Best Buy Gamer's Club is ending?

Sounds like Best Buy is ending their gamers club, 20% off everything for $15 a year was by far the best deal in gaming, knew I should've stacked up 10 years!!!

I remember my friends paying $100 for two years or something crazy like that. It was when Xbox One and PS4 launched.

A few months later, I renewed for $30 for two years with a coupon.

I got a lot of deals from GCU, but with the new generation, I went digital. No regrets. It was cool while I was buying discs, though. Best Buy is alright.

There have been rumours that Sony has been putting pressure on these discount programs to stop offering the discounts. Sony games haven't been available for preorder on Amazon for a little while, and GCU being discontinued seems like it could be a result of pressure from Sony.

Amazon probably have the clout to hold out, but it should be interesting to see how this all goes.

Yeah, this is a super bummer as I used the 20% off a lot for large games that I didn't plan on replaying. I'm good until September 2019, luckily! Easily the best deal in gaming. 20% off any unused games no matter the release date was amazing, on top of the $10 store credit on select pre-orders.

So fucking lame.

I wish I re-upped my subscription past the end of the year now. Looks like I'll have to shop around for deals from now on as Best But was easily my go to retailer for games for the past four years. I got Fractured But Whole for under thirty dollars after all the certs and stacked offers last fall. Great program, sad to see it go. Now they'll be more incentive than ever to get in on those Black Friday deals, which I hope still continue to go up early both online and in-store, hours ahead of schedule.

Such a bummer.

Really glad I reupped earlier this week.

I wonder if its a sign of best buy closing down soon. Amazon has killed almosy everything else.

@please_love_me: It started around a week before God of War came out, I believe. God of War disappeared from preorder, along with all other Sony first party titles. GoW reappeared on launch day. If you look currently, Detroit is not available for preorder, Spiderman is not available for preorder. Days gone, no preorder. Presumably they'll appear again once they actually come out like God of War, but there doesn't currently seem to be any Sony first party title currently available for preorder on Amazon.com.

No one has officially gone on record saying what has happened, but rumours are it is related to the Prime preorder discount.

@mattyftm: sony is really going to allow Microsoft back in the game with stuff like this.

My understanding was the preorder discount was Amazon leeching from their own profits to get people to buy from them and signup for prime (as they do with a lot of promotions). Sony makes the same amount of money either way so I see no reason for them to have issue. The other explanation of every publisher deciding to sell their games cheaper to Amazon so they can have a 20% preorder discount makes much less sense to me (and that only Sony has issue with it, while EA and Activision don't).

The only other explanation is that Amazon is trying to put pressure on all the publishers so they (Amazon) retain more profit on the preorders and Sony doesn't want to play ball. But if that's the case I'd expect similar push back from EA and Activision.

@ev77: Yeah, the Amazon Prime preorder discount (and the Best Buy GCU discount) somes out of the retailer cut. But Sony runs their own storefront on PSN where retailers don't get a cut at all. If substantial numbers of people are buying via Amazon or Best Buy in order to get the discount rather than purchasing it via PSN, Sony are losing money. Anecdotally, I have seen plenty of people saying they buy physical games for these discounts even though they prefer the convenience of digital games. Sony run lots of market research and they will have numbers to back that up if it is the case.

That's not to say Amazon are blameless too, it's very possible they pulled the preorders in order to put pressure on Sony to back down. Like a "You don't want us to offer discounts on your preorders? Fine, we'll not let people preorder your games. Enjoy your drop in sales".

Of course this is all based on rumours and speculation, but the timing of all of this seems too convenient for it not to be related. Amazon pulled preorders of Sony games leading to widespread rumours of Sony being unhappy with the Prime discount. Then GCU is discontinued, ending similar discounts in Best Buy. Neither of these events have been adequately explained by the companies involved.

