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Why does digital media cost the same or more than physcial media?

Moogle11

Banned
It is one of the ways they’re scratching out some extra profits at a time when game development costs are soaring as gamers expect long games with top notch production values and 4k resolution (and ideally 60 FPS) while game prices have been stuck at $60. Made worse, in terms of their bottom lines, is that many gamers bargain shop and many games thus hit the bargain bin quickly, not to mention the used game marker and piracy that has people playing their games with no money going to them.

I don’t have sympathy for corporations, but I get the issue of rising costs and stagnant prices and that it leads to things like digital games costing the same, MTs etc. as you get what you pay for. If gamers aren’t willing to pay more than $60 as development costs soar they’re going to find other ways to get profits where they want them that many gamers will not like.
 

Despera

Banned
I bet some people foolishly think it's some sort of price to pay for the convenience.

If physical media disappeared right this instant, games would still be $60 on digital storefronts, and they'd stay $60 for years, because they don't take up finite physical space that drives retailers into dropping prices themselves. There are games that are three or more years old still at $60 on Steam, PSN, and XBL, only dropping during the occasional sale, sometimes not even by much.
Last game I bought physically was PES 2020. After a couple or so months it was still at $60 for the digital version of the full game. Got it from a local shop for half the price + additional player cards and gifts they had inside.

Other store games could stay years at the same price, something that can never happen in retail.
 

Aidah

Member
One, they still care about not upsetting retailers. At least for now. Although I doubt they'd drop prices if retail were to suddenly disappear.

Two, they'd rather keep that money than pass it on to you. Why do you think they're always so happy about the digital ratio going up, because the margins are higher and you can't resell.
 
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ethomaz

Banned
Because they don’t want to say “look we don’t support retail so buy digital that is cheaper”.

Retail still is over 50% of the sales.
 
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Digital doesn't mean it's free to make.
When you pay for psn or xbox live, you are paying for the servers that host your multiplayer sessions, not the ones that have the games to download. Storing a game in a server means that such game needs a place to be kept, a server that has to be consuming electricity to make the game available, a storefront so you can access that game, paying a domain so that storefront can be accessed via internet, paying internet bills, personnel salary, etc.

So, what you save by not printing game cases, game discs, and shipping you are dumping it in the store's cut (which represents what I wrote above).

That and also there's a relation between price and value. The value seen by customers on a videogame is comparable to $60. That's what they're willing to pay for a videogame, be it in physical form or digital, it doesn't matter.
 
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Saber

Gold Member
I frankly dunno.

All I know is at the time I pick Monster Hunter World the physical game price was R$129,00(about 24 dolars), while the digital version was R$ 299(56 dolars). The game was already launched years ago.

I find this all this pretty stupid.
 
I guess it depends on timing and where (& what) you play. But I don't rush to play things new, and I play primarily on PC. So for me, I get games for peanuts with all the bundles, sales and giveaways. I mean seriously, for me, digital is dirt cheap.

If we're talking console exclusives, it's a bit different.
 
1. Money. Publishers like money.
2. They can’t undercut retailers, they still sell tons at retail.
3. Convenience. We will pay more for convenience. That’s why a gallon of milk is $1.50 at a grocery story and $3.50 at a convenience store.
 

diffusionx

Gold Member
Same reason why the price didn’t drop when they got rid of manuals. The price isn’t set by the cost of goods but market demand. Nobody (well, very few) people put value into the box, cover art, and DVD, they value the actual game, which is of course the same both physical and digital.

Digital catalogs seem to make games cheaper in the long run. You can pretty much guarantee any new release to be 20$ in a PSN flash sale in less than a year from release.

That’s because publishers can price their game to the demand curve better, =as opposed to before where they shipped a bunch of games to a retailer and hoped it sold, and if it didn’t, the retailer would eventually throw it in a bargain bin. Now it’s super easy to drop the price on Steam or PSN and get sales from people who were not interested at MSRP.
 

Gabbelgak

Member
I would in all honesty pay more for digital than I do for physical. The convenience of being able to download from a digital library on a whim versus having to store disks is worth worth it to me. Especially considering many of the physical games these days are nothing more than a husk to ensure you have it and then you still download some massive update anyway.
 

Fbh

Member
Initially to keep retailers happy, but by now consumers have accepted and embraced these prices so why charge less.

I have to say though, on PC where most storefronts have embraced regional pricing, games have become really cheap around here, to the point it's one of the main reasons I'm considering going full PC next gen because. If you buy a lot of games it has really gotten to the point where the cheaper games end up paying for the more expensive hardware. Like Cyberpunk is up to preorder for $34 on GOG.
 

