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Will Coronavirus cause increase in sales/prices. Decrease, or not affect games?


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Just thought I would see your opinion on the matter.

 

Will the increase in people working from home also translate to increased online shopping.

 

Or

 

Will people tighten their spending/budget and things will slow down/decrease?

 

I would love to hear your thoughts.

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There might be a small spike, but if this drags on, it will definitely dive because all discretionary spending will take a dive.  Some people will keep their jobs and others won't.  If you've lost your job (or think you might) you're not likely to buy superfluous games. Also, if you do lose your job or your hourly wages dip, you're potentially going to sell stuff to get some cashflow.

I don't see this as a "silver lining" since it involves people losing their jobs but, yes, if you are a blessed one to have steady income, you're probably going to see some good deals in a couple of months if we're still being quarantined (or whatever they call it.)

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I'm in a fortunate enough position where I don't expect any impact on our income for either myself or my wife.  But I still plan to buy less.  For the most part I only buy games used and for the foreseeable future, I don't plan to interact with many people in person outside of family, and that pretty much means not buying games.  Besides, the way I see it, now is the time to reduce my backlog, not increase it.  

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Thankfully I’m not impacted financially (yet) but I know that if I were, my pricier games that I’m not as attached to are the first things that are going on eBay. I imagine it’s the same for a lot of people (nonessentials being sold first) so I would think, if anything, there would be an increase in online listings and a small dip in prices.

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Tough to say.  I think the more rare / key stuff out there will be okay (Panzer Dragoon Saga, Earthbound, sealed Zelda/Pokemon/Mario, etc ), as there's more than enough of a demand to sustain it and the people in that stratosphere of collecting probably won't be hit as hard.  I think people will be more likely to hold those through this rather than sell at a loss and maybe even store for the longer term ( 5-10+ years ).  That said, it could potentially mean they kind of taper off in terms of rising in value.

It's probably more likely to impact modern collector's editions of games in general, people are gonna be second-guessing that $200 preorder they've got now.  

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48 minutes ago, Code Monkey said:

We laid off 20% of our staff on Monday and other companies I spoke with have gone as high as 50%. I highly suspect prices will drop a lot as people try unloading their games to cover bills.

Which industry is this?  And sorry to hear it.  You feel your position is pretty secure?

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It's a great question that I'm sure a lot have thought about.

My initial thought was that an increase in free time due to the current quarantine situation, combined with little amount of activities to choose from outside of tv/gaming would result in an increase in demand for games.

The more I thought about it though, I think this initial idea is overshadowed by the fear of the unknown regarding peoples jobs and the economy. Recreational spending will probably be tightened for many due to the current situation. So my guess is prices/spending will decrease a bit, if anything.

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47 minutes ago, Strikezone1 said:

It's a great question that I'm sure a lot have thought about.

My initial thought was that an increase in free time due to the current quarantine situation, combined with little amount of activities to choose from outside of tv/gaming would result in an increase in demand for games.

The more I thought about it though, I think this initial idea is overshadowed by the fear of the unknown regarding peoples jobs and the economy. Recreational spending will probably be tightened for many due to the current situation. So my guess is prices/spending will decrease a bit, if anything.

This exactly explains my point.  If people think they will be staying in their homes for 2-3 weeks, then they will likely buy games.  It'll be a small bump, but if this drags on, it's not going to look pretty.

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1 hour ago, RH said:

Which industry is this?  And sorry to hear it.  You feel your position is pretty secure?

Agricultural building construction. We have had 3 buildings ready to be sold this week and the customers all cancelled because they weren't sure if they would have a job next week. Our buildings are about $200,000 each so it's putting a big strain on our daily costs of operation with crews across the country. I won't be going anywhere, I manage the software and IT portion of the company and have been with them for 11 years, I'm one of the largest revenue generators here. And I just bought a Porsche 2 months ago so here's to hoping.......

It's hitting all industries, almost our entire office is working from home now to stop the spread of the virus, it's only my team and a few others left in the building. Because of this we aren't printing hardly anything daily now so our leased printers aren't being used much which means the company we lease the printers from is taking a big hit. I talked to our printer company yesterday and they let go half of their staff because the revenue isn't coming in from the printers just sitting idle. (We pay 1 cent per black print and 10 cents per colour print).

Restaurants are all shut down and a lot of them will have to close and never reopen, I have a feeling this will be even worse than 2008.

So yes, I think a lot of people will be jobless in the next 3 weeks or working at a reduced pay so their companies can stay open. Then all the games will go on the market to pay the bills. I know my Bitcoin dropped $4000 in one day so I effectively lost a large portion of my investments. I'm confident it'll eventually get back where it was though, maybe after a year.

P.S. I'm buying any higher end NES or Atari 2600 games if you need to make a quick sale at a reduced price.

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As a few people already mentioned, we should see a significant drop in prices in the next few months. Most people do not have the recommended 3-6 month savings buffer to get through this and retro games are an extremely unnecessary expenditure.

In fact, a decent condition first print CIB LoZ just sold for less than $300 when it had been selling for over $1250 just a couple months ago. Could be a fluke, but I'll definitely be watching the big eBay auctions for a good deal.

Edited by DoctorEncore
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43 minutes ago, broncofantd793 said:

An estimated 60 to 70% of American workers live paycheck to paycheck.  Roughly 40% do not have $400 in cash in savings.

Prices in the non-sealed market will be coming down, especially after we get a month or more out from the closings. 

Yeah.  The temporary impact of this thing is potentially going to be so far beyond the Great Recession, where people were laid off gradually and at least had SOME ability to try and find other work at a lower wage to make ends meet.

Total shutdown of food-service/bars and all sorts of store/mall cutbacks, along with the massive wave of cancellations in the travel industry is going to be devastating to a lot of people.

 

Long term impact may "work out" if things can pick back up quickly enough -- but even a month of missed paychecks will absolutely ruin a lot of people's entire year, financially.

And unlike the Great Recession, where those who could afford it could go out and try and keep the wheels of commerce greased by spending...they're stuck at home this time, too.  (still making money because a lot of professionals can work from home, at least temporarily, but not SPENDING beyond the initial grocery/supply rush)

Edited by arch_8ngel
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