2K exec critical of UK retail price slashing
2K Games Global President Christoph Hartmann warns UK games retailers that they're making the same mistakes as music stores did in the region. He feels that retailers slash prices too quickly, many times on month-old software, to make room for new inventory. This is fairly different from the US, where the release price of games can stick (barring bombs or special sales) for a long period of time.
Granted, game prices in the UK start high (around $100) at release, but dropping prices shortly afterward trains the patient customer to get a better deal very soon. In contrast, notice how "used" prices in the US aren't that much better than new, which teaches consumers that the release price is what they should expect for a while.
Hartmann believes that by focusing on the short-term and the latest blockbuster, UK companies are too quickly slashing prices on older games. In the end, Hartmann's words sound like a passive attack on UK used game sales, which would make sense, because no money from those purchases goes into the publishers' pockets.