@mattyftm: As you said, "Enjoy your drop in sales" which seems like a weird move for Sony to take as people aren't going to magically decide to buy the game digitally just because Amazon isn't selling it 20% off, either they will buy it from another retailer or wait for it to drop in price. And I mean it's Amazon, no one can really tell them what to do.

It does seems something weird is going on considering all their unavailable games (possibly even just server/backend issues), but it wouldn't be the first time Amazon got a chip on their shoulder with another company (see Google and Apple).

Damn, I just realized this thing with Amazon extends to the PSN digital gift cards.

I was in need of a $10 code this morning and looks like they've been out of stock for a month or more.

Wowowow lucky me. I just hopped on to nab Yakuza 6 and Octopath collectors editions a month or so ago. That program is nuts I switched my preorders to Best Buy and saved $38 after two preorders, already clearing the cost of the program. I can see why they're axing it.

Aww, son of a bitch. This was my favorite thing in gaming.

@oursin_360: I doubt it. They're one of the few companies that have actually been doing better in the Amazon era. This definitely seems like some game company fuckery.

My membership runs to early 2020, so not too annoyed. Maybe by then I'll finally give up on physical games.

best buy employee here. i'm surprised it lasted this long. the big thing being the 20% discount puts the price below cost. it's better than our employee discount which is 10% above cost and that only saves us like 5 bucks

The notion that bestbuy and Amazon buy there games at the same price from Sony is probably not true. Amazon is a big online retailer in the US and the EU they got some leeway when it comes to the negotiations of prices. Sony videogames income is probably 20% Amazon related so Amazon is gonna get a better price in deals when you know a lot of your income comes from this Online monopoly giant. Sure Best Buy is big but not Amazon kinda big.

I wonder whether Sony releasing their games on Fridays has something to do with the Amazon/Sony spat that seems to be happening.

Has anyone actually been to the video game section of a Best Buy recently? If so, this should come as no surprise. Half of the few physical games they stock are bargain bin 19.99 titles. The other chunk of the games aisles are either gift cards for psn/xbox live or game merch.

I don't think Best Buy is going any where any time soon, but the writing is starting to appear on the walls. It's always SUPER uncomfortable when I go in there and like 15 staff members are standing by the entrance staring at you waiting for you to ask them for help.

@breq:

my local best buy as a pretty full video game section (with the exception of the Nintendo area which is not as full) I guess it is location dependent.

Same here. There's a Best Buy two miles from my house, and it doesn't seem to have any trouble attracting customers. The employees are friendly and the in-store pickup service is efficient.

Everyone has different experiences, of course, but I gave up on Amazon when they started missing delivery dates. "Free shipping" doesn't do me any good if they don't deliver when they say they will.

I have not used that service or bought a game from Best Buy in a long time. On a different topic, I am not a fan of Best Buy's new logo. It needed a change but going to a generic sans-serif is not a great start for a re-brand.

I was able to get God of War as a pre-order on Amazon form the $47.88 or whatever they offer. I had to choose the disc version of course. So maybe its only select Sony titles?

@maxszy: As I said above, it only happened about a week before God of War came out. You could preorder before that point, but then all Sony games disappeared from preorder. God of War only reappeared when it came out. All other titles still seem to be unavailable for preorder.

@andythemez: They've never cancelled pre-order discounts. They did cancel discounts for games up to 2 weeks after release though. I don't know if they ever had special editions discounted? I was annoyed that something like Dragon's Crown Pro basically launch edition had some special shit, but was base price, but wasn't included. It's frustrating to see things that ARE regular priced pre-order games but NOT included because they come with a tiny bit of like "first run edition" extras.

The really bad thing about this is that Best Buy's program is better than Amazon's. The GCU works with any new game, which means I can wait for a game to come out and take a look at it before buying it. Even if the game has been out long enough to be discounted you can still get 20% off that price, as long as it is a new copy. Unless something has changed with Amazon's program, it only works for preorders.

Man, that sucks. Like everyone else here, I've had a great time with it, saved a whole shit ton of money on new games.