmick.
Basically. It’s also easy to sell that kind of stuff at a loss when you’re Kmart/Big W or Target when it was never gonna be your big seller by any means and you can make it up in other departments easily.
I dunno seems like some pricing is pretty competitive.
Destiny + DLC PS4 – $69
Most PS4 titles coming up are at $79, which could be better but at least its not $99.
to be fair JB usually has their games priced far lower than other retailers and usually stocks all the big titles cheap at launch. As the article mentioned (and as you would know if you read it before reaction posting) the issue is more likely their music and dvds/bluray sales bringing down the gaming sales.
People did read the article. Only they realised that the dvd/bluray thing was an opinion and not an actual fact.
What do you pay at JB? The prices near me for new titles range from $60-$70, a far cry from the $100 tags from when they started.
Never had an issue with getting a copy of any popular or obscure titles either.
Your JB sounds shit Prob a clearance dump
Stop being ridiculous
When JB first starting selling games, they were in the competitive $60-70 for new releases. Even as recerntly as 5 years ago I was picking up new-release games for $69 (with Big W around $74, Target $79 and EB at $99) – stuff like Resistance 2, MK vs DC (I still have the reciepts, I keep them for all my games). And those prices were still like that after the first week super-sale too
When I go there now (and I go to a wide range of stores from Melb CBD to Melb Metro stores) and the prices for stuff like Watch Dogs, when new, reverted back to $89 after their first week “sale” (of whatever price it was, I bought mine from HK so I dont know). They arent discounting and being competitive like they used
As for the “clearance dump” comment – all JB’s sell the shovelware titles in those 2 for $40 bins
^this^
Their prices used to be competitive. The last few games that I have bought for the PS4 though, have been priced the same as EB. The Last Of Us and WatchDogs were within a couple of dollars of EBs price, according to the prices on each of their websites.
Thank fuck DSE, Target and BigW have come to the party lately.
Like hell they were.
When my local store of 14 years started selling games they matched EB for prices before dropping down to $70-$90 within a few months. When JB announced they would try to bring their prices down to try and get as close to imports as they could, prices in my store dropped to around $50-$80 with most new titles at around $60 to $70. Even with new gen games going for $110 elsewhere stayed around $80
I brought my copy of Watchdogs on release for $69 and it’s still being advertised as such.
I know about the shovel ware bins, all the stores have them but you speak as though that’s all they stock now when the bins are completely separated from the new release, second hand, top seller and library displays.
Find some good games in the bins every now and then too.
I might be able to find cheaper games at Big W and Target but they NEVER have new titles and I have never seen half the obscure games I see at those stores at any other game related shop.
Did you know there is a Beauty and the Beast game for Wii and not the Disney version but the teen romance flick that wasn’t even released in Australia? One of many titles Big W and Target can provide when their 3 copies of the new titles sell out.
And with all this experience visiting different stores you should have noticed the very different prices in on the same items since each store does have the right to change non sale items. The reason I never went back to the JB that opened up in the new Ikea building was a $20 mark up on nearly everything compared to my local store.
Also, considering that JB has had flagging sales for years despite their attempts to be more competitive I am hardly surprised prices started going back up. If no one buys at lower prices and continue to go to places like EB what do you think will happen?
So I maintain my assertion that your store is shit.
Calm down angry man
My store is shit? I dont own a store, nor do I frequent/preference ONE in particular
Take your pick of the following stores and please rank in order of “shit-ness”
* Melbourne South Wharf
* Melbourne CBD Lonsdale St
* Melbourne CBD Bourke St
* Highpoint Level 1
* Highpoint external
* Airport West
* Watergardens
* Sunshine
* Melton
I’ve been/bought from these stores in the last few months – again, please feel free to rank them in shitness, since they are ‘my store(s)’ – I’m curious of your metric
Of course, if youre not from Melbourne…
Not angry, do live in Melbourne.
Here’s an easy check list.
Did those stores sell new titles for $69 and then raise it to $89 after the sale?
Do the shovel ware bins somehow stop the store from stocking new titles or ones you want?
Does your store sell new titles for $100-$120?
If the answer was yes then your store is shit.
Rethinking strategy is one thing, but lowering prices requires better sales
Their prices are nowhere near as competitive as they used to be. Not surprised by this news at all.
