Page 1 of Experimental bargain Play.com games lists

Hi Guys,

With many people getting their £5 off voucher from Play.com emailed to them today and some of you now wondering if/how to use it, I thought I`d do everyone a favour and put together a list of what games are most discounted at Play.com at the moment AND currently still in stock.

Basically, I`ve listed everything that`s listed as 50% off or more discounted from RRP (i.e. nothing above £20) and also, in a few cases where RRP is not stated I`ve simply listed it if it`s under a fiver:

PS2
XBox
Gamecube
Gameboy Advance
PC

Currently, the majority of the bargains seem to be for the Playstation 2, but that could change byteh end of the month (when the discount vouchers expire).

Both affiliate and non-affiliate links to the product page on play.com are provided for each game listed.

In addition to this, for every game listed I have also provided links to product-specific searches with Pricerunner, Dealtime & Kelkoo so that you can double check that it`s not available cheaper elsewhere and there are also links to reviews available on CNET & IGN where available to tell you a lot more about each game.

I hope you find it useful.

Feel free to comment on it. However, please be considered with your opinions though as it is a little experimental at the moment and I can`t vouch 100% for its accuracy as it`s auto generated (although manually uploaded to my webspace at the moment). However, I`d like to think it`s a good job.

HtH
RM

This item was edited on Thursday, 7th April 2005, 23:13

Thankyou very much, about to order Havest Moon Gamecube for my girlfriend, and I`m happy to use your affiliate link as you often post great bargains.

It`s a good idea of yours to post the review link, kelkoo link etc.

Not wishing to pick holes, but how about a link to www.gamerankings.com for the game review though to get a balance score?

Once again, thanks, and keep up the good work!

Al

www.admars.co.uk

Yup...I noticed Harvest Moon as well (bought my nephew a GC for Xmas due to the Woolies/Tescos/Virgin Megastore price mix-up) - looks like an interesting purchase at £17.99 - even better with a £5 off voucher as well.

Re. review sites - I simply picked two sites which use the GET method for their search form so that it was simply a matter of composing URLs which include the game titles and formats. Had a look at the site you suggested and it seems that they use the GET method too so there`s no reason why it couldn`t be added to the review site list at some point - or even used to REPLACE the two review sites that I (admittedly arbitrarily) chose as it contains links to many review sites.

cheers
RM

This item was edited on Friday, 8th April 2005, 08:46

Well it ain`t perfect but its pretty good. Cheers for this. The only advice I could offer is perhaps to include all the PC budget games. For instance, Soldiers: Heroes of WW2 is £7.99 and it only came out 8 months ago. Ditto for Perimeter(though that is actually £5 from Gamestation plus delivery).

Quote:

Well it ain`t perfect but its pretty good. Cheers for this. The only advice I could offer is perhaps to include all the PC budget games. For instance, Soldiers: Heroes of WW2 is £7.99 and it only came out 8 months ago. Ditto for Perimeter(though that is actually £5 from Gamestation plus delivery).


Thanks for the comments....always useful to get opinions.

A brief explanation of my decision process might be in order here...

As I don`t currently have script/MySQL access with my current webhost (I plan on moving sometime soon) I cannot run this from a database with a search facility. I am therefore currently restricted to presenting fixed-content files, precompiled on my machine and periodically uploaded to the web server.

For this reason I have to be mindful of keeping it simple and reasonably short, hence I have imposed a minimum 50% off threshold to identify the most discounted items in Play`s stock list. Unfortunately, any simple threshold will, by its rough and ready nature, always rule out one or two useful items and, likewise, rule in one or two not so useful items. The key is in finding the right threshold to balance the "failed positives" and "false negatives" (technical speak).

For games under £10, I guess there may be an argument for relaxing the discount threshold somewhat to a minimum of, say, 33% off. That would be sufficient to include the two games you mention. I`ll give it a go and see how much longer it makes the lists. If it looks good, I`ll upload the extended lists later today.

Actually, in some ways the technical restrictions imposed upon me have been good for focussing the mind. All too often I see examples of people who`ve simply used technology for technology`s sake and this invariably leads to an unnecessary information overload in the interface. By having such an obvious restriction placed upon me it`s actually directed me to seriously consider what information is going to be of most use, thus cutting out a lot of dead wood on the Play.com site that will just get in the way.

cheers,
RM

This item was edited on Friday, 8th April 2005, 09:57

Cheers for the info, Reestit.

However, due to my terribly cheap nature, i`d already sourced all the game bargains myself for when/if the voucher came through...

... Pathetic! ;)





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"Le Chef est commissioned to make le gateaux in le shape of un Kylie Minogue du pert bottom, und le eclair like de big marde, poking out between le marzipan buttocks.
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whats this voucher? how do i get one? sorry if im being a bit vague? at work have to be quick.

I don`t want to achieve immortality through my work... I want to achieve it through not dying.
Woody Allen

yeah whats this vouchder?ive ordered lots from play.com and not got a voucher i even placed a order on wednesday night ..

No chance now, chaps. Limited to 8000.

www.play.com/ds

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"Le Chef est commissioned to make le gateaux in le shape of un Kylie Minogue du pert bottom, und le eclair like de big marde, poking out between le marzipan buttocks.
66*66*66*66*66*66*66*66*66*66*66*66*66*66*66*66*66*66*66*66*66*66*66*66*66*66*66*

This item was edited on Friday, 8th April 2005, 13:47

Okay guys...

I`ve had a good look at my code and I`ve been able make some improvements to my tool as follows:

(1) "Game Rankings" has been added to the list of review sites covered.

(2) Games under £10 that are at least 33% discounted have been added (in dark blue) - this should highlight some of the budget games that have been reduced.

(3) While making these changes I spotted a previously unidentified problem that was limiting the number of results listed in the table - this has now been fixed so there should be a wider range of titles highlighted.

(4) As with the review links, I now only list comparison links which provide a non-empty search result so that you don`t waste any time clicking through to a comparison site only to find that the search result is empty.

I am now in the process of recompiling the data (this could take a while as it probably requires a gigabyte or so of webpage downloads - good job I have spare bandwidth to use up in the next week).

I`ll give you a heads-up when the data has finally finished compiling.

HtH
RM