Jimquisition: Don't Charge Retail Prices For Digital Games

[Alcamonic]

Another bamboozling case is Diablo 3. I currently have it pre-ordered through Game for £32.99. Blizzard are charging a whopping £45 for the digital edition. That's nearly 50% more.
It's enough of a price gap to cause my brother to not buy it. His Mac's CD drive is busted, but he's not goin g to pay out an extra £12 to get a digital edition.

Thought about Diablo 3 the moment I saw the thread. I was in joy when I saw they were releasing a digital download. "Hurray" I thought, "A cheap and easy way of getting it".
Almost made me spew my coffee out on the screen in shock when I saw it was 59,99 euro For normal edition!

Btw, if your brother is really sad. He could just buy a physical copy and enter the game-code and digitally download it (and much cheaper, logical?).

 

[Altorin]

Another thing along this vein that really gets under my skin is the death of manuals. I mean, PC games USED to have awesome manuals, but even Console games used to have manuals, and they were considered a valuable part of the package - you were charged up the ass if you ever lost a manual in terms of game rental and resale value. Why is it cool now to not even make them? the last 3 games I've gotten (Mass Effect 3, Mortal Kombat, Gears of War 3, and most aggregiously, Starcraft 2, Blizzard being the king of the awesome manual era of PC gaming) have all 3 not had a manual. Game boxes feel empty without them. Why are they going away? Should we not in turn charge them up the ass for basically "losing" the manual for the game they're trying to sell us?

Why are they doing this? I mean, even if you don't like manuals, even if you're some crazy bint that thinks they're a waste, was that such a universal observation that we needed to do away with them all together? the boxes still have manual clips in them. It seems silly, and a bit of a slap in the face to sell a game with nothing but an advertisement and an online pass in the place of a manual.

And don't get me started on fucking advertising in games. Big Corporations in general seem to have forgotten that advertisement usage is an alternate form of payment - we're paying with our time and attention watching ads. Don't put ads in things that you're charging for, unless you're positive the person on the receiving end is going to want to see it (I'm all for, for example, Microsoft advertising Dollar Gold months on the live dashboard). Don't add extra advertisements to things we're already paying for and then have the audacity to sell them like a feature "buy our ads! they're ad-tastic!".

Edit: and Oh yeah, they're not even selling manuals to their old games. I bought a physical copy of Starcraft/Brood War, hoping to get a new copy of Starcraft's awesome manual. No dice, seriously, wtf.

 

[Irridium]

So, people are saying that if publishers price their digital games lower than retail, retail won't stock them. Since this seems to be primarily for PC games, I say... so? Isn't PC at retail all but dead? The amount of people who got to a store to buy PC games is very, very few. Most use Steam now.

If Sony can charge less for their digital Vita games and have stores still stock the physical copies, I don't see why publishers can't do the same with PC games.

Besides, PC gaming at retail died completely, would it really make much of an impact? Is the retail PC games market really such a huge market that they won't risk losing it? Considering PC sections in retailers are really small and out of the way and getting smaller, I highly doubt it.

 

[Weresquirrel]

Thought about Diablo 3 the moment I saw the thread. I was in joy when I saw they were releasing a digital download. "Hurray" I thought, "A cheap and easy way of getting it".
Almost made me spew my coffee out on the screen in shock when I saw it was 59,99 euro For normal edition!

Btw, if your brother is really sad. He could just buy a physical copy and enter the game-code and digitally download it (and much cheaper, logical?).

Arr, I suggested that to him. The other alternative is that he has friends who work in an electronics store, he was going to see if he could borrow their external CD drive they use for netbooks to install it.

 

[blackrave]

Next thing we know publishers will make digital versions cheaper... by making physical copies more expensive.
From their point of view it makes sense.

 

[Nuke_em_05]

As far as the statement that they cost different to distribute, and should therefore be priced differently, this is just wrong. It's an argument that I see for piracy as well. The premise is false. You are not buying a disk and a box. The cost of the disk, imaging it, and packaging it is maybe maybe $1 ea. You are buying a license, and the aggregate distribution costs are incorporated into that price.

It isn't like digital distribution is 100% free, either. They have to pay for servers, maintenance, bandwidth, merchant accounts, etc.

