Cyber Monday vendors targeting gamers with big discounts

Dean Takahashi
Updated

Gamers are going to get a lot of bargains on Cyber Monday, the traditional discount day for electronic commerce holiday shopping.

Cyber Monday hasn’t always been as big a deal for gamers, but the discounting strategy has spread everywhere. The day has grown in significance as electronic commerce surpasses retail sales in many categories, particularly electronic goods such as video games. Gamer sites are speculating that there will be some discounts coming on the newest titles for the Xbox One and PlayStation 4. Among the discounts coming up: Dead Rising 3 on the Xbox One for $49, Forza Motorsport 5 for $50, and Ryse: Son of Rome for $50.

Amazon posted its own list of Cyber Monday deals for video games. Amazon’s promotion features deep discounts on a featured game every 10 minutes. For instance, at 8 pm Pacific time, Disney’s Epic Mickey: The Power of 2, was on sale for $13, a 35 percent discount off its usual price. Bethesda’s Rage for the PC was slated on Monday evening for $9.81 with free shipping (on orders over $35), down 51 percent from the usual price of $20.

Amazon also slated some full-day deals, such as selling Grand Theft Auto V for $40, instead of the usual $60 price. Amazon also had the BioShock “triple pack” for $15, down 81 percent; the pack includes BioShock, BioShock 2, and BioShock Infinite as downloadable titles on the PC. And it offered the Sony PlayStation Vita in a bundle with the complete first seasons of The Walking Dead for $180, down 31 percent from $260.

Origin PC offered a gamer PC deal where you buy any Origin desktop computer for more than $2,500 and you get free goods including a 250 gigabyte Samsung 840 EVO SSD, a free Plantronics Gamecom 380 headset, 4 free PC games, free ground shipping in the U.S., and professional CPU and GPU overclocking. That adds up to a $620 value.

Meanwhile, eBay advertised a bundle of a Sony PlayStation 3 with a 250-gigabyte hard drive and two games: Batman Arkham Origins and The Last of Us for $200. Walmart advertised a Nintendo 2DS handheld for $100.

Of course, the deals won’t stop on Monday. Digital commerce firm Venda says that online sales get a 28 percent boost in the first two weeks of December thanks to continuous discounting. Kotaku has a long listing of gamer deals.

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