When's a Sale a Sale?

GamePlanet has started their Boxing Day Sale. I used to love the GPStore Boxing Day Sales, as they usually had some shinies in there for a bit of a discount.

This year I'm not so sunny about it.

When I cruised through the games list, two things sprang out at me:
1. The specials aren't that special, and
2. The shinies aren't there.

A little while ago, GamePlanet stopped being a retail store; this meant less stock to carry, and no retail premesis. With that, I think, is the sad reality that they won't have quite so much stock to move on at the end of the year; they can now order just what they need for their orders, and they don't have to hold stock like a usual retail outlet quite so much.

This means they've less stock on hand that's neat and cool, and less reason to drop the price on it. Simple economics, but... it makes me a sad panda.

If you look at something like Two Worlds, you have probably heard it had a less than stellar reception. Based on this, and the fact that the original sticker price was a hundee, what would you expect to pay in a sale? For me, it looks like it should be a stocking stuffer, coming in at < $40. Hello, it's still at $70 in the "sale." Certainly some of this won't be GPStore's "fault;" they'll have bought it full price from their distributor, and no price protection is applied. But it should really have dropped to $50 at RRP by now, and be less than that in a sale.

Perhaps it sounds like I'm turning into a penny pinching moron. Dunno about that, but I do know that in the USA, a sale is actually a sale, with a good incentive to turn up and see what's what. Here, it's barely worth getting out of bed to see what's going on at retail. This doesn't bode well for cut price PS3s in a couple of days :)