I bought a Blu Ray online from them recently and it arrived really quickly – was very impressed. I’m so used to having to wait ages because prices are so much better in the UK.
Yeah, my copy of AC4 (Black Flag edition – cheaper than regular edition, whut?) turned up pretty much two days later. Very surprised.
Lucky. Most of the stuff I order from JB gets dispatched from their Melbourne warehouse (pre orders mostly) so i’ve waited anywhere upto 2 weeks before :/
But If I order something else online that’s been out for a while and a near by store has it say Mermaid Waters i’ll have it in 2 days, which is awesome.
Wait what? They effectively class anything on a disc as “software”? Surely that’s a recipe for bad sales data and incorrect analysis.
The figures say software sales aren’t working, lets stop stocking games despite the fact the sales people tell us that’s the only thing people buy
This is how they disclose to their shareholders and the market (and competitors!) They will have more accurate stats internally from which to base decisions.
Pretty sure that’s just the press release language. They’d have internal sales data as detailed as anyone could want.
I’d hope so, it’d be pretty damned stupid to run a business with so general a category, they might as well call everything they sell “Stuff”
They do categorize all their disc based areas as “software”. They brought this in for 2 reasons a few years ago, it means one manager covers all those departments rather than one for each of games, music and movies. And they can do the same with staff. All other staff are now “software staff” and they can work across any of the 3 “software” areas.
This is based on my experiences at JB. I was a “games coordinator” for a few years and then they shifted to this “software” shit. I left in late 2010. About a year after they did the “software” thing.
They still used to look at sales figures separately between the 3 areas though.
When a new release Bluray is on sale for $29.95 is considered a bargain by JB, I really don’t bother buying it. JB used to have amazing sale prices but now everything is that “buy 2 pieces of crap, get 1 more piece of crap for free” style of sale. Not to mention a movie like Thor is still costing $33 on Bluray when it’s already old enough to be reduced to their “cheap” $16 range but isn’t reduced at all.
I still dont get why $30 is an appropriate price for new release movies?
I know this is a horrible comparison, but I can buy the latest bluray movies when I am in China for $2-$3 per disc depending on exchange rate, seller and brand of disc. Like I said, I know this is not a good comparison, but imagine if latest release movies were $10 per disc in Australia – they would sell, and sell quick.
Isnt it better to sell 4000 copies of a movie for $10 per disc than 100 copies of a movie at $30 per disc?
I suspect the head honchos at the publishers dont think selling stuff for 50% less would actually net twice as many sales, thus they’d be losing out. Yet at the same time they’d have no qualms about raising prices to compensate for drops in sales =.=
This is the exact reason why I haven’t bought The Avengers yet, haven’t seen it dip below $30 yet, and it’s a 2 year old movie, but hey, that’s Disney for you.
Whole idea behind “The Vault” really. Hey, you want a copy of Aladdin on Bluray? Too bad. Oh wait, we’re making it available for a limited time. Better pay $40 for it before we lock it back up.
As I mentioned to @liondrive I did find Aladdin on Blu-Ray for 20 bucks from Ozgameshop, kind of regretting ordering The Walking Dead Season 3 instead of that now. Hopefully they’ll have some copies left on payday.
Time to think about a code-free DVD player and order stuff from Amazon.
Or if you have a PS3/PS4/XBONE you could buy them from amazon.co.uk, seeing as we’re in the same region (B, for those wondering) as the UK. (Or if you see a BD with ABC on the back (like this – http://www.brandsoftheworld.com/sites/default/files/styles/logo-thumbnail/public/0023/8593/brand.gif) it’s region free.
Yeah. I used to just wander around picking up movies for $10-$15 while waiting for my friend to finish work. I’d spend a hundred dollars and get a stack of movies, but now the price is at a point where the movies don’t fall under that next to nothing level.
If it weren’t for piracy and digital distribution I think increased retail prices would have actually brought back movie rental. When DVDs were in their sweet spot it was like ‘well, I’ll pay an extra $5 just to skip the inconvenience of returning it’. Now unless you’re going to watch it ten times there’s a good reason to just rent.
Man you buggers are tight. $30 seems more than fair to me.
