Poll: Food for Thought on Digital Game Value

[DanielBrown]

No discount no sale for me.
Could make an exception if it's a game I seriously want, but in that case I'm sure I'd order it from a game shop instead. Doesn't have the same value to me when all I get is a game code. It's only when the games are extremely cheap I can justify getting it.
I remember someone explaining once why digital games were the same price as physical, or even more expensive which is often the case, but I have forgotten what it was.

 

[Battenberg]

Games just aren't worth £40 to me, they simply don't entertain me enough to justify that amount of money.

Is that more because you're not hugely into video games or because you deem the launch cost excessively high?

I'm in a fairly similar position although for a more mathematical reason. As far as I recall I've only bought one game at launch cost (and even then it was a decent deal because it was a special edition for the standard edition cost) however that's more down to lack of funds than anything. I love video games, I count them among the things I am most passionate about but I simply can't afford to buy every game I want at launch (I would if I could), waiting until they go down to £20 lets me play twice as many games, waiting until they go down to £10 lets me play 4x as many and so on. By simply playing a few months behind other gamers I get a substantial boost in value which allows me to play more games than I otherwise would.

 

[Azure-Supernova]

But can we honestly say that if we had a choice, and not poor, we would buy Steam games at full price? Would we value the Steam games we have now more so if they could only be purchased at full price?

I'll answer this question as bluntly as possible: It depends.

I look at Steam games with the same scrutiny that I look at physical games. I wanted Bioshock Infinite from the day it was announced, so I bought the collectors edition on release. I wasn't really fussed about Resident Evil Revoultions HD re-release, as I already had it on 3DS so I wait for a sale. It all depends on how badly I want the game paired with whether or not my brain can arbitrarily justify the cost.

 

[Eve Charm]

Eh even when I want a brand new game like Rouge legacy or monaco what's yours is mine on steam the launch week they generally are on sale. Scribblenauts DC was 35% off cause I owned the other one launch week so I bought it when I probably wouldn't have. There are just too many places to get steam keys to never have a need to pay full price.

Wii-u doesn't have 5-10 other places selling digital copies of wii-u games all trying to under cut each other, it's just them, It all has to go through them. At the end of the day tho, the Wii-U has one more GLARING flaw with the digital age, an 32gb or 8gb harddrive. Why in the world would anyone want to go digital when your paying the same price as physical, AND it will force you rather soon to upgrade your storage.

 

[Whispering Cynic]

When I pay full price for a game I expect to own that game, not have it on extended lease from Steam. What I can, I buy in retail stores - in my country it's cheaper than Steam (when it comes to new releases).

 

[loc978]

My Steam library has more hardcopies registered to it than digital-only games... I think the only Steam store purchase I've made at full price was Terraria for $10. Full price hardcopies... hard to say, a lot of 'em only made it onto steam years after I bought 'em. Nice of 'em to register those retail keys, but I can't really recall which ones were discounted when I bought 'em.

I know I bought Supreme Commander and Forged Alliance for full price at release (I think that was $40 each)... but again, hardcopies.

 

[zumbledum]

I don't want this to turn into a flame thread, but I am curious about what our own actions.

Iwata, as we all know by now, has already stated that keeping digital price the same as hard copies keeps the games value up.

Of course we have many who disagree with this and the big company that regularly discounts digital games is Steam.

What the comment by Iwata makes me think about is how many of us would even consider purchasing a game at full price if the option was there to get it at a cheaper deal a few months down the road.

I can honestly say that many of my Steam games I would never of bought, I would of had half of them at best. The sales are what I usually wait for. But can we honestly say that if we had a choice, and not poor, we would buy Steam games at full price? Would we value the Steam games we have now more so if they could only be purchased at full price?

I leave that up to each one of us, but I will say that Iwata is not completely wrong.

EDIT: The reason I say Iwata is not completely wrong is that when we work/save for something and finally get it we, as humans, tend to cherish the item more. Should we get the item easily, we tend to brush it off. Aka, backlog.

dont know who this iwata chap is or what he said but it sounds like the typical voodoo bullshit. the more you value something the more you will be willing to pay for it , so therefore the more we charge you for something the more you will enjoy it. but ofc it doesn't correlate that way.

its just desperation to justify the issue where digital distro's have to sell at retail prices because of abuses in the market.

