Jimquisition: Don't Charge Retail Prices For Digital Games

[BooTsPs3]

I couldn't agree more. And the problem is worse here in ireland( and probably other eu countries but i'm not 100% sure). Games cost 45-50 euro at retail here, but on the playstation store a new release game costs 70 fucking euro!!! Thats 20-25 euro more that the retail copy. its fucking ridiculous and it needs to stop

 

[MonkeyPunch]

Oh sure there is.......its greed filled, bullshit filled and reeks of pure unadulterated evil. But intelligent non the less.

I choose to not call that intelligent but erm... erm... exploitative.
Then again you could call it intelligent exploitation. Damn you. Shut up. No. I win.
*puts fingers in ears*
"nananananananananananana"

 

[Urh]

While we're on the subject of pricing, we need to see an end to regional pricing bollocks with digitally distributed games and media. With digital content distribution regional pricing schemes should not exist because nearly all the business arguments behind regional pricing simply do not exist with digital distribution. I may not have the exact figures, but I'd be surprised if pushing 0s and 1s across cables turned out to be more expensive than manufacturing and shipping discs to all corners of the globe. Who knows, maybe when oil hits $300 a barrel publishers will think twice about putting in a manufacturing order for what is essentially a fuckton of plastic.

 

[Sourman]

I got distracted at the end of the video, but "I'm Hitler" did make me focus right back on it

As for the whole price thing, I think publishers are hoping that if they can keep selling games, both digitally and physically, for the same price for long enough, we'll take it as "industry standard" and stop complaining. Of course it's stupid, but publishers already think we're stupid, so what's new?

 

[anthony87]

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.

 

[Dastardly]

As always, they will do it until it stops working for them. And for all our talk, all our articles and videos and e-mails and forum posts, every word we write about ignores the simple fact that these guys only ever read the bottom line.

----

As an aside, the issue with releasing two versions at the same time at different prices is that this model favors the lower-priced version. Retailers won't spend the money to stock a title if they feel that folks are just going to buy the digital version and leave them with unmovable product.

The answer, then, is to lower the price across the board. (Or, of course, raise the price of the lower-cost version to match, which is what they're doing.)

 

[Aureliano]

In theory the worst part about all this is multiplayer as far as getting value for your money. Back in Sierra days if you bought a single-player game and got it in physical media, sure your disk might eventually go bad but if you properly archived it you would get the same game forever.

Now you can't sell off your game, you can get locked out for changing systems too many times or being a dick on the forums of that company, and if it's a multiplayer game in a few years there simply wont be a way to access much of the content due to a lack of users down the line. Digital downloads not costing less are, in my opinion, more of a drop in the bucket once these other changes are reckoned with as well.

 

[BooTsPs3]

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

 

[viranimus]

Awesome. You took the words right out of my mouth Jim. Seriously. So yes you can call me a good Hitler and you may proceed to thank God for me.

Only thing I think you missed was the automatic diminished value a digital copy has vs a physical one just for its ability to be resold, but it seemed more like you were trying to present that as a good thing somehow.

 

[hawk533]

For dual release, digital and retail, the price difference between the two will never happen since the retailer will complain about it and just not stock the game which will result in huge profit drops for them.

But if the stores refuse to stock the title (especially if it's a popular game) they'll end up losing out too. And every digital sale results in a higher profit margin for the publisher than physical sales so it's to their benefit to drive consumers to the digital download.

 

[Waaghpowa]

I get my games wherever I get the best offer/price. Most retail stores don't offer shit for prices or extras like Steam does for PC games.

I also say "Fuck that" to any PC game sold for 60 dollars unless I know for a fact it has extensive content to justify it. EA needs to stop this 60 dollars digital PC game bullshit. Even Ubisoft is doing the right thing and selling them for 10 dollars less. UBISOFT!

 

[RaikuFA]

You used not only Persona, but the FIRST Persona game as an example.

Jim...thank you.

And yeah, I agree. I admit I'm one of those "but I like the way the games look on my shelf" type of people, but if we ever actually do hit a point where digital downloading becomes the smarter, move effective, and cheaper option...so long shelf.

If I remember... Atlus wanted it cheaper digitally but Sony said no.

 

[Rad Party God]

Steam sales!, problem solved!.

Seriously though, that's one of the biggest gripes I have with this generation, I've already fully embraced digital distribution and I'd love to see it happen in consoles and handhelds, but just as the righteous man-god führer Jim said, publishers are too afraid of change.

 

[The Artificially Prolonged]

Deutschland Jim Sterling Uber Alles!