Remember the Studio has to make money, then the distributor, then the retailer.
It is less than the price of two adult movie tickets at the cinema, that seems like good value to me.
Halving the price and doubling the sales would not equal the same revenue for any of the people in the food chain.
$30 to get a high definition, full surround movie experience in my home that rivals the quality of the cinema, that I can watch as many times as I want, whenever I want, often with extra features sounds pretty fair to me.
When I had dealings with Sony Australia, the cost to manufacture a jewel case, disc, and paper inserts, then distribute them to retail was seven dollars. Made in Aus, put on store shelves, everyone made their cut of profit. The price actually dropped over time for popular titles because economy of scale shares the setup cost evenly over units made.
So let’s be generous and say the retailer makes $5 of a sale. We are now up to $12. Where does the rest of the money go? Sony have paid all the rights they need to pay and made a small profit (twice in fact, because they are the manufacturer AND publisher), the distributor made their money moving it all around, and the retailer made a solid profit for the unit.
Where does the extra money go?
They have done the research and concluded that they can charge an amount that people will be angry about but still pay. Granted prices of distribution and manufacture have gone up in the ten years since I had all this info, but let’s throw out a high number and say it now costs $15. The other $15 is just free money for them. That’s bullshit.
Edit: That’s free money on the supplier side, by the way. JB doesn’t see a cent of that.
Cost to Manufacture and distribute is seven dollars. Add a cut for the studio. Then add a profit margin for Sony on top. Then add JB hi-fi’s overheads on top. Then add JB hi-fi’s per-unit profit on top.
Pretty soon you’re at $30.
I specifically said that it included their cut.
It’s much cheaper than that these days.
The most expensive part of the production process is producing the glass masters. The actual cost to manufacture disks is much cheaper. I recently had a quote for DVD glass masters and 1,000 units in keep cases for $1,200. The quote for 5,000 was about double that. For 15,000 it was $5,000. That’s way less than $7.00 a unit.
In reality, if you said that the cost to shelf per unit was $1.00 for a blu-ray title like Avengers, you would be making a gross overestimation. The thing is that distribution costs are ridiculously low these days if they exist at all. I haven’t been in a situation where a wholesaler has charged me for delivery since last century.
My estimates include Sony taking their cut, royalties, and the distributor. Sony pays for distribution. They send millions of items out a month. They run trucks from Sydney to Perth.
So yeah, pure manufacturer costs are low, but they make a solid profit per unit. Making a profit margin of 400% on top of your ordinary sustainable profit and just expecting retailers to continually cut margins to razor thin levels is a joke.
When was the last time you went to the cinemas? It’s $21.50 per adult these days. ($18.50 concession, $12 cheap-ass Tuesday)
Now I’ll admit, I’m unemployed. I have maybe $100 a fortnight after bills, food, rent, etc to spend on myself. $30 is almost 1/3rd of that money, so of course I’m going to be tight.
Not where I work. It’s $12 in the regular seats, $14 for the better seats, and $3 extra if it’s 3D, so the most you’ll pay is $14 for 2D and $17 for 3D.
Are you posting from the early 90s? Where abouts is that? I gotta concur with Mase though. All over my city, its $21.50 is the standard ticket (non-3D) with $14 for Tightass Tuesday. There are only a handful of cinemas in the entire metro area (usually family/independent ones) that sell for less than $17ish. I don’t think I’ve been to see a film in the last 3-4 years where it didn’t cost us at least $42 for the tickets alone.
Yeah, we’re independent, and semi-rural (population of about 14,000, I think).
The Readings cinema near me (Sydney suburb) is usually $23.50. HOWEVER, if you pick up a local shopping centre pass (free and 2 minutes to fill in a form), it costs $11 during the week. This is a great deal and had no clue it existed until someone who worked in the centre told me. I wonder if similar deals are out there in populated areas.
My local Hoyts is $8.50 for all movies every day of the week…
I’m in Newcastle and the Event Cinema, Hoyts and Reading cinemas are all $8.50 for a standard ticket plus the $3 for 3d.
Yeah. When we moved back from the Netherlands to those prices, my Dutch gf was like “WHAT?”. Australia tax for sure.
