Guildwars sales... are they good enough?

Durring my lunch break at work I took a trip to Best Buy to browse around and waste time. I found something that kind of bothered me. As I browsed the PC game isle, I noticed Guildwars was no longer in it's place of prominince on the Top Shelf. At first I thought perhaps it was so successful that it was moved to it's own display or end cap. But after searching for a while I found it on the absolute bottom shelf with it's price discounted down to $39.00 (usd)!

Does this mean the sales are slow? Does it mean Guildwars doesnt generate enough interest to placed at eye level view? Does the discounted price reflect lack a of interest and sales? I hope not, I want guildwars to be financially successful for A-Net. I want A-Net to see a financial future in guildwars and have reason to continue development, support, and expansion. *very concerned*

-Nim

Might just be on sale.

It is top sales in Singapore for 3 weeks running......

Still holds the #1 spot at www.play.com for the UK, and it has done since launch.

LOL... perhaps Best Buy is just being foolish placing the #1 game in a place where no one can see it. Or just some local store's BAS degree department manager who thinks he is a great manager making bad marketing decisions for the store :P

It is quite possible that the game has lost some interest in America. I do not know the facts so I can't say for sure. But I also would think that the interest in the game has already been at peak, those who really wanted it have already gotten it. Those who don't have it or not sure if they want it, will get it later on as time passes by. They will be the stragglers that come in last. Like I said I have no facts or information on the sales for US, I'm just using what little intelligence I have left to come up with this thought.

Until you figure out the cost/maintainability and all those other figures from Anet, then compare it to those of other companies and their releases (eg. WoW), you really have no idea. A company who sells more perhaps might still be in debt more because of production/maintainence cost. It all boils down to many different things that only the company knows.

Product placement is as much a commodity as anything in the retail environment. For example, food manufacturers pay additional money to chain outlets to have their products placed at eye level (as opposed to upper or lower shelves).

It may well be that whatever was in place for Guild Wars at this store ran out. But I promise you that shelf placement has nothing to do with success of sales outside the New York Times Bestseller List.

A major thing to consider is space. A retail store only has so much floor on which they can display their purchased product.

When it comes to software such as Video games, DVDs, CDs, and computer games on end-caps the space is going to be in a nearly cosntant state of flux.

It can be mighty hard to keep up in the world of digital media, and they only way is generally by displaying those new hit titles asap.

This is a very good point. And aside from this you have to remember game is fairly new, they are making adjustments they didn't realize they'd have to at first, and working on expansion packs. My guess is they might not see a gain until they start fixing major issues for gamers, then start pumping out expansion packs. *Once again using what little knowledge I have left to think of ideas*

You don't need to point out any potential factors. Point is, even Anet can't figure out all the factors, or else they wouldn't be making any mistakes. This is earth here, people make mistakes. So even Anet will be missing out on some crucial points. There's no real need to ask these types of questions and expect a real accurate answer.

I think its just a Best Buy thing. I went to my local Best Buy on the day of release, and expected to find cardboard cutouts, end caps, people dressed up as fire imps. Instead I had to ask for help locating it, repeating Guild Wars...no not Guide Cars, GUILD WARS. When the associate went to the back to check if maybe they had stock there I found it on the third shelf halfway down an isle burried between Leasure Suit Larry and Pre-school Math....okay exagirating on the titles, but catch my drift.

Hmmm... My local WalMart store still has it on the "New Release" section of their games, which actually surprised me. I thought it would have been moved by now to a regular shelf slot.

You can't judge by one Best Buy in one city. It's just anecdotal evidence and it means nothing.

That's like saying "it's really hot today. It must be global warming!" Or, "it's cold today. Must be another ice age!"

LOL, I like shopping at Best Buy, but you are sooooo right. When it comes to software location, it is real screwy at my local store too.

I'd like to mention that, at least where I live in the US, 'top spot top-shelf' life of products tends to be very short, no matter what. There are so many products that in order to accomodate the new stuff, everything is moved down rather rapidly. And as Virago said, companies pay to have their product in the ideal spot. Sometimes, they even pay to 'reserve' shelf placement, leading to EMPTY shelf space with 'COMING SOON" placards. *rolls eyes*

It's akin to how a movie theater with 24 screens can still seem to be functionally playing only 3-5 movies. Too many 'big' movies released within a few weeks of each other, not enough screens.

Well, not to be pessimistic (as usual) Best Buy has a tendancy to move things off the shelf and lower the price as soon as it starts selling less copies. I got KOTOR 2 10 dollars off the original price like a week after it came out.

Now, you have World of Warcraft. That was up for weeks and weeks (at least at my best buy) And even Half-life. I didn't expect Guild Wars to be on the bottom shelf so quickly with all the hype.

Microsoft actually sends people around to WalMart to make sure that their X-box displays and things are all the way they want them to.. Was a bit of a surprise the first time I saw one of the MS people rummaging around and rearranging all the games and console accesories.

I usually doubt conspiracy theories, but I could totally believe this is true.