 

[ultrabiome]

i think i bought terraria for full price, but that was only $10.

i bought half-life 2 for full price (i think), but that was in 2004 when it came out and it was a boxed copy. everything else has been a steam sale or humble-bundle - which for me means i don't think I've paid more than $10 for anything on steam (besides HL2). especially since i have steam copies of games i have for consoles, and those i got for dirt cheap.

as for nintendo... nintendo is quite aware of the popularity and demand for their games. people want them and are willing to pay 'full-price' for nintendo's systems and games. yes, sales like what's on steam drive massive sales and profits, but now that the cat's out of the bag so to speak, less people are willing to pay full price when they know the price will drop in 3-6-12 months time. nintendo games do not drop in price quickly due to demand and nintendo is smart enough to realize that anything but minor sales will change what gamers expect to pay for nintendo products and stop paying 'full-price'. that's exactly what would happen if nintendo dropped the price on digital games compared to retail, which is why nintendo won't. prices for nintendo games will match across digital/physical so the choice is not which version is cheaper but more of a 'convenience/drive space versus permanence/physical storage space' choice.

 

[Pink Gregory]

I find it odd that people talk up Humble Bundles costing as little as $1 but that seems to imply that, doing so, the purchaser is giving practically nothing either to the developer or charity.

 

[Doom972]

I only bought a few games at full price on Steam. I think that video games are generally overpriced and that this is a good way to deal with it (At least for those of us who are patient enough to wait).

When selling digital copies, it doesn't matter how many copies a company sells (since they don't need to manufacture copies), but only how much money it made. Selling a game digitally for $10 can be much more profitable than selling a game for $50.

One more thing - I think that we gamers should stop worrying so much about the companies' profits and focus on what us consumers deserve for our money.

 

[dyre]

I buy games full price on occasion, but recently I haven't really been so hyped up about any games that I absolutely had to buy on release.

I don't want this to turn into a flame thread, but I am curious about what our own actions.

Iwata, as we all know by now, has already stated that keeping digital price the same as hard copies keeps the games value up.

Of course we have many who disagree with this and the big company that regularly discounts digital games is Steam.

Not sure who this Iwata fellow is but he's correct. A digital game is almost a perfect economic substitute for a physical game (most people don't care as long as it's convenient), so if a company allowed the price of the digital version to fall, it would essentially force down the price for both.

Steam has digital game sales AFTER several months of the game already being out (I mean the serious sales, not the 10% ones), which makes sense since most of the demand for the full-priced game will already have been met by then. In fact, it would probably be a good idea for Gamestop to also use similar promotions on slightly older games, since people are unlikely to pay the full price of a game (physical or not) several months after release. But at release, digital prices ought to be the same as physical prices.

 

[FPLOON]

Um... Where's the "I only got them through Steam codes" option... because that's where almost every one of my Steam games come from... unless you count doing those Humble Bundles for Steam keys as the "90%" option...

Regardless, if the game's also off PSN, then I just go there since I rarely play games on my laptop that's not just a ".swf" file on my computer or an online flash game on another website like Miniclip or something...

Don't get me wrong... If I had an actual desktop computer, then I would be using Steam a lot more... But, right now, if I end up with the Steam version of a game, then that's cool... I guess...

 

[Kae]

On Steam?
Well because the Steam DRM annoys me a little bit I only buy things there when they are heavily discounted, however I do buy games at full price on GOG and GamersGate, though on GG only if they are DRM free, I guess that's my personal protest against DRM, if you have it there's no way I'm buying the game full price.

 

[BearShark]

Only one(Portal), which I bought when I was new to Steam and didn't know about sales.

 

[Yabba]

xcom original and xcom enemy within. I like xcom

 

[PoolCleaningRobot]

EDIT: The reason I say Iwata is not completely wrong is that when we work/save for something and finally get it we, as humans, tend to cherish the item more. Should we get the item easily, we tend to brush it off. Aka, backlog.

Usually its the opposite: if I paid a bunch of money for a game it better be worth it. The Last of Us was the first game in a while I bought at full price. For a bit I was distracted by weather or not the game was worth it (totally was). Likewise, I liked the game Rage but others hated it. The difference was I spent $20 and not $60.

When it comes to games, I buy the ones I'm really looking forward to when they come out and in physical form. Of course, I've been short on time and money for a while so I don't buy new very often. If I buy pc games at full price, they're usually indi games or old titles so they're already discounted. Otherwise I put games I want to try on my Steam wish list and wait for sales.

When I pay full price for a game I expect to own that game, not have it on extended lease from Steam. What I can, I buy in retail stores - in my country it's cheaper than Steam (when it comes to new releases).

Not that it makes much of a difference but Gabe Newell did say in the past that if Steam were to ever shutdown (for good) that everyone would be given the licenses for their games. But i definitely understand your answer, i am like that for console dlc. Its easier for PC because your games will work unlike say dlc downloaded on 360 (which doesnt transfer to xbone)

I remember one of the GoG guys said "Gabe Newell says that when Steam's servers shut down he'll make your games magically drm-free. What'll happen is they'll be magically gone." I agree with both of you. I wouldn't spend full price on digital content cause it's inherently more limited. And with the amount of space games are taking up these days, an offline copy is worth it