Digital price's compared to hard copies

Guyver

Guyver

Guyver

Associate
Joined
2 May 2012
Posts
181
hi all.

i have a question for you all to see what you think.

we all know Pc's are the master race :P this seems to be in game pricing as well. most of the time i can get a game on steam or from EA digitally cheaper then going to the shop and buying a boxed version which makes sense. no boxing needed, delivery ect so cheaper to make.

BUT iv noticed console's it seems to be the other way round ( at least on the PS4 ) its cheaper to get games from the stores ( if you can find any still in existence lol ) then online. Playstation store prices are ridiculous compared to store prices.

what do you guys find? not had an Xbox for a while so not sure how their digital prices are but console seems to be behind in this respect.
 
It's not that they're 'behind', it's that they're two different markets. Console manufacturers rely on physical retail to sell games, hardware and accessories and for increased market presence and advertising. Any attempt to undercut retail prices via cheap downloads would alienate those retail partners.

Things are progressing somewhat - promotions on the Xbox and PS game stores are better than they were a few years ago - but you're not going to be downloading a new release for £30 whilst it's £40 in Asda and Tesco.
 
thats ok but digital should be cheaper as its cheaper to make. plus £55-£60 in PSN wen its £45-£50 in somewhere like Game is a little wrong in my book. i cant see digital making any money that way.

i get all my games digitally on my pc these days but never on PS4 as costs far too much.
 
Guyver said:
thats ok but digital should be cheaper as its cheaper to make. plus £55-£60 in PSN wen its £45-£50 in somewhere like Game is a little wrong in my book. i cant see digital making any money that way.

i get all my games digitally on my pc these days but never on PS4 as costs far too much.
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On the other hand, you could say that the premium for digital downloads is made up for because you have the convenience of not having to go to the store to buy it.
 
TheVoice said:
It's not that they're 'behind', it's that they're two different markets. Console manufacturers rely on physical retail to sell games, hardware and accessories and for increased market presence and advertising. Any attempt to undercut retail prices via cheap downloads would alienate those retail partners.

Things are progressing somewhat - promotions on the Xbox and PS game stores are better than they were a few years ago - but you're not going to be downloading a new release for £30 whilst it's £40 in Asda and Tesco.
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This sums it up perfectly.
 
Digital should be half the price as you cannot resell or trade them like why would I pay £59-99 for fifa 14 when i can get a second hand copy for £25 and still get £10-£15 of that back with a trade in ? even 1 week out from fifa 15.I predict more and more games not offering an install option to hard drive they want you to be annoyed by the disc noise and buy the digital copy.
 
C64 said:
Digital should be half the price as you cannot resell or trade them like why would I pay £59-99 for fifa 14 when i can get a second hand copy for £25 and still get £10-£15 of that back with a trade in ? even 1 week out from fifa 15.I predict more and more games not offering an install option to hard drive they want you to be annoyed by the disc noise and buy the digital copy.
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all games install to the hard drive as standard on PS4, no need to install it, it does it automatically.
 
Guyver said:
thats ok but digital should be cheaper as its cheaper to make.
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Doesn't matter; the disc, case and booklet account for very little in the actual cost of a game you buy and if anything, the fact that it's a physical product is actually one of the key reasons that you get competition between retailers and their willingness to discount games (or anything else) in order to get them sold.
 
They don't want digital to give us cheaper games, they want it to strip us of consumer rights that comes with the purchase of physical products.

Digital is more expensive because they can dictate price rather than the competitive market.
 
Actually the price online and the price in game are probably closer than you'd think. Game is ridiculously expensive. It's the online etailers that kill it.

Although sometimes the pricing can't be too bad on some of the. On the PS store vita versions of Borderlands 2 and God Of War collection are only 20 quid, they are more expensive than that in shops.
 
there was a documentary on amazon and I never knew this but the company is set up not to make a profit, it does make some but they are very small.

all the money is re-invested into making amazon bigger, basically creating more warehouses, more jobs, more product lines, more services.

they actually sell items at a loss in order to kill other retailers off. therefore increasing their own revenue which then gets re-invested and the cycle continues.

their system is set up to be a killer shark which grows bigger and bigger, first it was feeding off the small fish, now it's killing bigger and bigger fish everyday.

it's marketplace one day could kill ebay, in fact it's fulfilled by amazon service is a lot better than selling on ebay if your a wholesaler. if you want to sell something second hand ebay is still better but amazon is getting better and better everyday.


one example they used was they had a best selling book which cost £5.99 on their site. a local independent shop said that the RRP was £14.99 and that they had to buy it in for £8.99 (£3 more than what amazon sell it for) and sell it for a minimum of £11.99 to make it worth their while.

amazon obviously was stealing sales from thousands of book stores and that is basically why now borders are dead and waterstones are struggling, and thousands of independent stores are dead.

how do you compete with a company that has set itself up not to make a profit?

basically the losses they make on these products are recouped by all their other sales. they gain new customers every day who are buying more and more, making them more powerful.

not only do they sell products themselves but they allow other people to sell through them making even more competition. the show was well worth a watch. basically now we are reaping low prices but once amazon kill off everybody what do you think will happen when they have zero competition?

even if a competitor opens up they will sell their products at a loss in order to kill them off to reap future rewards.

it's certainly going to be interesting in 10-20 years time to see how many retailers have been killed off and how many remain.

supermarkets have done this in the past too but not the the extent of amazon, it's grown from a book store, to having it's own devices such as kindle, it's own services like streaming movies/tv shows and buying digital music, to creating it's own market place. not to mention they stock pretty much anything now when it used to be books only.

they have also moved with the time and now do digital books, it's constantly evolving. the kindle was likened to the ipod and how digital music killed cd, digital books are the future and soon paperback will be harder to get and much more expensive.
 
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Interesting post Sonny.

For what it's worth I buy most of my games on my USA psn account these days as new releases are nearly always £35. The only ones I don't buy like that are games that'll hold their trade in value.
 
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Meths said:
Interesting post Sonny.

For what it's worth I buy most of my games on my USA psn account these days as he w releases are nearly always £35. The only ones I don't buy like that are games that'll hold their trade in value.
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it's well worth a match if you can find it on demand, it was one of the freeview channels i'm sure.

with the book example how can a retailer who's cost price is £8.99 compete with an online retailer selling it for £5.99?

they don't do this with every product obviously but that one product can push hundreds of new customers to the site that become repeat customers.

that's hundreds of lost sales which then means those small retailers die due to not turning a profit and then even more people start buying from amazon because there is no competition.

they likened the effect to a flywheel which grows larger and larger everyday but also gains more momentum everyday spinning faster.

it's amazing to see someone turn a business which they started from home and using their garage as a store room into a business worth billions within a couple of decades.

it also went into detail about the philosophy of amazon and it's employees and how they are challenged to improve the business every day.

it's not available any more but it may be on youtube/torrent the official link is below

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b041zc5w
 
TheVoice said:
It's not that they're 'behind', it's that they're two different markets. Console manufacturers rely on physical retail to sell games, hardware and accessories and for increased market presence and advertising. Any attempt to undercut retail prices via cheap downloads would alienate those retail partners.

Things are progressing somewhat - promotions on the Xbox and PS game stores are better than they were a few years ago - but you're not going to be downloading a new release for £30 whilst it's £40 in Asda and Tesco.
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This, pretty much.

A few years ago, Steam by and large sold for similar to physical prices, if not more than it. The PC market is just ahead of the console market in this regard, and the fact that no one party has it locked down also makes a difference. If Steam is expensive, you can go to GOG, for instance on the PC, whereas on the Xbox or Playstation you're much more tied in.
 
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