Seriously?

I don't think the age old "LIVE prices are not to undercut retailers" argument holds any water. I pre ordered The Witcher 3 on LIVE as it was cheaper than the likes of Amazon, ShopTo etc here in the UK. There's absolutely nothing to back that theory up.
I do think the prices are getting better. a few years ago it wasn't uncommon to have bargain basement games that would retail in shops for £5, still at £40 on LIVE. That's another reason why I think the LIVE v Retailer argument is redundant. LIVE prices
weren't even close to the prices retailers were selling them at. I mean, it would have made sense if games were selling at a slightly more competitive price, they weren't.

Last gen wasn't even really geared towards digital until the latter couple or so years on the 360, even then, it was still rare to see people sating they preferred digital over physical. I recently bought the Imperial edition of ESO for £24 on a EU store
and that version retails at £50-£60 everywhere else.

 

I had to go back and find an old response I had for this,

At Major Nelson's Live podcast at Pax East he got a question like this. I just went back and double checked on what his answer was. He said when it comes to retail some of it has to do with getting customers in the door and buying stuff. Stores will lower
the price of something and then everyone else will do it to keep up.Sales are good at doing that. In the digital space that doesn't exist.

I'm sure that's part of it. But as the popularity of digital increases I bet we'll see the prices get lower quicker.

 

I went to the convenience store and milk was more expensive than at the grocery store, seriously?

 

^ perfect example of ignorance ,right there people. Completely missed the OP's point which was probably from not reading the entire post. Best keep quiet if I were you.

 

Can't speak for the US, but here in the UK there is now competition in the digital market. CDKeys regularly sell digital games at the same price you expect retail versions to sell for. Often cheaper too. They currently have 12 months live selling for under
£20 or at least they did for the best part of last week. The likes of Amazon, GAME etc sell them for £35-£40.

 

"I went to the convenience store and milk was more expensive than at the grocery store, seriously?"

Yeah, I know a guy who owns one of those stores. They would love to sell to you at the grocery store price but they do not have the volume to be able to do that. Except when their milk is aging and they need to move it at cost. Then it is about the same.
Even local grocery stores cannot compete with Wal-Mart due to bulk. Local IGA $3.10 a gallon. Wal-Mart $1.89. <--Wal-Mart can do this due to size.

Now, you might think that with digital. But that is really not the case. That is why they said digital was better for both the consumer and publishers/devs when talking up the digital future. But that will not happen. No reason for it. Will we see price
drops? Sure. But it will take much longer. And no, they are not competing with retail when retail, all mainstream for sure, have been $20-$25 new while digital is still $60 and occasionally $50. And the only way you will ever see digital as low as retail
lows of about $20 will be the rare sale at that point. Cutting out materials and all the middlemen will just increase profits (and it does). But then games do cost more and more to make so maybe, at least for smaller devs, this is a needed thing.

I will also say that digital and physical is not competing as much as some think right now. Many just do not have the network to handle the whole game download and need the disc. Some like to share the disc with family and friends. I buy disc a lot due
to having 3 older sons that want to play. Only time I go digital is when it is a game we will play online together and the home console feature helps with that and allows more to play together.

 

GU, you could buy digitally and as long as you have 2 or more consoles, you're basically getting a BOGO deal (buy 1 get 1). Depending on your family's circumstances, that's actually a steal. Assuming someone falls into this category, every digital game they
look at on XBL should be looked at as if it were 50% off, since you're paying $60 for 2 of the same game.

 

digital copies are always "new" and considered one and done

physical copies at stores are already paid for when the outlet bought them.

Physical copies "might" me traded in eventually to same store where it can be resold for a secondary profit.

Retailers will sell physical copies for this reason at a below cost price.

When you walk into "gamestop" you might buy a mic, might buy 2 games, might by a magazine, maybe your friend will buy a game as he is there with you, with digital, you buy one thing...

 

No, retailers will sell cheaper because that shelf space the games are sitting on is more valuable to retailers than an old game sitting there collecting dust. Digital games take up no shelf space, thus there's no need to shift excess units to make space
for newer games.

Nothing whatsoever to do with retailers paying up front for the game. If that were the case, the likes of GAME wouldn't have ridiculously high entry points on their new games. Even when you consider some of that profit has to get spent on rent, wages,
running costs, some of those games are just outright overpriced compared to other brick and mortar high street retailers.

 

I thought it was common knowledge that digital copies are always more expensive?... Take Fallout 4, MS offers you a digital preorder for £55 i think, orrrrr you can head to amazon and get a physical copy at your door, day of release, for £42.

 

Raging -- Sleeping Dogs was just on sale a few weeks ago for $15. =/ Sucks you missed it.

 

Digital copies on the console are more expensive for one simple reason - no competition.

The PC has been all digital for years and is by far the cheapest platform to game on. You can't buy physical versions of 99 percent of the games even if you wanted to. The developers are providing activation keys to dozens of different online retailers and
the competition drives down prices.

When the game's sales slump developers sell the keys for even less which in turn allows the distributors drop the price even more. It's why you see games get discounted 75% in less than 6 months on many occasions.

The UK has several stores that sell keys but only for a small part of the gaming library. Microsoft's knows that a percentage of the Xbox owners will pay for the convenience of digital and when they hold a monopoly on pricing they'll get their asking price.

It's obvious that Microsoft is the problem in most cases not the developers. Every cross platform indie title can be picked up significantly cheaper on the PC so the developers are willing to take less for the game but MS doesn't want to drop the profit
margin......apparently even if lowering the price would generate more sales.

 

@Randver -- Don't they have competition in the form of physical discs vs. the games on demand portion? I don't play PC all that much, but as you allude to, the physical portion of PC gaming is almost dead. Most people buy their games from Steam/Origin,
so the competition within PC gaming is one digital retailer vs. a different one.

I mean, I get what you are saying, especially as it relates to the topic posted in this thread.

 

I've never bought a physical copy of a PC game, but have easy 100+ random titles grabbed from Steam sales haha

 

@Egg

Don't they have competition in the form of physical discs vs. the games on demand portion?

Yes, but this is the part I don't have an answer to why it isn't having an impact.

Are enough people paying the higher prices for digital to make it worthwhile to not lower prices? Is Microsoft's cut of the digital distribution of games so small compared to the companies other income that it's not worth the effort to be competitive? Who
knows.......