It is a problem with publishers. I saw FIFA 12 for £50 on psn. 50 GOD DAMN QUID! It's laughable that they think they can charge this, though that will be the problem if publishers get a monopoly on digital outlets.

Even the argument that its the same price as retail because it has a premium for the convenience of not leaving your house is stupid as it is often still cheaper to get the bus to the into town and buy the game there. And plus it waste more time anyway as you wait for the thing to download. Seriously I live 20 minutes from the nearest game shop I could hop there and back and be playing the game in the hour, even if stop for something to eat on the way.

Even steam is not immune to this problem as I believe retail outlets threaten not to stock pc games if they are sold cheaper cheaply. I don't why developers/publishers don't look at the advantages of exposure on steam against the limited shelf space now given to pc games and tell retailers to stick their self space up their arse.

 

[Qitz]

For dual release, digital and retail, the price difference between the two will never happen since the retailer will complain about it and just not stock the game which will result in huge profit drops for them.

But if the stores refuse to stock the title (especially if it's a popular game) they'll end up losing out too. And every digital sale results in a higher profit margin for the publisher than physical sales so it's to their benefit to drive consumers to the digital download.

True, but the retailer doesn't rely on just that game sale to get buy, where as Developers do. They need to make a profit to keep the Publishers pleased and not get scrapped to recover the costs of the development. So while it is lose / lose, it's not as huge a loss for the retailer.

While Digital sales may put more money into the pubs pockets than retailers, you can see how man people here don't want full on DD because of bad internet / want for a physical media or what not so they're not at the pinnacle point of Digital being more reliable than physical. Once that happens though, I can see more and more publishers getting a half-working brain and lowering digital prices to get greater profit.

 

[Weresquirrel]

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.

I don't mind some digital distribution. I can handle not owning the physical copy if in cases like Steam or GOG the price is often significantly cheaper. Why, for example should I buy Prototype 2 for £50 on PSN, when I could go to say, Game or Amazon for £10-£12 less, then sell it back later and re-coup some of the loss when it turns out to be bland and samey like the first one, it boggles the mind.

 

[Falseprophet]

Not to defend the publishers (furthest thing from my mind), but I've never really seen this argument brought up:

The big publishers are all trying to build their own digital distribution platforms, because none of them want to give a percentage to Steam or GOG or Amazon or whoever. But then they realize even though in theory digital distribution should be cheaper than physical, it actually has costs they probably didn't have to deal with before. With physical games, GameStop, Wal-mart and the other retailers take on the cost of storage, shelving, and some of the front-line marketing, customer service, complaints and most importantly, customer cash transactions.

When a game publisher creates a digital distribution platform, they go from being a publisher who lets dedicated retail businesses sell their content, to a bona fide online retailer. Which puts them on the hook for:
i) Server farms to store the content and customer data
ii) Bandwidth for the downloading of content
iii) applications to handle secure online retail transactions
iv) the technical and customer service expertise to run an online retail business
v) the legal advice to handle retail transactions pretty much anywhere in the world

Now, the major publishers might have some transferable expertise from running online multiplayer servers and such, but I think most of the applicable expertise of online retail has until recently been held by the hardware manufacturers (MS/Sony/Nintendo) or those who threw their hats into digital distribution early (Valve, GOG, Games for Windows, etc.). So the publishers have probably been blindsided by how expensive digital distribution actually is and are keeping the prices high as a result.

What the big publishers actually need to do is:
i) Accept that they're not cut out for the retail business, and learn how to do business with Valve and Amazon et al the same way they did with GameStop and Wal-mart, or
ii) Understand that Valve and the other early adopters were able to get away with mistakes early on because they had little competition. If they want to be successful online retailers, they should use the advantage of the late adopter and learn from the early adopters' mistakes without making them all over again yourself, but also realize that building the infrastructure in the first place is going to be really expensive at first. But if they don't build platforms at least comparable to Steam, why should anyone take them seriously?

Is there something to this, or I have completely missed the boat somewhere?

 

[Don Reba]

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

 

[GonzoGamer]

This is why I refuse to buy Skyrim on Steam. The bloody game is STILL at $60. I always wait for Bethesda to release a Game of the Year Edition so I can at least get everything. Buying one of their games at launch is never good news to me.

Their games would be well worth $60 at launch, if their games actually worked at launch.

I've been saying this for years: that the industry needs to get a better pricing structure in place. Especially if they want to sell more new games. And this isn't just for digital distribution (but for that they should at least discount the bare minimum of the cost of packaging the disc, transporting it to the store, and everything) but the retail stuff too. It's hard to take their cries about used sales seriously when everything is priced at $60.

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