The PBEM AAR that has just started using Ageod’s American Civil War game has me considering picking it up. It’s been out for a year. But then I started looking around at my options and realized something.
GameStop has a physical copy for $30 in some local stores. Same with Best Buy, at the same price. Target will send me a physical copy for the same price via their website and Amazon has the same offer (as well as used options for cheaper.) Even CDV, the official publisher, will mail me a physical copy for that price.
But Matrix games wants $50 for a digital only download. As does GamersGate.
Am I missing something? Because the developer isn’t getting much at all if I go the physical copy route, but I have zero incentive to pay more for less even if it does benefit them more. Something about this sales approach suggests insanity.
What about not having to go to the damned store (or wait for delivery, if that’s your thing)? I will never buy a game in a store again if it’s possible to buy it online instead. Price isn’t really a factor.
That’s great, but for a lot of us $20 is enough to be a factor. Especially with gas at $2 a gallon and retail stores not too far out of the way.
Don’t get me wrong, I love digital delivery in general. I just think that they have to at the very least be price competitive with brick and mortar. This game isn’t and it makes zero sense because it benefits no one. Ageod get’s less money from me buying the cheaper physical copy then they do even if the digital price was the same. Leaving the digital price higher is just stupid.
Matrix can leave it at that much online because eventually the physical copies will run out, anyone who goes there is by definition hardcore enough to pay a premium, and there’s probably some publisher agreements or something.
I don’t think he’s asking that they sell it online for less. He just wants parity. But, of course, retailers would probably object to price parity, too.
That’s one of the reasons I hardly pick up anything from any dd provider.
I’m actually one of the people that think games I get as download only should be cheaper - considerably cheaper - than the same title at retail.
I get no CD or DVD, I get no manual, I get no box and the dd provider has to provide neither of those to me (as in pay for their production, storage and transport). There’s still no dd provider that allows resales, so I’m forsaking that option as well.
The dd option can have some positive sides - take Steam for an example, you have every game on your account available in one central place, and you need not to worry about patching your game with the latest updates, it’s pretty convenient for oft-patched games, I guess.
Steam also does sales and stuff pretty frequently, so it’s definately one of the better or even the best service out there.
But those that think they can stick the price for a title at $50 and leave it there forever, even when you can get a physical copy for $4.99 with free shipping, those providers can send me $50 for a digital copy of a “No Sale” poster in A3…
The main issue for the problem you’re describing would seem to be lack of competition online. That, and they’re probably not paying enough attention to their virtual inventory.
I’ll go ahead and ask for it. If I’m paying 20-50 dollars a month to subsidize the distribution of your software, buying my own dvds to burn back up copies , and either printing relevant manual bits or using my electricity to read them on my monitor, I want the digital version to be cheaper than the physical copy.
And I don’t mean doing it by raising the price of the physical version by 10 bucks just because it makes it look cheaper.
I agree that downloads should be cheaper, but I grudgingly understand why they aren’t, at least right now. However, it is a slap in the face to charge more for downloads then what I can get the title in a store or from any number of websites for. And it is also shooting themselves (the developers) in the foot for reasons already mentioned. The title in question is less than 500mb in total size, so you can’t even make a bandwith argument here.
Retail discounts are often about clearing shelf space as much as anything else. Ironically, digital distribution alleviates concerns about shelf space in the price equation. For a store at a certain point they will have sold enough units of a certain product at the original price point to cover their entire wholesale order, so after that, even if they sell each remaining box at less than their per unit wholesale price, it’s all profit.
So far I only buy digital if it’s the equivalent of a real bargain and I can’t see myself changing that in the near future.
I’d take a shipped boxed copy to me any day over a digital exe with some DRM attached that might or might not get patched out in a few years.
In the current financial climate I can’t imagine a company that would go tits up taking care much about these patches regardless of what they said in the past unless they have them already finished sitting on some file server (cough Valve cough). Not implying that Valve is in financial trouble it’s just an example of a company that stated this in the past quite vocally.
I don’t care why retail discounts. I’m aware enough to know what I’m putting into the equation and I don’t see that reflected in the price relative to the boxed copy. And really, if retail has to discount to move inventory, that should be a clue to online distributors what cultural value or demand there is currently for it and price the online copy accordingly. Otherwise, you’re just hoping the online customer is a sucker enough to buy it, which many are. Just because you find suckers, doesn’t mean you aren’t scamming them.
And really, you see that reflected in how long Blizzard can pump out its battlechests at relatively high prices, why other games get discounted until they are cleared. Online prices should reflect that difference in addition to the money saved on production.
This is the reason I don’t buy more games from DD stores. I use Impulse and Steam, but unless the game is only available online, has a nice discount during a sale, or offers some other incentive, I find that I still buy most of my games in boxed copies. Hell, I see games cheaper on GoGamer or Amazon (even with shipping charges) than I see offered on Steam normally.
When I looked at the prices last night, I accessed GameStop through a link provided by the publisher (“Where to Buy”). Today I noticed that the GameStop website doesn’t acknowledge that some of their stores have copies if you go their directly. They do, however, offer the game as a download for $40. So they are still undercutting Matrix and GamersGate. Interesting.
