Leading online retailer Amazon is trying to give U.S. gamers more incentive to buy physical retail games at its online storefront, as opposed to brick-and-mortar retailers.
On top of frequent $10- and $20-off deals, the retailer last week told customers via email that it would drop release day delivery rates of certain video games from $5.99 to just 99 cents.
That means that gamers can pre-order titles like Microsoft and Bungie's upcoming
Halo Reach, and, for an extra dollar, have the game delivered to their doors on the game's release day. Paying Amazon Prime members continue to get release day delivery for no extra charge.
Since ordering from Amazon means not needing to pay state taxes in many areas of the U.S., it is now absolutely cheaper to order from the Seattle-headquartered online retailer, in many cases.
Other upcoming games confirmed to be eligible for 99 cent release day delivery include Sony's
LittleBigPlanet 2, Activision's
Call of Duty: Black Ops, Bethesda's
Fallout: New Vegas and many more.
As leading specialty brick-and-mortar retailer GameStop sees revenues of around $9 billion annually, Amazon has been increasingly aggressive in expanding its gaming business. The retailer has a video game trade-in program that is currently in beta, and also has a section on its site for digitally downloadable games.
In March this year, one analyst said Amazon is
planning a significant expansion of its digital download games service, in order to compete more directly with services such as the store aspect of Valve Software's popular Steam platform.
Amazon job listings at the time also pointed to expanded efforts in the games business, as the retailer sought a "Designer, Digital Software and Video Games" and "Software Development Engineer, Digital Software and Video Games."
Just this month, Microsoft director of Game Platform Strategy Andre Vrignaud announced that he would be
leaving the Xbox house to take on an unspecified job at Amazon related to "an exciting new customer experience in video games."