This thread is kind of amusing because I actually work at Best Buy in the computer dept (where the software is kept). I would agree with what many others have already said, that product placement (especially at Best Buy) should not get you worried about the future of a-net and/or Guild Wars

I don't know about where you live, but where I live the people that work at best buy aren't the smartest.

Nintendo was doing that ten years ago.

shop display usually means very little. I work in a game store in UK and although we are sent out 'chart' layouts each week, we dont always stick to it. For example, Guild Wars was meant to be at number 1 this week, but we had none in stock due to it selling out, so its not in the chart at all. And say... I don't know, San Andreas for PS2 was supposed to be number 1... well we have at least 12 spaces for the #1 spot and if we only have 3 copies of the game in, its gonna go in the chart at #8 where we can put just one game in.

And yep the theory thing is true, our company is paid by EA to have their own "EA Tower" put in each store with selected titles displayed on them. And if we don't do it we can get in lots of trouble, since EA is paying a LOT of money. And when Halo 2 came out we were again paid a lot to put giant cardboard Master Chief's up in the stores.

But yeah, a lot of the time it depends on how many of a game that store has in stock; something with few copies left is going to go on a lower shelf, or not be 'facing' the shop but instead be spine-on. San Andreas, still stupidly popular is in fact spine-on because its now 6 months old and a lot of other big games have come out. Star Wars Ep. 3 for example will stay at number 1 for a while but will soon be moved to be spine-on because the stock will stop being sent out in such huge quantities. You'll find a game that stays steadily popular instead of being huge at release and then dying down, will often make its way from facing to spine on to facing again regularly. Because as the staff do their general tidying and filling up of spaces, if there is a gap in the facing they will put in something they know is still selling well. And if something much newer comes out and they have no space left facing, they will take the older (or cheaper ) titles off

I bought GW the day it came out. I went to EB Games and they didn't even have the game on display - not even a cardboard stand or anything! I had to ASK if they had them yet. Luckily they had a few, but they were locked in an opaque box behind the counter. If I hadn't gone in specifically looking for GW, I would have never known it was there.

I bought mine the day it came out for $39.99CDN from Best Buy
I havn't checked since then but places like Best Buy only put up a display for the first few days when games come out.

Can anyone explain the financial model of GW to me, though?

I mean, they've probably spent in the region of $10M developing this game, and they have running costs for the servers which they'll have to keep running for at least a few years - but they only charge for the game itself?

And it's not even more expensive than single-player games.

I have a real hard time getting that to add up to turning a profit.

They'll make little if any net profit on the initial sales i think. However, expansions are going to be much much easier to develop for the game than the first release, so when they sell it for full price they WILL be making substantial profits, which i would only assume completely outweight the server requirements for the game.

I went out 3 days before it went out to ask if they had them yet.
the answer was no check again tomorrow, so I did and they already had it.. so technically I had my game 2 days before release, but since I didn't have a pre-order account I wasn't able to play it sooner than the official release.. oh well.

oh and around here it's still at the top of the shelf in about every store =)

bought my copy at MediaPlay, the week it came out

They had it display of the new releases, had mostly old stuff that had been out for a week or two (Matrix Online). It was a bit pricey at $49.99 but hey it was new. I had remembered playing the E3 beta like two years ago and it was neat. Plus the box art was pretty cool, it just looked awesome.

I wish I coulda gotten the Collectors Box, with the female necro, conceptual art, headset and shit

I bought mine for $39.99....but if someone wants the game they'll go looking for it.
I'd be worrying if it goes down to $19.99 like EQ2 did

I'll get worried when they start bundling the original game, and the two newest expansions for $19.99...

Like SWG.

There's a slap in the face of everyone who paid $50 for the original game, then another $40 for each expansion.

GAD! Ive been searching for this info since this post first appeared and now I have found it, at gamesindustry.biz. Here are the top ten full priced games for PC for last week. First number is this weeks ranking, and second number is last weeks ranking.

1 1 GUILD WARS NCSOFT EUROPE
2 4 CHAMPIONSHIP MANAGER 5 EIDOS
3 - IMPERIAL GLORY EIDOS
4 3 THE SIMS 2: UNIVERSITY ELECTRONIC ARTS
5 5 WORLD OF WARCRAFT VIVENDI UNIVERSAL GAMES
6 2 HALF-LIFE 2 VIVENDI UNIVERSAL GAMES
7 6 FOOTBALL MANAGER 2005 SEGA UK
8 7 THE SIMS 2 ELECTRONIC ARTS
9 8 EMPIRE EARTH II VIVENDI UNIVERSAL GAMES
10 9 STRONGHOLD 2 TAKE 2

Not bad eh? It think that's where it began life on the chart when it was released too. Poor WOW, all the down at 5... ;D

-F

Here in Canada, they continue to be sold out everytime I go to future shop. Haven't been to a best buy yet.

But the price at another store we have here Electronics Boutique, (EB), RAISED the price. I have never seen that before.