UK Supermarket Chain Claims One-Third of GTA V Spending

[roseofbattle]

UK Supermarket Chain Claims One-Third of GTA V Spending

Tesco's entertainment market share jumps up thanks to the sale of popular games like Grand Theft Auto V.

There are many places to buy games beyond the brick-and-mortar game store. A third of money spent on Grand Theft Auto V was spent at Tesco, a supermarket chain in the UK. Not only did the sale of GTA V drive the games market forward in the UK, but it also boosted supermarkets' entertainment market share, with Tesco's shares rising from 11.9 percent to 17.1 percent for the 12 weeks ending Sept. 30.

"The games market has grown by an impressive 29% compared with the same period last year," Fiona Keenan, strategic insight director of research company Kantar, said. "Tesco has been the big winner of the release of Grand Theft Auto V, collecting over a third of all money spent on the title during the two weeks after its release."

At first, it might seem a little strange to buy videogames from the same place you would buy your groceries, but supermarkets have been expanding into the entertainment market for years with the sale of video. Kantar reports 81% of money spent on Star Trek: Into Darkness and Iron Man 3 came from supermarkets.

"It will be interesting to see if the success of the supermarkets in the games sector continues this Christmas with the release of PS4 and Xbox One," Keenan said. "GAME and Amazon are leading the way in pre-orders so far and we expect specialist gaming retailers to do particularly well in the run-up to launch as consumers look for help and advice."

Source: MCV [http://www.thegrocer.co.uk/companies/supermarkets/gta5-drives-entertainment-sales-at-tesco-and-asda/351019.article?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=Social#.Um5EyTKtGs0.twitter]

Permalink

 

[LazyAza]

Kinda makes me laugh that I still have no interest in playing gta5. haha

 

[Able Seacat]

I did get my copy of GTA V from Tesco's online store. There was an offer on and I got £5 off, not to be sneezed at.

 

[fix-the-spade]

That's not surprising, the supermarkets always have the best prices on the big releases. Way back on the Modern Warfare 2 release my local Tesco had a deal that went something like £20 for the game if you spent £40 or more on shopping, which was far beyond anything Game could offer (£60 for a game and a week's worth of food, what's not to like?).

It's somewhat hilarious that Game/Gamestation abused it's position so badly that now when a big game comes out, people buy from literally anywhere but the only dedicated high street game store in most of the UK. I wonder if they appreciate the irony of being the game shop that nobody wants to buy games from.

 

[J Tyran]

Thing is it should be no surprise that supermarkets here in the UK are doing well with media sales, the fact is they are all usually cheaper and often have special offers on top. Vouchers that you get along the lines of "spend £xxx and get 10% off your bill" often count too or extra loyalty points, then finally you have decent supermarket specific credit card cash back deals.

The only people that must bother with UK game retailers are the people relying on trade in nowadays, poor sods getting shafted every time.

 

[Idlemessiah]

I can vouch for the whole supermarket thing. I work in Asda in a fairly small town and we got through nearly 1000 copies in the first week alone.

We only had 100 on day 1 (50/50 XB and PS) and normally when something like that runs out it stays run out until we get more, but our boss figured we'd sell more so she drove to the next town (which has a much bigger store) to get 100 more. Funnily enough they were gone by the end of the day too.

Also of note; because the game has a large install and lots of people have small HDDs we sold nearly all of our memory sticks on day one too.

 

[Hazy992]

This doesn't surprise me in all honesty, Tesco is absolutely massive in this country (seriously, they're everywhere). Not only that but supermarkets in general tend to sell games for far cheaper than dedicated retailers (it was £37 at Tesco but £45 at GAME. Seems like a no-brainer), and GTA V was sold out at my local Tesco for a couple of weeks.

