Oculus Summer Sale Kicks Off, Offering Big Savings on Rift & Go Titles

Since most people have a limited budget, i see and get like the next guy why sales are attractive. I bought way too much in these summer sales on both the Oculus and Steam stores already.
I’m not sure whether i should feel clever or dumb about saving over 300 by spending over 240 =)
But that said, regarding complaining about the summer sale not also being done for the Quest, well, i don’t remember any other platform ever being released and having a large part of its entire lineup discounted so close to release, ever.
(The only exceptions i can think of are where some platforms tanked so hard that they were discounted for clearance sale quickly)
So yeah, i don’t think it is a reasonable request or even any that is sense making based on any previous precedent.
Summer sales and other such big palette wide sales are done by several platform holders like Oculus, Steam etc each year, doesn’t mean they have to do them for all their titles on all platforms and it wouldn’t even make much sense at all to do one on most of their lineup which has just been released on a new platform.

Guess what would happen if most of the lineup was discounted now on Quest?
Then a large part of the users would complain who bought the stuff at full price just recently and accepted to pay the higher prices usually coming with new releases on most platforms.

Things are often discounted after some time to try to get some sales going again once the sales numbers are low after a while when a title isn’t that new anymore.
(even then it often doesn’t help much in some cases when all do the sales at the same time)

In some cases for digital content there is also a discount made for a short period while it is new to get more people into using the content which may be beneficial as to get higher presentation ranking in the store, get more people talking about the new product or get more players into a multiplayer game which is needed for online multiplayer focussed games etc, various reasons.
But if the entire lineup on a new platform is discounted at the same time, then one doesn’t get most or any of those benefits while at the same time riling up users who paid the regular price of the new titles just recently etc and as dev one just gets less money for the thing one worked hard on and likely hasn’t recouped the dev costs on yet in most cases.

I was initially surprised just like you when looking through the summer sale stuff on Oculus and seeing it only applies for Rift and Go titles and i wondered why, but yeah, thinking about it, of course they don’t discount the entire lineup on Quest so close to launch, it would just make zero sense sales wise and would likely rile up more users, all the users who bought lots of stuff very recently, than it makes some happy who expect the entire lineup to be discounted so close to launch.
People are more accepting of having paid more for something and that then getting discounted after some (not too short) timespan because it is just older at that point. Many of us are trained to that by this weird system of sales everywhere established. But lots of people get quite angry when something still pretty new is heavily discounted a very short timespan after they bought it, which they bought thinking hey, that is the price for this product right now while it is so new.
If a product creator/seller does that too often, well, no one would buy their stuff at full price anymore ever.

Besides those Quest(/ new platform specific reasons why a massive palette wide discount doesn’t make much sense right now on Quest, speaking more general, i have mixed feelings about such big sales in general.
On one side, of course when they are there, i buy stuff during them anyway if i have some money at that time, just like the next guy.
At the same time there are many downsides and i wonder to what weird nonsense behavior it trains all sides.
Like many product/content creators likely releasing things at higher pricing at some point/with some experience, knowing they will have to stepwise and for sales, too have to lower it in between, too.
If your starting price is already (“too”) low, no room to do big sounding discounts anymore.
And many users also get trained to not buy things at full price and always wait for the sale.
It turns things into this weird economy sub game which we can see in many other fields.
Like for clothing i see in some stores for some products they meanwhile even come out with price labels where multiple prices are already printed on and stroked through, again, all already printed on from the factory to make it seem like that thing has been heavily discounted/ reinforce “what a bargain it actually is”.
In other cases, like a super market chain here, i see they raised the prices stepwise on most of the product palette over the past few years and now just discount a few different products each weak (to the same old price or slightly above it which it had a few years ago before they raised it on all products) and that way get people to buy lots of units of that product that week, because, hey, discounted, save big by spending more.
I know of multiple people in my friends and family circle who go way overdose on buying way more units of some products in some super markets when they are on discount that week, because hey, saving money.
And with that action again reinforcing those store chains to further exaggerate with tactics like some i observed and mentioned above.
Or for other friends who are on Steam, i have several who put hundreds of things on their Steam wishlist and don’t buy much or any title at regular price and then buy a huge load during sales, so many, that they then have a ton of titles of which they then often don’t play many for multiple years.

Sometimes such to weird level going things makes me wonder if those kinds of things aren’t going so far in a moronic negative direction that wouldn’t we better off if all just sold the things at a reasonable price they can make money from and then not do any of that discount and pseudo discount crap and not have those huge sales days anymore?
A lot of products (besides cheap clothing from China) cost a lot less in average a few years ago and was more affordable throughout the year, then raising prices further and further and then having big steep discount sales days.

Maybe i remember it too rose tinted, but i feel like when i was small there weren’t nearly as many palette wide “sales” days throughout the year and random sales here and there for every product, instead besides odd exceptions, there was more like one big palette wide discount before summer and one big such discount before winter, which
made sense as having to clear the clothing etc stock for the previous weather season.
Then stepwise more and more sales days were added one by one and now it is this whole meta game around it with all sorts of ridiculous and negative side effects.

Of course if/while it is available, as user/consumer one will try to make use of it to pay less for the same thing and as product/content creator/publisher one will be teased to take part in it with the dangling promise one could sell more units during that timespan, few thinking about how negatively that affects sales long term when many users are trained to only buy most things during sales or how it affects pricing negatively when product/content creators have to take such lower price discounted sales options into consideration and hence stepwise price their stuff higher during regular pricing periods etc.

It is a weird setup all around with such sales on grand scale.
Of course while it exists and is run that way, we all sorta have to participate to some extend.
Will we get that kind of stuff happening for the Quest, too? Likely of course, like on most other platforms.
Just also likely in a few months or closer to a year, not right when the platform just launched not too long ago and most devs haven’t even recouped their dev costs yet and most users just paid shiny new product palette launch pricing for it.