Summer is quickly approaching and the video game industry is bracing itself for the season of conventions and announcements, even if they’re all digital for the second year in a row. But summer also brings with it one of the biggest sales events of the year, asAmazonhosts its annualAmazon Prime Daysale. Amazon’s now shared some early information about the upcoming sales event. However, like in previous years, things will be changing somewhat, too.
For the time being, all Amazon is able to confirm about this year’s Amazon Prime Day is that it’ll take place in June. Even just that small amount of information shows some deviation from previous years, however. For example,Amazon Prime Day in 2020 was delayed all the way into October. A summer Amazon Prime Day shows, at the very least, that Amazon has established some amount of normalcy in the pandemic and is well-prepared to host a massive sale.
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But a June Amazon Prime Day is different even from Amazon’s normal scheduling. Amazon Prime Day sales from 2015 – its first annual event – through 2019 have each taken place mid-July. This will be the first year that the event takes place in June. Amazon noted that it’s choosing a date where Amazon Prime Day will get “more attention” both from customers and vendors. It’s also possible Amazon is dodging competitor sales events likeWalmart’s The Big Save.
For additional context, Amazon also clarified that there would be notable “transportation slowdowns” in July, as well as an international focus on theOlympics that start on July 23. The nature of these transportation slowdowns wasn’t clarified, however.
While Amazon says the shift is for “more attention,” Prime Day likely isn’t going to have trouble with that regardless of when it’s held. The first year of the event, Amazon said that Amazon Prime Day was evenbigger than Black Friday, which seems like as big of a sales event as can be had. Yet Amazon clearly sees more value in a June date. The video game industry, at the very least, would agree with that point of view. Excitement for upcoming video games reaches a peak in June, based around E3 and other announcement events.
Even withAmazon Prime Day being as big and popularas it has been these past several years, it still faces criticism over its lack of major discounts and manipulative pricing. Prices have been raised for Prime Day so that discounts appear larger than they really are. It’s unclear what Amazon has done in recent years to address this criticism.
Expect more information aboutAmazon Prime Day 2021in the months to come.