 

[thenumberthirteen]

Like a lot of other commentors it seems; I'm not surprised Tesco got the lion's share. Where I live Tesco has, by far, the widest selection of games and DVDs at the best prices of any retailer in the area. Why shouldn't I go pick up a game or DVD at Tesco? That way I can buy massive bags of crisps at the same time

 

[TheEvilCheese]

Basically, Tesco is becoming Walmart.
Which is funny, because their primary competitor (ASDA) is the one owned by Walmart.

I've had pretty good experiences with Tesco for media and hardware, in fact their online store had the limited edition Pikachu 3DS in stock long after all the other major retailers in the country had run out. And it was reasonably priced to boot!

 

[Andy Shandy]

Makes sense. Tesco, like most supermarkets, are competitive when it comes to pricing. As far GAME, well I honestly have no clue how they are still going nowadays, outside of people not knowing about other places.

 

[omega 616]

Like somebody else said, it was £5 cheaper there than anywhere else... I bet that was what a third of people wanted to take advantage of.

I think this is kind of relevant to the used game argument. People are willing to save a fiver, rather than go to a dedicated game store... Ok, it's not solid case for it but it seems a fiver saving is enough to people.

 

[Jamash]

Thing is it should be no surprise that supermarkets here in the UK are doing well with media sales, the fact is they are all usually cheaper and often have special offers on top. Vouchers that you get along the lines of "spend £xxx and get 10% off your bill" often count too or extra loyalty points, then finally you have decent supermarket specific credit card cash back deals.

I expect a real killer is their 'Spend £50 and get £0.xx off per litre of fuel' promotion they regularly run.

If your car's tank is near empty and there's a game you want, it makes sense to buy it from Tesco where it will count towards a discount fuel voucher.

 

[J Tyran]

Thing is it should be no surprise that supermarkets here in the UK are doing well with media sales, the fact is they are all usually cheaper and often have special offers on top. Vouchers that you get along the lines of "spend £xxx and get 10% off your bill" often count too or extra loyalty points, then finally you have decent supermarket specific credit card cash back deals.

I expect a real killer is their 'Spend £50 and get £0.xx off per litre of fuel' promotion they regularly run.

If your car's tank is near empty and there's a game you want, it makes sense to buy it from Tesco where it will count towards a discount fuel voucher.

Morrisons run that offer a fair bit too, as well as the reverse "spend XXX on fuel and get an in-store" voucher.

 

[Jamash]

Thing is it should be no surprise that supermarkets here in the UK are doing well with media sales, the fact is they are all usually cheaper and often have special offers on top. Vouchers that you get along the lines of "spend £xxx and get 10% off your bill" often count too or extra loyalty points, then finally you have decent supermarket specific credit card cash back deals.

I expect a real killer is their 'Spend £50 and get £0.xx off per litre of fuel' promotion they regularly run.

If your car's tank is near empty and there's a game you want, it makes sense to buy it from Tesco where it will count towards a discount fuel voucher.

Morrisons run that offer a fair bit too, as well as the reverse "spend XXX on fuel and get an in-store" voucher.

Given how relatively expensive fuel is in the UK, and how people seem to lose all sense of rational and critical thought when presented with seemingly cheap fuel offers, I wonder how traditional videogame retailers without petrol pumps will be able to compete with supermarkets who can combine the two in apparent special offers.

It's not too bad at the moment, but as the average age of gamers and the prices of petrol inevitably rise, and as the cross section of car owning gamers who are in the market for both games and cheap fuel increases, these types of seemingly unrelated special offers could really hurt the traditional games retailers (even if all they would have to do match these fuel discounts monetarily is offer a £3-£4 discount off the next purchase with every full price purchase or £50 spent).

 

[J Tyran]

Thing is it should be no surprise that supermarkets here in the UK are doing well with media sales, the fact is they are all usually cheaper and often have special offers on top. Vouchers that you get along the lines of "spend £xxx and get 10% off your bill" often count too or extra loyalty points, then finally you have decent supermarket specific credit card cash back deals.

I expect a real killer is their 'Spend £50 and get £0.xx off per litre of fuel' promotion they regularly run.

