Jimquisition: Don't Charge Retail Prices For Digital Games

[doctorjackal777]

For me personally I don't like digital distribution. I hate the idea of one day not being able to have a solid physical copy of the game I purchased in my hands. The only time I ever download games is when there is no physical copy like with Minecraft and a few others. If I want a video game I go to a shop and buy it.
That said, I do agree that if something is cheaper to make is should be cheaper to buy. But that's never going to happen. I mean just look at the shops full of clothes made in China that probably cost 20cents to make and yet are being sold for $50~
And as for retail shops threatening not to stock stuff if somewhere else is selling it cheaper something smells ratty right there. Since when was it okay for shop A to demand that shop B match their prices or else they'll throw a big old sulk until the creator of the product makes them.
I mean seriously can you imagine if this was the case in other situations? Where I live EB Games sells most new releases for $20 for than JB does, can you imagine if EB threatened to stop stocking that game until the publisher forced JB to put their prices up?
I understand it's a bit different when you're comparing retail to online purchases but, seriously the idea that shop A has any influence over the prices in Shop B makes me really uncomfortable.

 

[zelda2fanboy]

Can't say I agree with him on this one. As a consumer, I of course want cheaper games. It's why 90% of my game purchases are through Steam sales these days.

From a business standpoint, it makes no sense to sell your digital and retail games at different prices from day 1. Everyone knows there's a greater markup on the digital product. That's not the point. It's not good business to undercut yourself.

It's not undercutting yourself. When games are sold at retail, a portion of the profit goes to the retail establishment that sold it and the cost of manufacturing and shipping the physical copies - people that are not the publisher. All they have to do is pass that savings off to the consumer when sold through a digital storefront. They don't even have to pass of all of the savings, just some of them. Say for example, Battlefield 3 comes out digitally and in store at the same time. Would it be that ridiculous to charge 8 to 10 dollars less because EA is their own distributer and didn't have to pay to ship it somebody else and lose a small portion of the profit to them? A lot of consumers would argue that there is numerous disadvantages to not owning a physical copy and would like additional incentives towards the digital ones. And even a slight bullshit incentive like an extra map or five dollars is nothing compared to the savings the publisher gets by selling it through its own digital storefront.

Hell, amazon does this all the time. They know damn well that they are at a disadvantage for game sales because shipping direct to the consumer takes slightly longer and is more expensive. You know what they do? They occasionally skim 5 to 10 dollars off of their profit margin to offer an incentive to customers to use their shipping programs like Amazon Prime, or just to get them in the habit of ordering through them. Kmart did this for awhile too through their brick and mortar stores while they were restructuring their games section.

Digital sales are just crazily advantageous to publishers and their inability to realize this is astonishing. Nintendo selling game codes to retailers? WHY? It's practically a charity to places like gamestop and Target. Why give them some of your profit and waste even a nickel on a piece of paper when every single person with access to the internet can easily buy the games without having to leave the house. It's insanity.

 

[lRookiel]

Last time I checked, Steam did it right.

Thank god for Valve.

 

[Doom972]

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.

You'll have to be a bit clear as to what exactly is that "holy grail of digital distribution" you think other people see Steam as. While I don't think it has the proportions of some fictional holy artifact (It's not fictional or holy and most definitely not a vagina), I do see it as my preferred place to buy games.
Yes, cheap sales are intended to make you buy stuff, which is not surprising since this is an online store. You can't blame them for wanting to sell stuff.
It might cost more than retail if you live in North America, where games cost the least for some arbitrary reason, but even buying at the regular NA price is usually cheaper than what I can get in retail stores.
Steam is way cheaper than the alternatives some people have. Especially if you consider the sales.

 

[Rblade]

this is just full fletched retarded. the practice that is. No matter what way you look at it the money that goes to paying the guy behind the counter, the owner of the shop, the guy driving the truck, the disc and it's creation.

That now all goes to the publisher. Cutting out those, what, 5 middle men should make it cheaper to get the product to you so paying the same is just them getting more.

shops should be able to compete with stuff like soundtracks and books with art and all that included in the purchase. I used to, and still do, love reading through the books with all the art and backstory in it.

Asking same prices for digital and hardcopy is like demanding supermarkets charge restaurant rates for beef. It's by it's very concept, stupid.

 

[Don Reba]

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.

What would be really funny and quite in line with the current style is to use goatses for video thumbnails. Thankfully, I won't find out, if you have taken up on my advice, because:

escapistmagazine.com##div.filmstrip_video > a[href*="jimquisition"]

Yay, my wish came true.

