In a
survey of (presumably) eBay prices for rare and collectible games, MTV Multiplayer's Jason Cipriani illustrates what re-releases of these games do to their resale value -- and, by association, to the people who hoard these game for profit. As it turns out, re-releasing rarities like
Dracula X affects game collectors negatively in the same way it affects normal people positively -- by making the games more easily available, thus driving down the cost of copies in the original format. Won't someone please think of the jerks trying to make a profit from their rare games?
To use another
Castlevania example,
Castlevania Chronicles: Cipriani found a three-year high price of $70 for the 2001 PlayStation release in 2007. Two years later, after the game's release on PlayStation Network, physical copies dropped to a low price of $26.93. The people who just wanted to play the game could now get it for six bucks, leaving the PS1 discs for collectors only.
It's not as simple as a re-release dropping the value globally, however: the data shows some weirdly fluctuating prices, like
Persona 2: Eternal Punishment on PlayStation, which seems to have gone
up in price significantly following a reissue. Perhaps interest rose when buyers got the idea that it was even possible to buy an old Atlus game.
The effects of re-releases on classic game pricing originally appeared on Joystiq on Wed, 16 Dec 2009 23:25:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
