Halo Reach update

I forgot to post that a big part of why this game is selling well is

not just the fact that it's a Halo game, but Microsoft is promoting it heavily, such as running TV spots during NFL games in the US, one of the last bastions of where live TV gets TiVo'd at a lower % so that consumers have a higher probability of watching the commercials. I didn't even like the Halo Reach commercials that much from a creative standpoint, but for a game like this it is more about mass awareness among the near-core and non-core shooter player base on the 360 platform than it is winning a Cloe for creativity. It's 'bout reach people. Audience reach. Halo audience reach.

Meanwhile, that wasn't the only thing going on during Halo Reach's launch week. When I went to check out Target I found that the store was offering a $20 gift card purchase of Halo Reach, except they were sold out resulting in many sad pandas for sure. But that wasn't all. Target was giving away $20 gift cars for Halo Wars (the real time strategy game on Xbox 360), Halo 3 and the last Halo game, Halo 3: ODST. That's a lot of discounting on a lot of Halo.

But then I went to Best Buy. Sure enough, they had Halo Reach

0n hand. At first I was bummed Target didn't have it because who couldn't put a $20 gift card to Target to good use? Was I really going not get the $20 gift card and buy it? After reading how much people liked Reach over ODST I decided I should just get it. To my pleasant surprise Best Buy was offering the same deal: a $20 gift card with purchase. YES!!!! Later that night I saw a TV spot advertising as that fact. And on the Best Buy website they were making the same offer. Oops...I should have done my research first.

But thinking back to Target, I noticed that the retailer was offering $20 gift cards with purchase of Mafia II and Red Dead Redemption, both Take 2 Interactive games. Across two major retailers, who both happen to be HQ'd in Minneapolis, there is a very similar discounting strategy going. Best Buy probably planned it first since it national TV spots ready when Halo Reach launched. For Target to match that it wouldn't take much time or effort to print up placards for in-store display. The problem for them was that they didn't have the same quantities Best Buy had, and that's probably a lot of lost sales. I often hear that such discounting is really a bad strategy for retailers because they actually generate negative margins per sale with the gift card, but in reality the gift cards get the consumer back in the store and buying more. Further still, I'm also thinking that the retailers themselves, and not MSFT and TTWO, funded these discounts.