Did it ever cross your mind, Jim, that maybe publishers keep the prices the same for customer equity? What if I don't have the bandwidth or usage cap for periodic 3-6gb game file downloads? What if I don't have the hard drive space to store/install them? I need to pay more because I prefer a disk? I imagine that a price disparity such as you suggest would bring about a lot of consumer backlash.

I think you have a valid point with the $60 price point overall. It isn't that one distribution method is priced this way, it is that any distribution method is priced this way. Fight for a lower price point altogether, but singling out just one is going to get you serious backlash from the other.

 

[QUINTIX]

It used to be that PC games where $50 at launch while the console counterparts where $60. Whatever happened to that model?

The whole entertainment pricing scheme, outside of music, sucks. During the great depression the film industry thrived. Not even 30 years ago $10 (adjusted for inflation) would provide hours of entertainment at either the cinema or the arcade... with snacks and beverages! Now the commercial visual arts waxes and wanes with the disposable income of a nation's population. The only reason why gaming grows is that there is room to grow. If it had the same market saturation as cinema, it would be shrinking just like cinema.

 

[Doom972]

I've been wondering about this subject ever since I began buying digital almost exclusively, with special editions for certain games and rare retail deals being the exception.
I understood that the reason for the situation being what it is probably the fear of retail stores banning publishers and the publishers not having the balls to challenge the retailers' threat.
The current solution seems to be the discount sales.
I don't buy a game until I can get it at a price I find justifiable and sometimes if a game's price doesn't drop and it doesn't get a sale for some time I lose interest in it, which is a money save for me and a lost sale for a greedy publisher.
I hope others are doing the same, so publishers will understand that we value our money and won't throw away 50$ for just any game. Don't get me started on 60$ games.

 

[Ishigami]

Steam is not the holy grail of digital distribution. Stop praising it.
Steam deals / daily offer etc. are cony-catcher. These offers are there to convince you to cash in now because otherwise you lose out on a supposedly cheap deal. In the end many people will therefore buy more games, more often and even games they usually wouldn?t pick up. In the end many will spend more money on Steam for games they don't even play. At the same time it increases acceptance of the service leading even to more full price sales.
It is like the F2P model of many MMOs. Many people will in the end pay more to play F2P than they would have paid subscription fees on an P2P MMO.
If a game is not on such a special offer it still cost as much or even more than retail.
No Steam is not cheaper.

 

[Corven]

This could be applied to how just 1 or 2 years ago pc games were for the most part always 10 dollars cheaper since devs and publishers didn't have to deal with licensing fees on consoles, but nowadays they're just as expensive as console counter parts for no justifiable reason other than publishers wanted the extra 10 bucks.

 

[Jimothy Sterling]

God, I wish there was a way to remove Jimquisition from my latest videos page.

Perfectly understandable. I realize that for some, it is difficult having my face appear in their feeds because any passing girlfriends and boyfriends will fall in love with it and leave you in order to seek my hand (my own wife, upon seeing one of my videos, actually divorced me in order to marry me again. It was very troublesome).

I assume this is the problem anyway, since it's the only logical one I have as to how simply seeing the existence of a video in a feed is a problem to anybody. In any case, you can let your significant others know that I am off the market and so they should probably stick with whoever they settled for.

 

[ex275w]

The problem is that the systems are so static, since their isn't any competition between digital distributors yet, the prices remain static. I find digital distribution great because games in Mexico can cost 75$ and in origin they are available at 35$. I haven't seen any computer games in stores here in Mexico, so my only options are to buy them through Steam or become a pedophile burglar.

So digital prices are great for me, though they could surely be lower.

 

[4173]

Wow. It's almost as companies may be beholden to people who don't care about video games or the "video game community." I don't think any of the giants are private corporations are they?


As always, I'm impressed with how generous everyone is with other people's money.


Likewise, I'm sure there's no risk in being an innovator or early adopter. Seen any zeppelins lately? "Hey EA guy, why are you such a pussy? Worried you might lose your job? What a *****."


Of course it's not a moral issue, because they are fucking video games. They are not fucking vaccines.

 

[Ilikemilkshake]

And that my friends, is why I do all my game shopping from Amazon/Gamestop.

