*** The Official Playstation 4 (PS4) Thread ***

digital media is the future but there are things holding it back:

pricing - digital media costs nothing apart from bandwidth costs therefore it should theoretically be a hell of a lot cheaper to buy than a physical copy which also needs to be transported from manufacturing to disruption to the retailer and then your home. the fact i can get a game for up to a quarter of the price on amazon than PSN is a joke tbh.

broadband infrastructure - everyone needs to have access to a half decent connection, im talking 40MB minimum, because file sizes can be so large, with some people stuck on say 2MB it would take them weeks to download games, movies, etc.

the main problem is the pricing, can anyone explain why a digital copy costs so much compared to one from amazon? im pretty sure digital copies could also be exempt from taxes, as you could set the servers up in a tax free haven. basically games could potentially be so much cheaper.
 
Quote from an article CVG did about the Wonky pricing

There are some justifications for the wonky pricing. Even though buying digital seems like it should be near-costless, bandwidth needs to be paid for and servers need maintaining. Almost certainly not helping is the UK's broadband network which, if it were a schoolchild, would be the last one picked for any team.

A global 2010 survey put us 27th for net speeds with an average of 3.8Mbps, compared to Japan's 7.8Mbps and South Korea's 12Mbps. The truth is our infrastructure is weak, and doing business over it is more costly.


There's also the issue of how much the creators and copyright holders take (I like cheap things, but concede it needs to be more than 'nothing'). As an example of how the latter effects prices, consider that Lego Pirates Of The Caribbean from Disney costs £13.99 on PSP, while Lego Star Wars III: The Clone Wars from LucasArts costs £31.99, despite releases just two months apart.

On top of that there's a mess of retail relationships. Each major film distributor or games publisher - especially Sony, as a platform holder - relies on actual, real shops to shift the consoles that drive software sales in the first place. Undercutting these physical outlets too heavily would be like slicing off a foot to stop yourself going bald.

Certainly, it would be a bad idea. Most frustratingly, no one will officially clarify why prices are so high - and who takes what percentage cut from the PSN price.

Sony, amazingly, claim to have no one who can speak on behalf of PSN. THQ, who experimented with PSN pricing and distribution via MX vs ATV Alive also declined to comment. At the time of writing, another prominent PSN developer is also blanking our requests for comment. Mysterious, indeed.

Yet none of these reasons really matter to the average consumer. The reality is these problems must be solved, or consumers will go elsewhere. OK, mid-sized titles such as Limbo, Joe Danger and Dead Nation - and the occasional bargain (Burnout Paradise Complete Edition at £23.99 is a steal) certainly help, but they're simply too occasional.

Valve's hugely successful PC and Mac distribution system Steam is a great example of how digital distribution can work. Things generally cost what you'd expect - new titles such as Deus Ex and Dead Island are up for £29.99, in line with or just cheaper than a boxed copy. But there are also frequent discounts and sales - real sales, ones that make you stop and think 'Oooh'.

On the front page at the time of writing, Modern Warfare 2 is £14.99 - half its regular price - while Far Cry Complete has a 75% discount. That's real temptation - not the brain shrug you do for two quid off an already stiffly-priced retro shooter on the Store.
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Highlighted in red the main issue, which to an extent i agree, Real shops dont want to be undercut, if they were people would be one time customers, and that would be for the console it self.
 
Psycho Sonny said:
the main problem is the pricing, can anyone explain why a digital copy costs so much compared to one from amazon? im pretty sure digital copies could also be exempt from taxes, as you could set the servers up in a tax free haven. basically games could potentially be so much cheaper.
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IMHO it is purely down to competition.To download on PSN or XBL, you have to buy from PSN or XBL. On PC, if you want a Steam game, you can buy from Steam, GMG, Gamefly, Amazon, Game... and so on, all of whom supply valid Steam keys. If PSN and XBL start releasing a key system to other retailers, then we might see digital download prices on console falling.
 
Psycho Sonny said:
the main problem is the pricing, can anyone explain why a digital copy costs so much compared to one from amazon? im pretty sure digital copies could also be exempt from taxes, as you could set the servers up in a tax free haven. basically games could potentially be so much cheaper.
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You still have to pay VAT no matter where the servers are held when buying digital media. Same with ebooks, you'll see that the price includes vat.
 
insane200 said:
Quote from an article CVG did about the Wonky pricing



Highlighted in red the main issue, which to an extent i agree, Real shops dont want to be undercut, if they were people would be one time customers, and that would be for the console it self.
Click to expand...

still is a non-issue.

put it this way, say sony want to sell their consoles, im pretty sure amazon, shopt to, play, asda, etc wouldn't say no because they have started selling games for cheaper.

they would basically stop selling the games and just sell the consoles.

those stores do not need to rely on game sales in order to survive, amazon probably has over 100,000 different lines, losing one line (console games) would be like them losing one hair on their head.

they would still make huge profits, just on different items like headphones, heart rate monitors, hdmi cables, etc, etc, etc.

sony dont need the retailers tbh, google sell their nexus range themselves online directly to the consumer, why can't sony, if somehow retailers did refuse to sell their consoles because they undercut their games?

personally i cannot see 1 legit reason as to why digial games arent a hell of a lot cheaper.

if asda was to stop selling ps3's tomorrow another company would take it's share of the market.
 