Local Cinema is $8.50 for an adult ticket. And that’s not cheap Tuesday. Add $2.50 for 3D.
http://www.cineplex.com.au
It’s not that I’m tight, and it’s not that I don’t expect anyone to make any money out of it, but $30 for a movie just isn’t a great price. I mean I’d enjoy seeing The Avengers on my TV in HD a few times, but it doesn’t really add up to a $30 experience.
Also over the past ten years I’ve brought enough games and movies that I’m almost overwhelmed with how much crap I’ve got. It makes paying $30 for something I’m only going to watch a few times more trouble than it’s worth (and thanks to Blu-Ray doesn’t fit properly into my current racks). I’m about ready to just dump half of them at the Salvos.
Feel free to donate them to the salvo’s I work at then 😛
I’d feel bad giving them some of these. I mean what’s the difference between dumping broken lawn chairs out front and giving them my copy of Kane & Lynch: Dead Men? =P
People might have a use for the broken chair?
Hahaha.
Someone could conceivably repair the lawn chair …
Won’t anybody think of the Middlemen?
You would probably find that new releases are fairly price inelastic, i.e. they sell 1000 copies at $30 but would only sell 1200 copies at $20. The costing probably works out something like:
Cost of media/licence – $18
Cost of sales – $5
Profit margin – $7
Older releases are cheaper because the studios have reduced licensing costs at that point. Essentially they’ve been remaindered.
Your $3 disc bought in China almost certainly does NOT include a licence fee to the makers of the movie. Basically they’re paying for the disc and sleeve, and the rest is profit. It’s basically pirated. Heck, forget about “basically”; it’s an unlicensed copy – it IS pirated.
I know its pirated, thats why I said it was a horrible comparison
But does one really care for a 2 year old movie?
It’s been 2 years since the movie’s been out, even been on Free2Air. Why should I still pay $30 for it?
After 2 years, $10 for a movie is a just price. For everything else, there is pira… ehm.. Mastercard.
I completely agree with you but sometimes I wonder if their hands are tied a bit with the prices. The old Australia ta at work.
Try living in Japan where a Bluray will cost you $50 at NORMAL price.
http://tower.jp/item/3666896/%E3%83%8F%E3%83%9F%E3%83%B3%E3%82%B0%E3%83%90%E3%83%BC%E3%83%89
A country where people still rent films and sit all the way through the credits in the cinema.
Retail pricing is still set by the distributor’s cost price, though. Also, Thor is from Disney and they’re notorious for maintaining high cost prices long after release.
Haven’t bought a single physical music product since signing up to Spotify, and stopped buying B-Rays since Netflix.
Still buy all my physical console games, because 30GB downloads kill my internet cap, and the price is no different from retail (if not worse). Also, being able to return uninteresting games is #1 awesome feature that digital doesn’t support yet.
As a JB employee I just wanted to add my 2 cents:
Yes…the definition of “software” is a weird one…often causing confusion, internally it is now referred to as the “media” department, which doesn’t necessarily help.
Prices, on cd’s & dvd’s at least, is very much controlled by our supply chain. To use @mase ‘s example of Thor, walt Disney pictures, who supply the movie to us, much like many suppliers such as fox, universal etc know how popular their movies are and as such charge retailers such as JB a premium for each ordered copy, because they know retailers will have to pay it to keep customers happy, if a movie is $30 chances are its because we paid $27.35 per copy due to supply chain monopolization.
Whilst I agree and sympathize, please also realize that while a company does want your money, they also want to keep you happy to keep you coming back into stores.
Wow that’s a very very low margin, seriously… you have to sell a lot to kinda ‘breakeven’, sucks…
I used to work at JB a few years back, deadset when I’d go to purchase my own stuff using my staff discount, more often than not the “sale price” was actually lower than my staff discount price (which was exactly wholesale) meaning that for more than a few of their inventory JB were running at a loss. When I did get a staff discount it was never more than $5-10 and and it usually sat around $5 on games.
JB make next to nothing on games and other software, as has been previously stated the pricing issue in this country is caused by companies like Disney, Sony etc.
That’s fair enough. Thanks for enlightening us on the topic.
Games even less so. I recall my days at JB where a new release title was sold below cost, and people would still come in complaining about the price.
