Is Ubisoft lying about ZombiU?

[Viper1]

darkknightkryta said:

Viper1 said:

KylieDog said:

Viper1 said:

Let me get this straight.  A retailer will puchase X amount of copies at full price but if a certain percentage of those copies do not sell, the distributor will send money to the retailer to offset the reduced retail price to sell the remainder?

It depends on the agreement, it is either that or the copies are paid to the publishers as they sell.  Is very rare anything is shipped back anymore, usually a fault is the cause for that to happen.

That's the consignment agreement I was talking about before.  That's rarely used except in some European markets in desperation mode.   HMV did it for a little while when they were in administration.  But this is not used as standard practice.  Much less widescale.

And I've also never heard of a distributor paying money back to a retailer for a percentage of product that was reduced in price by the retailer themselves.

It most likely is though.  I can only really speak about Square Enix games since I looked into their financial statements, but the reason Hitman, Tomb Raider, and Deus Ex wasn't profitable was because of that retailer insurance.  I don't see why other publishers don't make those deals with retailers, it lets them stuff channels.  I actually see games hit the bargain bin way faster now than they did back in the PSX/N64 days.  Back then a game stayed full pirce until it became a greatest hit and if it didn't, it just got discontinued.  From what I know Nintendo doesn't do that which is why their games stay full price until they cut the price themselves.

True, Square Enix did engage in price protection rebates but Ubisoft has not.  SE engaged in that pricing scheme because they believed they would make up the difference via DLC.  Definitely a gamble that didn't pay off.