In next week’s shopping circular, the UbiSoft published Wheelman is on sale for $30.  After only just over a month!  Last week, the equally fresh-on-the-shelf HAWX was also listed for $30.  That’s half-off!

If you’re a gamer on a tight budget, UbiSoft seems to reliably cut their prices within three months of release.  It seems to happen with all their major releases regardless of if it’s in the hyper-competitive Christmas season or in the summer dry spells.  See: Assassin’s Creed,Prince of Persia, Shaun White, No More Heroes, Far Cry 2,  Brothers in Arms: Hell’s Highway, the Imagine/Petz/Coach series.

These weren’t token “save $5″ sales.  Prices were slashed usually between 25%-33%.  That’s new release $60 console games marked down to $40 or $45.  $30 DS games either 2 for $40 when purchased together or $20 each,  straight-up.

There’s sometimes a sense in retail that it’s better to sell shelf-stagnant item at a discount than to not sell it at all.  Is this UbiSoft’s thinking?  In many cases, these price drops are temporary for a week or two, sometimes at specific retailers.  But more often than not, within a month or two of that first drop, it’ll stick permanently.  

Perhaps because of their large output of SKUs, they have agreements with retail partners that product needs to move off the shelves to make way for new titles?  Who ultimately eats the cost?  The retailer?  Or does UbiSoft give them a kick-back for taking such a dramatic loss?  I used to work at Best Buy, and our employee discount was to pay what the store paid to receive the merchandise plus an extra 5%.  Trust me, there wasn’t much worthwhile savings on media items, be it video games, DVDs, or music.  Most often, Target’s flat 10%-off everything employee discount would have netted a better deal.

And why so soon after release?  It’s probably best while advertising is still fresh in people’s mind.

Whatever their reason for this seemingly hair-trigger liquidation reflex, gamers in the know who track these sorts of things now have little faith in the initial asking value for UbiSoft’s new releases, having been shown time and time again that a price drop is reliably right around the corner.