Kusarigama

Member
Because if the digital version of the game is priced lower than the physical disc version then consumers will pick cheaper option which will have impact on retailers who help in selling the consoles. To avoid this clash against the interests of retailers, platform holders priced the digita versions same as the physical versions.

This brings an interesting question, since Stadia is all digital platform with no relation to retailers why is it that the games on Stadia are priced same as on other platforms. Answer us Stadia.
 

Bryank75

Banned
Because it's a stepping stone...they want to move to digital and then move to license rental and take ownership away from you while carging the same as always. At the end you will own nothing but pay more, cause they can charge for license updates and other things.
 
I presume discounts are at discreation of retailers. They must be getting margin big enough so they can price cut to increase liquidity.

Digital, you are buying from company themselves. They normally never want to undervalue their stuff outside of sales. So you pay full price.

I could be wrong about retailers margins cause on consoles themselves they dont get any margin apparently.
 

Bakkus

Member
I have no problem with Digital games being full price at launch.

But games like Breath of The Wild being sold for £60 three years after they released is just nuts.

Sony and MS seem to be a bit better with this. But Nintendo just refuse to lower the price of old games.
If they still sell well, why should they drop the price?
 

lpking2005

Neo Member
8 understand the argument for keeping retail alive but I don't understand why we can not have parity with the retail price.

In the UK, we have to pay between £10 - £15 more!

I will never switch to fully digital until they can find a way to make the prices better.
 

Bojanglez

The Amiga Brotherhood
8 understand the argument for keeping retail alive but I don't understand why we can not have parity with the retail price.

In the UK, we have to pay between £10 - £15 more!

I will never switch to fully digital until they can find a way to make the prices better.

The official digital store price is the proper retail price (i.e. RRP). The physical stores are the ones that break the parity, presumably taking a hit (less profit margin) themselves. The official digital stores have to sell at the RRP for launch just to maintain appearances and keep publishers happy, however often they are quick to discount.

Ultimately the digital stores (on console at least) have a near monopoly on digital copies of their goods, that said, Nintendo (and to some extent Xbox) sell digital copies via other retailers and in this case they are often cheaper or have parity than with the physical copies (i.e. on Nintendo games on Shopto.net).

For PSN it is often easy to buy PSN credit for 15-20% less than the £ value if you shop around, this makes buying day 1 digital more palatable. I just stockpile credit when it is cheap and use this when needed.

I hope digital sales become a battleground more in the next generation and we might get more retail digital codes undercutting the official online prices. Also offering other benefits (maybe digital trading schemes) could help adoption.
 

mcjmetroid

Member
they don't want to undercut retailers and render them even more obsolete than they already are perhaps?
This is pretty much it.

It's more about pissing off retailers more than anything else.

You don't want a Sega Saturn incident where retailers refuse to stock your console because of how badly they've been treated.
 
They tend to drop in price not long after launch or go on deep sales later in life. Then again it took Nintendo do catch on and even then they still stand behind the fact that their first party games don't go on sale often and when they do it's not by much.

Logistically I think they can but don't think they want to.
 
Corporations are easy scapgoats, but whenever that issue's brought up, I always think to myself just how surprised we'd all be if we actually put some thinking into the things we consume and realize that the market's dictated by people a whole lot more than everyone's led to believe.

If all of a sudden, tomorrow, people stopped preordering digital versions of products and started to always wait for them to go on sale, the culture would shift faster than one might think. Since that's obviously never going to happen, they'd be stupid not to do what they're currently doing.
 

sn0man

Member
Because the switch to digital was never about saving the customer money or giving them more choice. The switch to digital has always been about increasing profit and exerting more control over the market of video games.

Marketing tells us that lower prices and more choice are digital but the facts show that isn’t always the case.
 

D.Final

Banned
Because the productions for a software cost is extremely expensive.
Especially for a AAA game today
 

DunDunDunpachi

Patient MembeR
Publisher greed. They blame the retailers but to be honest when did that stop them from adding in DLC / online mode codes to screw the used market, selling all games digital Day One, making streaming / subscription services to cut out the retailer entirely, funneling money through V-bucks and XBL points which make almost $0.00 for a retailer, etc?
 

lock2k

Banned
Because people are idiots.

At least it still costs 60 dollars in the U.S., no matter the generation.

In Brazil we have another level of idiocy. When the generation switched, the games went from being R$ 199 to R$ 249 and people accepted it because "Its a new generation so it HAS to be more expensive". It became the norm without people questioning.

Guess what? The new normal is going to be R$ 300 plus (even the digital, without DLC) and morons will EAT IT UP. With DLC some games will cost more than R$ 400. Again, idiots will accept it. I hate people.
 
I think complaining about the price of stuff has to stop. If it sells what the seller expects, it either has the right price or it could be higher.
 
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