Yeah but those don’t really cancel each other out. If I’m paying $50 for a 600ml bottle of water you would still call my $40 price tag ridiculous. As frustrating as it is to deal with, especially when you’re so low on the chain the only influence you have is passing the message on to someone else who has no say in prices, it’s the only way you’ll see a change.
JB HiFi have people complaining about the price which forces them to react by fighting for lower prices (with mixed results). Without that feedback it becomes easier to justify throwing a higher price on the item to make a profit rather than going back to your suppliers and putting in the hard work of renegotiating the prices in order to make a profit while being fair to your customers.
Obviously it’s not that simple. Enough people are involved that to get the result you’re asking for someone to be cut out of the supply chain. JB HiFi have a bit of power in movies/music, but they’ve got almost no leverage with games. If they refused to stock Assassin’s Creed EB would pick up the slack even if it meant selling at a critical loss.
Especially when the company itself will sell you the same bottle of water directly themselves for $50 because they want to ‘match retail’. At the insistence of retail, because they don’t want to be priced out of existence, but with that kind of mark-up, the publishers sure aren’t complaining.
(Slightly tortured digital game price analogy.)
Heh, the attitude towards helping businesses sure does change when you’re talking about making a mountain of money by pricing your digital content to match retail as opposed to when you’re talking about not blasting smaller stores out of existence and generally screwing everybody by only giving GameStop/EB access to the good pre-order bonuses. =P
This is why we need to look beyond the normal distrubtion chains
Yes, I am referring to Paralell importing – it sucks but its a free market, right?
EzyDVD import all their games, and have monthly % off sales too.
http://www.ezydvd.com.au/games
May not get it first, but can often get it cheaper.
As someone that used to work in the storeroom and would often help the software guys unpack new stock, I saw the invoices all the time. I’d have to agree completely with the example of the margin. It’s not that far different with TVs and Computers either. Everyone comes in expecting to be able to have a $200 discount on a $1000 TV, not realising it cost $970 from the supplier. No doubt there are rebates going on behind the scenes, but you get the drift.
But how do you want a customer to come back, after he walked out when seeing a 2 year old movie still costing $30, after it’s been to Free2Air already?
I worked at JB also, and this a load of crap, i would see the prices when I was un-boxing movies and cds, the cost price is not as close to retail price as you suggested. and the fact that if u don’t sell a bulk lot of stock, u can simply send back what you don’t sell.
I would also be careful, as if you do work at JB, you will have signed a disclosure contract about talking about this sort of stuff, but then again, the company are a-holes anyways.
as for things like PS4 games, why would i buy at JB, when the console is region free, and i can just buy my games cheaper online with delivery, play them, and sell them or trade them in again after, …. Australian pricing is simply flawed.
Ive also noticed their prices have gone up quite allot as I always get them to price match with Big w. Now I just go straight to Big W.
I also found that it got to be a really big pain to get JB to match price. In the past i would just mention Big W had a sale price and they would match it. Now i have to show them proof, they have to call up and physically confirm that they have stock.
ive actually been denied a price match due to the fact that the game was “sold out” around the area. i managed to find it at another companies store for cheaper than JB.
Damn, as a professional government archivist and gamer the rest of the time I will be really sad to see the end of physical boxed media. I love having a collection.
Well now you have to tell us what you archive for the government! Drug busts? Weapon hauls? Are you the guy that runs the warehouse of secrets in Indiana Jones??
Bahaha I wish, but it’s actually photographic preservation, specifically of Indigenous culture and language. There are moments where I get to tell people we have “top men” though.
We have some top men looking into it. Top. Men. *glares*
I went into a JB the other day and they had completely redesigned their store, minimizing the “software” space. I’m sure they’ll still deal in “software” but they are quite clearly moving away from it to become another Harvey Norman type franchise with the introduction of the “JB Hi Fi Home” stores.
This is very upsetting news indeed. As a gamer and collector this saddens me. The digital age is coming friends, and I think a lot sooner than expected.
RIP physical media.
Until the average residential internet connection becomes faster and cheaper (on a per GB basis) Digital still has a long way to go before it becomes a real risk to retail.