If your car's tank is near empty and there's a game you want, it makes sense to buy it from Tesco where it will count towards a discount fuel voucher.

Morrisons run that offer a fair bit too, as well as the reverse "spend XXX on fuel and get an in-store" voucher.

Given how relatively expensive fuel is in the UK, and how people seem to lose all sense of rational and critical thought when presented with seemingly cheap fuel offers, I wonder how traditional videogame retailers without petrol pumps will be able to compete with supermarkets who can combine the two in apparent special offers.

It's not too bad at the moment, but as the average age of gamers and the prices of petrol inevitably rise, and as the cross section of car owning gamers who are in the market for both games and cheap fuel increases, these types of seemingly unrelated special offers could really hurt the traditional games retailers (even if all they would have to do match these fuel discounts monetarily is offer a £3-£4 discount off the next purchase with every full price purchase or £50 spent).

Its worse than that though, if you get the offer to get money off fuel when you spend cash in store and combine it with cashback on both the shopping & fuel the game stores really don't stand a chance. They already charge more for the game in the first place, as you say as the average age of gamers rises more will have families and have to run cars and priorities shift so there is less to spend on the games in the first place and they have to take every saving they can along the way.

The game stores could start charging a consumer friendly and competitive amount in the first place but I doubt they will, they haven't yet and unless they get desperate I doubt they ever will.

 

[Lono Shrugged]

Now that HMV and Xtra vision shut down the only 2 places in meatspace you can really buy games in Ireland is Tesco or Gamestop. Gamestop always have that obnoxious pre-order thing that means you can't wander in the morning of release day and just buy it. I used to always hit HMV on the way to work and pick up my new releases without having to sweat pre-order crap. Anything that doesn't restrict me as a consumer makes me happy. And Tesco just seem to sell the games as games, without the usual upsell, free t-shirts or DLC crap. So yeah I can see that working.

 

[Terramax]

It's somewhat hilarious that Game/Gamestation abused it's position so badly that now when a big game comes out, people buy from literally anywhere but the only dedicated high street game store in most of the UK. I wonder if they appreciate the irony of being the game shop that nobody wants to buy games from.

It'd say it's more that the casual crowd that buys GTA have never been to a Game/Gamestation before, therefore get it at cheapy Tescos, than it having to do with what offer they have on compared to other stores.

Seriously, most people that shop at Tesco would have a heart attack with a '£2.00 Off GTAV' sign. OMG, what a bargain!

 

[toastdieb]

The game stores could start charging a consumer friendly and competitive amount in the first place but I doubt they will, they haven't yet and unless they get desperate I doubt they ever will.

Supermarkets are able to discount the games because they know that you're likely to pick up some other things that have a much larger margin on them. I run a branch of a regional game store chain in the US. If a game's MSRP is $59.99, then we pay between $50 and $52.50 for each copy. On most new games, we make about $6.50 profit. This is why specialized game stores push preorders and used games so hard - there is no way for us to lower prices on new games and still make any money on them.

 

[Yopaz]

It's somewhat hilarious that Game/Gamestation abused it's position so badly that now when a big game comes out, people buy from literally anywhere but the only dedicated high street game store in most of the UK. I wonder if they appreciate the irony of being the game shop that nobody wants to buy games from.

It'd say it's more that the casual crowd that buys GTA have never been to a Game/Gamestation before, therefore get it at cheapy Tescos, than it having to do with what offer they have on compared to other stores.

Seriously, most people that shop at Tesco would have a heart attack with a '£2.00 Off GTAV' sign. OMG, what a bargain!

I would disagree with you there. I buy my games mostly from an electronics store (we don't have Tesco's here), but from what I can see games are almost always cheaper there than Game and GameStop. I once had a coupon for $17 on GameStop so I decided to buy a game there. With that coupon I ended up paying the same I would have had to pay almost anywhere else.

Used games also often cost the same or more than new games in those stores. Maybe I am part of the casual crowd, or maybe the need for specialized game stores is disappearing. They don't even compete with a bigger library in most cases.