Let’s take a look at how the 2020 Coronavirus Pandemic affected Black Friday deals.
The Annual Franchises
Watch Dogs Legion launched a few weeks before Assassin’s Creed Valhalla and apparently that and the slight dip in Metacritic was enough for the Watch Dogs to receive a Black Friday discount. It was your standard sale price, but it was a sale nonetheless.
Assassin’s Creed Valhalla would have to wait for Boxing Day.
Call of Duty Black Ops Cold War did not receive a hint of a discount at retail during 2020’s Black Friday. Not since Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 did we enter a Black Friday without a retail sale for the annual military shooter.
Other Releases
The rest of the titles were selected based on the discount, popularity, and availability. There’s little value in highlighting the door crasher sale of a niche title.
Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time receiving a $20 discount was to be expected. It would have been nice to see a $30 reduction instead, but it looks like Activision are content with slowly milking sales off it. In fact, we’re just getting a $39.99 (50% off) discount on PSN Store in the middle of November 2021!
Marvel’s Avengers was a bit of a bummer, so it wasn’t surprising to see a high profile game like this get a discount. I honestly though it would be $29.99 by Black Friday considering the collective groan and rejection of the game.
If Microsoft didn’t buy Bethesda in September of 2020, I would have pulled the trigger on Doom Eternal at $29.99. I loved Doom (2016) and was waiting to find out how the sequel turned out. I waited for the game to hit Xbox Game Pass instead and discovered that I didn’t like it at all.
One of 2019’s most unique game found itself at the $29.99 price point regularly, so it wasn’t a surprise that it found itself there again during Black Friday 2020.
Takeaways
- Patience wasn’t rewarded for Call of Duty fans — 2020 was the first year in a long time where waiting for a physical copy of Call of Duty to go on sale during Black Friday was pointless
- Patience wasn’t rewarded for Assassin’s Creed fans either.
- Combination of new consoles and pandemic demand probably didn’t force many publishers to hit that sale button