Final Fantasy VII Remake + Quarantine = Crazy Ebay Prices (..and other new retail & pricing trends)

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Retro STrife
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Final Fantasy VII Remake + Quarantine = Crazy Ebay Prices (..and other new retail & pricing trends)

Postby Retro STrife » April 7th, 2020, 11:30 am

FF7 fans have been clamoring for a remake for almost 15 years, and Square Enix is finally delivering on April 10th with Part I of the remake (which will be divided up into multiple parts released over several years). Reviews are positive so far, averaging around 87 on Metacritic. As a big fan of the original FF7, I went as far as to pre-order the Deluxe version on Amazon many months ago.. something I had never done before. Good thing..

Now the virus outbreak comes along and totally changes the retail landscape.. if you pre-ordered in store or planned to buy any closed retailers, you're now out of luck. Want to buy online from places like Amazon or Gamestop? It's sold out. With that, ebay prices shoot up. If you get bored, check out sold listings:

1. Confirmed pre-orders of the Deluxe version sell for about $120-$130 (original price $70-$80).

2. Confirmed pre-orders of the 1st Class Edition (original price $330) is going for around $500. [Who would have even paid the original $330 for this? Not me..]

3. With a GameStop pre-order, you got a free Shinra Employee Card. It now sells for $50 on ebay.

4. The weirdest to me.. Butterfinger is running a promotion where you buy the candy bar and get certain free DLC items for the game. The DLC starts after you buy 2 Butterfingers, and goes up to 10 Butterfingers to get all of it. Rather than buy the candy bars (for like $1 each), auctions have gone for $25-$40 for the DLC codes.

Even though I barely ever sell on ebay, pricing trends on games always interest me. I think these prices might even go up if the "sold out" situation continues after the April 10 release date. I could see prices closer to $150-$180 for the standalone game, similar to the trend that occurred with the sold out NES Classic.

Crazy, right? Is there any game or series where you would pay that kind of money if it was temporarily sold out everywhere? Any other crazy pricing trends happening? I suspect retro gaming prices will drop a bit, since people's finances are suddenly much tighter.. but then again, more people are gaming while stuck indoors. Lots of games being impacted too. Last of Us II delayed indefinitely due to the pandemic. The Turbografx Mini delayed indefinitely too, and it was planned to release in March.

Tron
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Joined: April 9th, 2015, 8:02 pm

Re: Final Fantasy VII Remake + Quarantine = Crazy Ebay Prices (..and other new retail & pricing trends)

Postby Tron » April 8th, 2020, 7:06 pm

Couple years back there was a Fire Emblem game that had some sort of preorder special edition limited number thing going on. It had the dlc on the cart so I wanted it bad since I don’t do digital purchases. Nintendo obviously made way too few of them, because scalpers were selling them online for 2-3x retail price. Retail sold out immediately so there was no way of getting that. I didn’t want to buy the vanilla game when there was an option to get the dlc on the cart so I waited. I figured Nintendo probably wouldn’t do a second run on the special games, but I hoped and waited for the slim chance anyway. I would think from a business standpoint they would want to since they could sell tons more games, but maybe they made more off the poor suckers paying for the additional dlc. Either way it sucks that Nintendo made so few and helps scalpers make money while just normal gamers can’t get it. I forgot about the game until this post. I wonder if the special games are still a fortune.


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