I got Mass Effect 3 on PC for 36 euro off Gamestop on release day. For PS3 it would've cost me 45-55 euro as a physical copy.

Last time I checked it was still SEVENTY FUCKING EURO on the Playstation Store.

I often see digital copies of games like ME3 or FIFA 12 on the psn store with hundreds or thousands of ratings. This would imply that thousands of people were buying these games digitally seeing as you can't rate something unless you've bought it.

On the UK psn these games cost £50-£55 which is £10-15 more than physical copies, what i want to know is who is stupid enough to pay this amount? It's ridiculous.

Pretty much if it weren't for steam sales there would be practically no reason to buy digital games, which is a shame =[

 

[ex275w]

Snippity Snappity Snoop

I often see digital copies of games like ME3 or FIFA 12 on the psn store with hundreds or thousands of ratings. This would imply that thousands of people were buying these games digitally seeing as you can't rate something unless you've bought it.

On the UK psn these games cost £50-£55 which is £10-15 more than physical copies, what i want to know is who is stupid enough to pay this amount? It's ridiculous.

Pretty much if it weren't for steam sales there would be practically no reason to buy digital games, which is a shame =[

I guess some people feel safe with their digital copies tied to an account, since DRM has ruined infinite installations.

I guess the people who buy them don't have access to the physical copies? The last PC game I bought was the Starcraft Battlchest back in 2007, I seriously haven't seen another pc game here in Mexico since. Plus Digital prices are lower here than retail prices, I was surprised Origin had decent prices.

Captcha: Body surfing...

 

[Andy of Comix Inc]

I saw the title of this weeks episode and I was like

FUCK

FUCK

YES

OH GOD YES

MAKE IT SO MR STERLING

...I was impressed with my high-level cognitive thought process during the period between me glancing at and clicking on the link to your video. Very impressed. I've been endlessly baffled by this and Jim has perfectly illustrated all the reasons it makes no fucking sense and needs to stop right now before it rips the industry apart like a crayfish in boiling water. Unfortunately Jim provides no solutions. I'd suggest "boycott" but it would mean the shepharding of thousands of millions of people into completely dismissing an entire storefront that's instantly accessible from every corner of the globe at all times. And that would be downright nutty.

 

[The Human Torch]

This also goes for Guild Wars 2, it's for sale on Arena Net's own website for 59,99 Euro, but I can pre-order it for 45,- Euro at my local gameshop. It's insanity. It almost put me off buying Guild Wars 2 entirely, because I just couldn't behind Arena Net's horrible business practice.

 

[Petromir]

So, people are saying that if publishers price their digital games lower than retail, retail won't stock them. Since this seems to be primarily for PC games, I say... so? Isn't PC at retail all but dead? The amount of people who got to a store to buy PC games is very, very few. Most use Steam now.

If Sony can charge less for their digital Vita games and have stores still stock the physical copies, I don't see why publishers can't do the same with PC games.

Besides, PC gaming at retail died completely, would it really make much of an impact? Is the retail PC games market really such a huge market that they won't risk losing it? Considering PC sections in retailers are really small and out of the way and getting smaller, I highly doubt it.

It's not the stores pulling their PC stocks that publishers are worried at, its pulling ALL a publishers games across ALL platforms due to pc dd pricing. Consoles are still massive in bricks and mortar.

 

[Irridium]

So, people are saying that if publishers price their digital games lower than retail, retail won't stock them. Since this seems to be primarily for PC games, I say... so? Isn't PC at retail all but dead? The amount of people who got to a store to buy PC games is very, very few. Most use Steam now.

If Sony can charge less for their digital Vita games and have stores still stock the physical copies, I don't see why publishers can't do the same with PC games.

Besides, PC gaming at retail died completely, would it really make much of an impact? Is the retail PC games market really such a huge market that they won't risk losing it? Considering PC sections in retailers are really small and out of the way and getting smaller, I highly doubt it.

It's not the stores pulling their PC stocks that publishers are worried at, its pulling ALL a publishers games across ALL platforms due to pc dd pricing. Consoles are still massive in bricks and mortar.

I seriously doubt retailers would stop stocking titles from the large and profitable console market to try and keep the really small and barely profitable PC market.

captcha: market forces

haha