Online Digital Pricing Question.

Hey,

Im just a bit curious on the pricing, I know the norm now for standard edition of games are $80 both retail and online but i have an interesting (well interesting for me) question.

I will use the new Battlefield 1 that will be released later this year. On the xbox store (https://store.xbox.com/en-CA/Xbox-One/Bundle/Battlefield-1-Standard-Edition/284a4b52-d219-403c-bc59-23b3ade77dd2) it
comes up as $80 for the standard edition as expected, but i recently came across amazon and it seems like theyre offering the same edition but cheaper (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B01F80SXRI/812463-20/)

Can anyone clear this out for me?

Thanks.

:)

 

Digital Pricing

There's no way that spending an hour or so installing a game from a disc takes longer than downloading it on Australian internet providers, especially when you factor in that some of these games are well over 40GB plus updates.

 

Digital Pricing

Welcome to gaming in Australia. More often than not, the games are actually cheaper on a disc.

They're also much faster to get up and running because you don't need to download the entire game, just install from the disc and download any updates. The digital versions are "supposedly" more convenient because you can buy them from home and start playing
without ever leaving the house, but internet speeds in Australia mean that you could go out, buy the game and have it fully installed and playable in half the time it would take to download a digital version.

 

store.xbox.com/.../284a4b52-d219-403c-bc59-23b3ade77dd2

Sorry, the link didnt work in the original post.

 

I'm not sure that the Amazon link is helpful. It brought me to a deluxe version of the game which shows as over $200. That's not what you meant.

Um, I think the Canadian market is less involved in sales and competition. For example, IGN or GameSpot talks about the juste-released DOOM game having discounts at various retailers, including Amazon. But on inspection, the link takes you to the American
Amazon page. Indeed there is a substantial discount but that's before currency conversion and added fees for importing the title. In the end it is probably not worth the effort. And you have to then resign yourself to ensuring you only look at Amazon.ca from
now on. And then sighing and thinking that nope, those things aren't for us and we're not going to get as many breaks.

As for Battlefield 1, that is still 6 months away. My advice is to not pre-order and wait to see what our currency value does in the meantime. Usually a forecasted price is the locked price, but you never know.

 

For shopping tips, I recommend the following:

• Keep an eye on amazon.ca, ebgames.ca, bestbuy.ca, and the Xbox store (download the smart glass app for your smartphone, it is a quick way in to the store)
  
• Discounts often transcend multiple outlets, but not all of them at the same time
  
• There are more good deals to enjoy if you're willing to buy physical disc or digital download (ie. Don't limit yourself to one format)
  
• EBGames doesn't discount, really, by their governing principles
• Flash sales are becoming more common, having one day or weekend sales
• Multiplayer-only games drop in value rapidly because other players lose interest
  
• Single-player games do not change over time, unlike the multiplayer ones, so why buy early? Single-player games drop in price, sometimes sooner, sometimes later, but by year 2 (or, one year after launch) there's publisher motivation to sell more copies
  
• Don't believe anyone's hype. Not even the so-callled Game Journalists. Get a game demo, if you can. Watch other people play. Even then, watching other people playing and playing it yourself are two completely different experiences. You still don't know
  how well it feels and plays until you're at the controller
• Be wary of cheap games asking for full price. Their nonsense will be exposed after launch by other players. Then their retail price will drop. This is more often observed with Japanese games, localized to Western markets. Because most of those developers
  do not have the AAA-game budgets but their Western publishers think that you're gullible enough to see a AAA-game price and assume that the game actually has a AAA-game level of quality and content. Then you take it home and find that it has previous-generation
  visuals and the gameplay is padded out with meaningless repetition... and you got hosed!
  
• Game publishers (not the developers) are not your friends. They are preying on your ignorance and naïveté to extract the most money that they can