Drive to a store, pick up a copy, go home, install it, patch it, and be playing = ~1 hour
Buy Digital, download 30GB of data = ~8 hours
It’ll be a while yet before Digital reaches it’s tipping point.
I think these will pick up again soon as agencies like ozgameshop start jacking up their prices and charging for shipping, but there’s no doubt anything disc-based is a tough market right now. We’ve got video on demand, digital districution for games and music… brick and mortar media have been in slow decline with the turn of the century. My future blu-ray purchases, with the exception of walking in and seeing something I want in the 2 for $20 bin, can be counted off on one hand – most likely me picking up blu-rays of shows I’m presently torrenting. I imagine Game of Thrones season 4 will be out soon, and my wife is going to want a blu-ray copy of True Blood, for sure. But other than that? Hard to say.
The future of game sales looks just as bleak, probably as soon as the next hardware revision of the PS4 and Xbone come out with a hard drive that can store more than ten games.
Maybe if brick-and-mortar would hurry up and fucking die already, we might stop seeing $80-90 new release digital game titles in Australia.
I’ve noticed that games stay at RRP longer than they have in the past… There have been a few games that I’ve been waiting for the “big discount” to happen (these games are fairly old now) and they are still sitting at the Day 1 price.
A few of them I’ve seen EB actually dropping the prices first, outside of sale time, but not far enough for me to bite in.
Yeah in games this is probably JB’s main problem at the moment – ever since the start of this console generation – EB has actually been better value – that’s not saying much – but GTA V was the last title I bought from JB. They need to address their pricing
The tragic cycle of the hipster.
JB becomes too mainstream, hipsters move on.
Like a swarm of trendy, trendy locusts.
JB was trendy? It’s a retail store like Harvey Norman, I had no idea it was ever considered ‘cool’.
I think he’s referring to all the times that photos of JB staff game review cards and clever window displays trended on social media and news sites
years ago it was definitely a trendy place (i’m talking like, 10-15 years ago) – most of the stores were pretty small, and the music sections were almost completely devoid of anything resembling top 10 albums. I live in Melbourne now, but I grew up in Tassie, and I remember loving coming to Melbourne on school holidays because it meant I could go to JB HiFi and load up on albums I wasn’t able to get back home.
This ^ I used to do the same thing;. In fact a few mates and I would make a day of it heading down to Melbourne and hitting all the music stores. with JB being one of the few that had the really rare import stuff.
They still have a good selection, but nothing like it’s heyday.
how good was it! I actually remember saving money just for the JB portion of the trip :p
… suddenly I feel old
lol, Yes that and Gaslight music. Yep we’re old.
Yeah being a metal head (like hard to get metal from Finland not emo shit) I used to love JB. That and it really was the place that said “like games, music and movies? Then come on in”. Now the yellow price sticker that meant SUPER CHEAP is actually meaningless and deceptive to the point I don’t think they care what sticker they use anymore.
I used to be excited for the day when Blu-rays where going to be super cheap like DVDs where years ago. Boy was I wrong when it became a case of both of them being expensive.
I buy a lot of stuff from JB online and have always found their service to be exceptional, they even gave me a free upgrade to a special edition for a pc game that had been out for a little while which included a redemption code for more in game content. The shipping is usually very fast and the prices on the stuff I want to buy, mainly blu-rays, is better than other comparable stores. Mind you I usually only shop there when they do have the item I want on sale but that’s how supply and demand works I guess
I still buy physical games. As they get larger and larger during this console generation it takes longer and longer to download them to the point where it is quicker (and more reliable in some cases) to catch a bus into the CBD, have lunch, pick up the physical copy, take the bus back home and install it from the disk then it is to download it.
and use the toilet. Also start cooking tea. Then eat it.
Then get a good 8 hours of sleep and it might be ready by then.
Hey buddy, 16GB day-one patches are a vital part of the new ‘get your money nownownow’ game development cycle.
Because that happens for every game, right? ::eyeroll:: And who really wants developers to find bugs past when they go gold, right? ::biggereyerollohgodthey’restuckmyeyesmyprettyeyes::
Be glad they’re doing Day 1 patches, in the old days you were lucky if you saw a patch at all, and games weren’t as complex as they are today.
