Why are digital games...

[ResonanceSD]

Priced at the same levels as physical games? Surely all the costs involved with distribution are lower as there isn't any physical media to be shipped.

Note: this isn't an issue of digital game pricing issues per region. I'm Australian, so I automatically win that contest.

 

[Loop Stricken]

Because people will still pay that amount, presumably because they believe the trade-off of physical packaging is worth the convenience of just downloading it.

 

[Cavan]

They're not allowed to undercut the physical retailers for new games because those retailers would throw up a stink and refuse to stock it at all, and the dev/publisher would lose sales.

People are also just used to paying x price for a new game, when you buy a game you don't really think about factoring in how much of your money is translated into the actual disc's value or the space it took up in transport or in a store or these other costs.

 

[Corven]

An added factor is that digital games go on sale much more frequently than their store bought counterparts, so for digital distribution users it is usually just a waiting game till the thing you want is on sale.

 

[evilneko]

Also, the boxing and shipping and all that is a minuscule expense, compared to everything else that goes into a game.

 

[Zouriz]

Server costs?

 

[dimensional]

An added factor is that digital games go on sale much more frequently than their store bought counterparts, so for digital distribution users it is usually just a waiting game till the thing you want is on sale.

Im not so sure they do, on PC I would say that it is possible but lots of online stores have games on sale almost all the time the selection just rotates while games on PSN or XBOXLive almost never go on sale and when they do the price is almost always far in excess of what you would pay at a store for the same game.

I am not sure why they price digital download games almost the same (and in some cases more) than their boxed counterparts seems a bit stupid really most of the time I can go to the shop buy the game (console game) cheaper than I could by downloading it get back and even possibly complete it if its quite short all before my digital game downloaded.

I think what it is they want as much money as possible and dont want to start a precedent of lower prices for digital especially if they get a bigger slice of the money through digital sales (which I am unsure if they do) and if they dont then they obviously arent going to charge less.

 

[Corven]

An added factor is that digital games go on sale much more frequently than their store bought counterparts, so for digital distribution users it is usually just a waiting game till the thing you want is on sale.

Im not so sure they do, on PC I would say that it is possible but lots of online stores have games on sale almost all the time the selection just rotates while games on PSN or XBOXLive almost never go on sale and when they do the price is almost always far in excess of what you would pay at a store for the same game.

I am not sure why they price digital download games almost the same (and in some cases more) than their boxed counterparts seems a bit stupid really most of the time I can go to the shop buy the game (console game) cheaper than I could by downloading it get back and even possibly complete it if its quite short all before my digital game downloaded.

I think what it is they want as much money as possible and dont want to start a precedent of lower prices for digital especially if they get a bigger slice of the money through digital sales (which I am unsure if they do) and if they dont then they obviously arent going to charge less.

My comment was pretty much pointed at pc digital distributors, xbla and psn games are pretty much owned by microsoft and sony, they don't need to put things on sale because you can only get their games through their service, unlike on the pc where you have several digital distribution services all competing for the consumers money.

 

[ResonanceSD]

An added factor is that digital games go on sale much more frequently than their store bought counterparts, so for digital distribution users it is usually just a waiting game till the thing you want is on sale.

Im not so sure they do, on PC I would say that it is possible but lots of online stores have games on sale almost all the time the selection just rotates while games on PSN or XBOXLive almost never go on sale and when they do the price is almost always far in excess of what you would pay at a store for the same game.

I am not sure why they price digital download games almost the same (and in some cases more) than their boxed counterparts seems a bit stupid really most of the time I can go to the shop buy the game (console game) cheaper than I could by downloading it get back and even possibly complete it if its quite short all before my digital game downloaded.

I think what it is they want as much money as possible and dont want to start a precedent of lower prices for digital especially if they get a bigger slice of the money through digital sales (which I am unsure if they do) and if they dont then they obviously arent going to charge less.

My comment was pretty much pointed at pc digital distributors, xbla and psn games are pretty much owned by microsoft and sony, they don't need to put things on sale because you can only get their games through their service, unlike on the pc where you have several digital distribution services all competing for the consumers money.

There isn't that much competition between dd companies. Steam is king. There should be more competition between game publishers. I now get my games from an importer which gets me cheaper prices than steam does + a box -_-.

 

[Zhukov]

Uh.. what?

I'm from Australia too, and the downloadable prices (at least on Steam) are often significantly less that what I see in stores.

They also go down faster.

 

[Corven]

There isn't that much competition between dd companies. Steam is king. There should be more competition between game publishers. I now get my games from an importer which gets me cheaper prices than steam does + a box -_-.

Steam, gog.com, gamersgate.com, d2d(gamefly direct download), desura, impulse, origin, greenmangaming.com, getgamesgo.com, onlive(debatable), amazon direct download.

There's plenty of competition on pc, you just have to look and some of them are arguably better than steam since they allow you to download your game without drm masked as a download client.

 

[ResonanceSD]

There isn't that much competition between dd companies. Steam is king. There should be more competition between game publishers. I now get my games from an importer which gets me cheaper prices than steam does + a box -_-.

Steam, gog.com, gamersgate.com, d2d(gamefly direct download), desura, impulse, origin, greenmangaming.com, getgamesgo.com, onlive(debatable), amazon direct download.

There's plenty of competition on pc, you just have to look and some of them are arguably better than steam since they allow you to download your game without drm masked as a download client.

Yes, but as steam is also a social hub, im fine with its drm capacity.

Uh.. what?

I'm from Australia too, and the downloadable prices (at least on Steam) are often significantly less that what I see in stores.

They also go down faster.

I just saw MW3 in a JB hi fi for 99.

I'll wait till you check the price on steam.

 

[paislyabmj]

retailers wont stock games that are cheaper digitally and/or the games of the company who owns the digital distribution service unless the game is ridiculously crucial in a eventually futile attempt to keep the soon to be redundant retail space going.it wont last forever as we will one day go fully digital but it sucks while its happening.every game bought hard increases the market dominance of retailers and prolongs this farce.

 

[Sack of Cheese]

Priced at the same levels as physical games? Surely all the costs involved with distribution are lower as there isn't any physical media to be shipped.

In my opinion, it's simply because they can. There's no rule saying you have to lower the right just because you distribute it via the internet.

 

[endtherapture]

Skyrim is still at like £35 on Steam.

I got it off Amazon for £20 a month after release.

 

[Hattingston]

From a PR perspective?
You can access it without the disc, and you can download it from anywhere, and it's more convenient then finding a disc when you want to install.
From a more reasonable perspective?
The price of digital games has already been standardized, so customers are used to it. Basically, because they can do it largely unchallenged because of grandfathering.

 

[Yopaz]

Because there are laws in order to make sure no-one gets an unfair advantage. A few years back Intel was actually sued for giving customers too much discount on CPUs causing AMD to lose a lot of money because they couldn't keep up.

MicroSoft has had a few similar lawsuits over such matters too. Yes, even though the profit margin is higher with digital distribution they have to follow certain guidelines for pricing. That means they have to keep their prices around the same level as physical retailers or get their ass sued.

 

[ThePenguinKnight]

There's not much I can say that others haven't already.

I've found a few games on PSN that cost as much as a new copy and whenever I go over them I can't help but wonder why they don't try to at least rival used prices. I rather pay less cash for the physical product, specially as a collector.