Call of Duty: Modern Price Warfare

In the last days before Christmas I spent a lot of time checking out retail stores just to see how the feeding frenzy was going. By the activity at the stores I visited, I'm willing to bet December sales will be very strong in the US, not to mention the online data I'm seeing. One particular thing I noticed, first at Best Buy, was that Black Ops was on special for $49.99 while last year's Call of Duty game, Modern Warfare 2, was still selling for $59.99. Normally when a big annualized sequel release the prior year's game drops in price if it hasn't already. The Black Ops discount was only a temporary price break, and it's not exactly like the game wasn't selling so it needed the drop to induce purchase. In fact, Black Ops is actually on pace to outsell Modern Warfare 2 (mainly due to the immense brand equity Black Ops inherited, but also due to the marketing and the game itself...it's really good) so lagging sales was not the reason for this discount.

And of course I checked out my local Target later that day because in the past it often has the same discounts going as that its Minnesota neighbor does.

To my surprise Black Ops there was not selling on the cheap. So much for my theory that what Best Buy does Target does the same. Perhaps the retail planners fell asleep at Target, or else Activision boondoggled Best Buy into the discount and shnerfluggined Target.

Whatever the back story, if you are any kind of core console gamer who doesn't already have Black Ops, seeing it for $10 off at Best Buy is a fairly compelling snicker snack O_0! My prediction is that Black Ops will crush again in December.