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BeanBandit said:
I see what you meant now, but I see don't think it will make much difference. It's corporation tax, and as such doesn't effect the end buyer.
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it effects the company selling the games so it does effect the end buyer.

more taxes = less profits or higher prices for the consumer.

by effectively having to pay less tax, it could potentially make games cheaper or sony more money.
 
Psycho Sonny said:
still is a non-issue.

put it this way, say sony want to sell their consoles, im pretty sure amazon, shopt to, play, asda, etc wouldn't say no because they have started selling games for cheaper.
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And yet they did when the PSP Go was released. Many retailers refused (or simply decided not to) stock it. Hell, the regular PSP and its games were discontinued in Sainsbury's long before the Vita arrived due to a lack of demand.

Psycho Sonny said:
they would basically stop selling the games and just sell the consoles.
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Some might, some might not. As said already, there's no money to be made on the core hardware.

Psycho Sonny said:
those stores do not need to rely on game sales in order to survive, amazon probably has over 100,000 different lines, losing one line (console games) would be like them losing one hair on their head.

they would still make huge profits, just on different items like headphones, heart rate monitors, hdmi cables, etc, etc, etc.
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Games retail is worth millions to these companies, they're not just going to shrug their shoulders and say "Oh well, we'll just have to sell more heart-rate monitors/baked beans/whatever-the-hell instead".

Psycho Sonny said:
sony dont need the retailers tbh, google sell their nexus range themselves online directly to the consumer, why can't sony, if somehow retailers did refuse to sell their consoles because they undercut their games?
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What?! Retail presence for games is as important to the retailers as it is to Sony, MS, Nintendo and all the publishers. There's a lot of mutually-beneficial relationships between those companies and retailers because without them, their product simply won't sell as well.

Comparing it to Google's Nexus range is missing the point entirely, the Nexus range was never intended to be a massively successful product. It's more like Apple suddenly withdrawing from retail space and selling only from their own website. They'd lose millions.

Psycho Sonny said:
personally i cannot see 1 legit reason as to why digial games arent a hell of a lot cheaper.

if asda was to stop selling ps3's tomorrow another company would take it's share of the market.
Click to expand...

But the market would drop as a result. Demand for consoles and games isn't an absolute figure; the more places they can be bought, the more are sold. A lot of games are bought on impulse; people go into town, look around, fancy a game, see one they like, they buy it. You remove games from those locations and fewer games will be bought.

This is going round in circles, all of this stuff has been said already.
 
Psycho Sonny said:
still is a non-issue.

put it this way, say sony want to sell their consoles, im pretty sure amazon, shopt to, play, asda, etc wouldn't say no because they have started selling games for cheaper.

they would basically stop selling the games and just sell the consoles.

those stores do not need to rely on game sales in order to survive, amazon probably has over 100,000 different lines, losing one line (console games) would be like them losing one hair on their head.

they would still make huge profits, just on different items like headphones, heart rate monitors, hdmi cables, etc, etc, etc.

sony dont need the retailers tbh, google sell their nexus range themselves online directly to the consumer, why can't sony, if somehow retailers did refuse to sell their consoles because they undercut their games?

personally i cannot see 1 legit reason as to why digial games arent a hell of a lot cheaper.

if asda was to stop selling ps3's tomorrow another company would take it's share of the market.
Click to expand...

You really do live in a dream world, a store that is there to sell games not selling games :rolleyes:
 
insane200 said:
You really do live in a dream world, a store that is there to sell games not selling games :rolleyes:
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which shop would that be?

game? i havent shopped there for years because it is ridiculously overpriced, so much so it's probably better buying from the PSN store.

amazon and asda on the other hand, if they stopped selling games, i dont think they are going to cry about it tbh, they have so many other lines to make their billions off of.
 
God bless the internet. Been having problems with my ps3 for months where it would just turn off randomly then you would have to pull the plug out and put it back in so in otherwords it was useless for playing games but just tryed a fix on youtube by opening up the power supply and turning the voltage down and it seems to have fixed it.
Thought id have to wait till the ps4 to play games like gta5 ect so hopefully it keeps working lol.
 
Psycho Sonny said:
which shop would that be?

game? i havent shopped there for years because it is ridiculously overpriced, so much so it's probably better buying from the PSN store.

amazon and asda on the other hand, if they stopped selling games, i dont think they are going to cry about it tbh, they have so many other lines to make their billions off of.
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Their prices are in guidelines of the RRP, people see to forget that Highstreet shops have to pay high street rates to rent the properties which is not cheap.

For companies like Amazon and Asda its just a side line, they make a few quid for doing nothing which is easy, and why they do it, once they finish pushing other places out of towns, they will have no one to compete with and the prices will no doubt be back to normal.
 
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