While that’s true and fair and my comment was mostly tongue-in-cheek and definitely exaggerated, you’ll also find that reasoning is the same as rationalizes Day One DLC. “We have all these devs sitting here on payroll after the game goes gold, what… did you want them to just sit there twiddling their thumbs?”
It’s also true that publishers and investors are speaking very openly and publicly in the AAA space about how to cut down development time and start seeing monetization – and thus, a return on investment – earlier and earlier in the development cycle. You’d have to be pretty naive to think that this doesn’t have an impact on quality control for new releases. Full-game-size is frankly absurd, and even a cursory skim through any QA forum or insider posts (such as the letters from The Trenches), shows that ‘show-stoppers’ aren’t living up to their name anymore.
Till you find out the day one patch is as big as the game and steam started downloading it so you can’t launch the game anyway or the console version needs to be online.
Suddenly the toilet and 8 hour sleep becomes a time sink rather than a necessity.
JB use to be good for new release games. EB would be $99 and you would see JB advertising fot $79. Now it’s pretty much same price and the excuse sometimes is because they have some DLC exclusive. I personally don’t care about have a weapon I can unlock throughout the game straight away. I rather pay a cheaper price.
Now I like to buy a physical copy to build up my collection and when I do, I now check Big W as they seem to sell new games at prices JB once were.
But lately, I am starting to see benefits of downloading. Been a steam user for over a decade but I mean for consoles. Take Ultra Street Fighter 4 for example. On Playstation, there is no upgrade due to the change of rating. It went from PG to M. So you if you have previous versions of SF4, you need to buy the full version of Ultra. At EB and JB it’s $60. On PSN it’s $40. Saving $20. I got JB to price match EB with Injustice Ultimate to $47 from $79. PSN – Now for less than $25.
You can’t lose it, damage it, destroy it. If your HDD fails, just replace it, log back in and redownload it.
I buy physical copies of games if they come with something physical, like a collectible or something. That is the only case, as buying any other game at full Australian mark up price is just a ripoff when I can get it for 20-30 dollars cheaper overseas digitally.
The thing that switched me to digital than software was because nowadays even if you buy a physical copy of the game 9/10 you still have to download day one patches in order to payvthem game you just bought, if you’re going to do thatvthen you may as well buy the digital copy which will likely get pre installed on your computer and probably patch in the time is of taken you to drive to the shop or wait for the post man. Big shame as I like the idea of having a physical library of games but I guess that’s just not enough anymore.
I buy all physical copies for console games & Bluray/DVDs. That said i haven’t bought many Blurays/DVDs for a while. I don’t really buy CD’s at all anymore, i just use Spotify. PC games are a completely different matter, i now buy all Digital copies especially because they are so cheap during Steam and GOG sales.
Or….like me, they’re choosing to purchase them online from cheaper sources – where possible.
There’s also the matter of wanting the media as soon as possible and some sites carry the DVD’s BluRays before JB HIFI.
Get with the times JB. You need a DRM
Take into account that most of the stuff released in the last year has been rubbish, hence why no one bought it.
Ubisoft tried to pull the biggest video game heist ever with Watch Dogs, but word of the con (bad graphics and gameplay that was nothing like the teaser that was shown at E3) spread extremely quickly and it was over before anything got going.
Looking ahead, I think JB HiFi will have to make some significant changes to their stores and what they stock/general format, and should probably rebrand to encapsulate what ‘futuretronics’ will be coming in the next two decades. They may want to look at stocking things like the various ‘gizmo-furniture’ you often see on tech sites and so forth.
They should also seize the opportunity to become the headline act for 3D printer sales and refill materials.
im really not surprised at this news. prices at JB have stopped being competitive. I used to shop at JB religiously as their prices on games were great and so were the movie prices but that was a while ago.
The fact that i have shopped more at EB this past year or so than i had in the past 6 years before has to say something about how bad JB has become.
Big W offers the best prices on new games currently but unfortunately they dont have a store near my house 🙁
Re Hardware.
JB stated declining tablet sales as the main drop in revenue.
I had to laugh when I read this. I just went into JB the other day.
I wanted to buy an Anime Blu Ray.
I was thinking, worth 15 bucks, but it’s Australia so I’ll accept 30 bucks.
Then it was like 60 dollars. WTF!
Yer, no.