 

[RobfromtheGulag]

Good Hitler. I'll use that one. Good point on the marketing too.

 

[CardinalPiggles]

If you don't support the better developers then they wont keep making great games. Sure skyrim is $60 but that's for hundreds of hours of gameplay. Considering millions of people pay $60 for COD which only has about 10 hours of content before your just repeating maps in multiplayer paying $60 for skyrim is a bargain. I bought it on release day and i think it's the best game this gen. Bethesda deserves your money for it

Quantity does not trump quality as far as I'm concerned.

 

[ResonanceSD]

Ha! I started this topic yesterday, L2Serch, Jim =D

JK, obviously. But question, has

snip

seen this video?

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

Ha! I started this topic yesterday, L2Serch, Jim =D

JK, obviously. But question, has

snip

seen this video?

Yes, but not until after the thread you're referring to had hit three or four pages XD

 

[ThePS1Fan]

Jim seems to be good at keeping up with what the community is talking about. Wasn't it just yesterday there was a thread talking about this very thing?

 

[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.

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

The thing is there is no risk to their console market. The Publishers cant afford to risk it, if they did, and the retailers arent bluffing then they'd not take long to cave in and the retailers would still get the sales when the publishers did.

It's no coincidence that the majority of games that start outside the standard retail RRP price point are DD exclusives.

Is it the sole reasons, no but the famous Steam sales suggest that publisghers have of problem with the idea that discounting gains them loads of sales thats worth it even on newer games, so lets charge almost twice the price because we not the 3rd party retailer is setting it doesnt add up that well.

Without a anti-competitive practice lawsuit with some serious power behind it then only the rumour of consoles going dd exclusive next gen will likely break this status quo. Publishers just dont have the incentive to take the risk so they wont.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

Jim seems to be good at keeping up with what the community is talking about. Wasn't it just yesterday there was a thread talking about this very thing?

Not to promote my own thread, but it literally just slipped onto the second page in the last half hour or so, assuming it's the one you're referring to XP

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/9.374224-Games-are-a-luxury-item-So

 

[ResonanceSD]

Jim seems to be good at keeping up with what the community is talking about. Wasn't it just yesterday there was a thread talking about this very thing?

Yes. Me.


EDIT: And I was inb4 this pretender.

Jim seems to be good at keeping up with what the community is talking about. Wasn't it just yesterday there was a thread talking about this very thing?

Not to promote my own thread, but it literally just slipped onto the second page in the last half hour or so, assuming it's the one you're referring to XP

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

Jim seems to be good at keeping up with what the community is talking about. Wasn't it just yesterday there was a thread talking about this very thing?

Yes. Me.


EDIT: And I was inb4 this pretender.

Jim seems to be good at keeping up with what the community is talking about. Wasn't it just yesterday there was a thread talking about this very thing?

Not to promote my own thread, but it literally just slipped onto the second page in the last half hour or so, assuming it's the one you're referring to XP

Yeah, I realized just a short time ago that <link=http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/9.374122-Why-are-digital-games?page=1>this was the thread in question, not my thread. To be fair, it was that thread that got me thinking about it. For the record, your use of the "games are a luxury item" argument wasn't the only thing that lead to that thread, it was just the straw that broke the camel's back, so to speak; I see the bloody argument all over the place.

 

[Agayek]

Don't Charge Retail Prices For Digital Games

The $60 pricing model is broken in the retail space, and that's a scientific fact that can be proven with science. It's truly staggering, then, that publishers are attempting to apply that awful model to the digital space, where they can better afford alternative pricing tiers. Simply put, a digital game should not cost the same as its physical counterpart, and the hubris involved in such a decision is astounding.

Watch Video

While you raise good points and I agree with you for the most part, I do have one thing I've just got to ask you: What's with all the bloody shrimp pictures in your last couple of videos? Are you trying to make a reference that's just going right over my head, or is it some kind of weird symbolism, or is it just a random thing you latched onto?

 

[Aardvaarkman]

"Digital Games"??

Does Jim think that the games that come on disc are analog or something? Can he hear the "warmth" and the crackle of games sold on a disc?

The games sold on disc at retail are already digital! This is such a bizarre and inaccurate use of terminology. Retail vs Digital is not the issue, since GameStop, etc., are already in the business of selling digital games.

 

[carpathic]

This is just like book retailers selling e versions of their books for full price...Oh, but they say, "printing the book is the cheapest part"...

Sure, sure it is.

Look, companies bend you over a barrel, that is what they do. Might as well get some lube.