YouTuber Mr. Wright Wray shows his physical video game collection. (Source: Mr. Wright Way)
Some people play video games like EA’s revived College Football series to simulate the otherwise inimitable thrill of leading the winning drive. Others want to deftly navigate recruiting trips and transfer portals and turn their mid-major alma mater into a perennial power house.
And some just wanna keep their kids off the Los Santos streets, saving them from a lifetime of Triangle, R2, Left, L1, X, Right, Triangle, Down, Square, L1, L1, L1-ing1 their way to digital terrorism.
“My son is 13 now, but when he was 10, I was sort of redirecting him from the Grand Theft Auto games,” said Jim Saraco, a PlayStation 5 gamer. Instead, Saraco introduced his son to MLB: The Show, NBA 2K and other yearly sports titles. The intervention worked!
“Now he's the one that always pushes me with, like, hey, the new [sports game] is coming out, did we get the presale?”
Sometimes, Saraco gives in and pays early, especially when the popular NBA 2K series bundles League Pass, the NBA’s streaming service. But he’s on a budget. And he knows that VC and yearly roster updates aren’t all it's cracked up to be. So, instead of paying prices that start at $70 and flirt with $100, he’ll, on occasion, strategically wait it out. “I mean, you could get the presale at full price, and then, like, two months later—especially for the games that drop in the fall—they're like almost half,” Saraco told eyeblack. “It seems ridiculous.”
For consumers like Saraco, Sony’s planned end of physical media—on July 1, the CD and Blu Ray pioneer announced it would end all physical game production in 2028—didn’t just further erode the concept of ownership, it made his cost saving approach that much harder.
Because whether you’re waiting for sales or loading up on VC until your 5’8” MyPlayer can sever Wemby’s ankles, seizing the option of game ownership from game buyers sacks sports gamers hard. Harder than everyone else.
eyeblack crunched the numbers.
The only Show in town
Well beyond capitalizing on the human urge to be first, the big players in sports game publishing incentivize day-zero buyers Yearly titles, more than any others, are built around increasingly arbitrary friction around in-game progression. Consumers can grind out hours of failure until their in game avatar is useable in online competition or single player storylines, but the games ease this process by saturating the experience with micro transactions—small exchanges of pay your real rent dollars for in-game currency—to open access for needed attribute boosts. Buyers can usually save on those micro transactions by ordering a full price (or more) preorder. Rapid depreciation was already an unavoidable by-product of games that receive regular updates. Still, patient buyers know that if they’re willing to sacrifice getting a little less game, they can save a lot just by waiting. Also, sometimes, waiting is all your wallet can handle.
I wanted to, as empirically as possible, track how physical and digital marketplaces engage with consumers like Saraco, and what might change if one of those options were unceremoniously removed. So on Wednesday, eyeblack compared two retailers: Sony’s all-digital PlayStation Store, and GameStop’s used shop, and examined how they respectively priced PS5 games.
First, here’s a list of yearly(ish) sports games2, from the Madden NFL, NBA 2K, and MLB The Show big three, to games simulating the fast growing leagues like EA’s F1 and UFC series.