Jimquisition: Don't Charge Retail Prices For Digital Games
- Thread starter Jimothy Sterling
- Start date
Hey dude. Here's a list of other articles and forum posts that refer to "digital games" and "retail" in the same manner.Aardvaarkman said:
http://www.ign.com/boards/threads/do-you-prefer-retail-or-digital-games-on-handhelds.452460435/
***Digital Games Will Have the Same Price as Retail Ones on Nintendo?s eShop
http://news.softpedia.com/news/Digital-Games-Will-Have-the-Same-Price-as-Retail-Ones-on-Nintendo-s-eShop-267606.shtml
***Retail plays an essential role even as games go digital, says EA's Peter Moore
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/169962/Retail_plays_an_essential_role_even_as_games_go_digital_says_EAs_Peter_Moore.php
***Nintendo Reinvents the Download
http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/analysis-nintendo-reinvents-the-download/095758
Quote: "It?s very easy to consider Nintendo?s sudden declaration to ?significantly expand its digital business"
***Nintendo Plans To Offer Digital Game Sales Same Day As Retail
http://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2012/04/27/nintendo-plans-to-offer-digital-game-sales-same-day-as-retail.aspx
As you can see these terms are widely accepted and understood. Complaining about it just makes you sound like a dull English teacher railing against people putting an 's' at the end of the word 'toward'.
Why don't you stop being a stuffy prescriptivist and discuss the SUBSTANCE of Jim's argument?
You're still talking about delivery vector, though. That's not really anything to do with whether the end product is the same.OldDirtyCrusty said:
Okay, then it`s delivery vector. The retail versions for console games have still more advantages than the digital ones. I`ll buy them as long as nothing major changes.Zachary Amaranth said:
There's a reason why the publishers don't just skip ahead and cut out retail; it's because of Consoles.
There's a duality in the mainstream game market:
-Retail System: Sells Console Games almost exclusively.
Unless it's a game with mountains of hype and marketing behind it, you won't see most PC games in retail anymore.
Just a casual stroll through a Best Buy, Gamestop, or Walmart will prove this. Even PC games sold as hard copies, are STILL bought online from overstock sites and referral lists (like Amazon).
-Digital Distribution: PC does nearly all of its business here now. Again, it's incredibly rare to see a PC game in a box set or DVD, and even those are just going to point you to an online DRM system to register your game. The upcoming Diablo 3 is going to retail, yet it's entirely online anyway.
And the problem stems from this: Publishers aren't entirely sure of who to back.
Consoles? Or PC?
The Big Publishers have made a KILLING on Consoles due to the ease of use appeal and innate market control (psychological DRM) consoles provide. It's been such a consistent stream for profits that they've integrated the console-factor into EVERY PART of their business model from marketing down to game design itself.
They're VERY dependent on consoles for success; far less so than PC (again, MOST publishers; Blizzard or Valve are obviously more PC-oriented than EA, Activision or most of the Japanese Publishers, but they are the exception and not the norm).
So put the two points together: Big Publishers need retail support even though it bites them with Used Games (and they LOVE to complain about it).
But now they're in a unique crisis; the Big Three Console Giants are shuffling their feet VERY nervously at the prospect of launching their next consoles (well, two of them anyway. Nintendo is only too happy to play from behind, technologically).
And this is key: because if there aren't any new consoles to cater to the Publisher's demands and the mainstream market that they've built around them, the symbiotic relationship collapses, and with it, so does their source of easy profits.
So what's the problem? Just make new consoles and repeat the cycle.
Sony and Microsoft are scared. They're worried deeply about the cost of another Loss Leader strategy. They LOSE money on each console sold, but hope to recoup the costs* in licensing and game sales.
Their current console loss leader strategies finally evened out in 2009, and took off from 2010 to present, where the cost of production was being vastly outstripped by the growth rates of revenue from software licensing/sales. But now, their consoles are moving too far behind the tech curve; they're horribly obsolete and everyone knows it.
Yet, the cost for the NEXT generation looks to be staggering. Proportionally worse than the previous generation, and that investment was painful enough. Nintendo's Wii U looks to be under control since it's essentially playing "catch-up" to the other two and that's been shown to be financially sustainable (especially with reduced manufacturing costs compared to 5 years ago).
And this hesitation is having profound effects on the entire market, because most major publishers, again, got married to consoles yet there might not BE "next-gen consoles" outside of handhelds and the Wii U.
The price to subsidize hardware might be too steep for either the Console Giant OR the average Customer. Imagine if launch-era PS3s were the standard price just because they couldn't risk any further loss than that!
So even if there ARE next-gen consoles, now they're worried about their ability to compete with PC (for the first time in over a decade), or how the market might react to consoles that essentially force you to get married to an online DRM system. (at which point why not just buy a PC anyway? Cheaper games, cheaper hardware. Same bullshit DRM either way.)
The longer the wait, the more appealing PC looks as its market share grows; a continuing trend that started over two years now, after years of tepid MMOs (well, *ONE MMO* cloned a dozen times) and second-rate port jobs from consoles.
(part of the appeal of current generation consoles is tangible security and the fact that the DRM of consoles is obfuscated to the average consumer. Eliminate that, and suddenly, PC doesn't look any worse. Now it's just a PC with an idiot-proofed GUI run by controllers instead of a keyboard and mouse.)
They're worried about market backlash, and with pricing schemes like this, rightly so.
So for now, everyone is just doing what they've been doing for the last six years, only now some of the publishers are preparing contingencies; if the next generation of consoles fails, fails to exist, or fails to dominate PC again, then they will have a system in place to continue marketing their games.
And until such a time as they KNOW which move is the dominant strategy, they're going to price evenly between the two. They won't get rid of Retail until it's no longer essential to the dominant strategy.
(Sony FINALLY noticed this and is adjusting their online market (since they own their own online market for the Vita and PSP-GO) to compensate for this, albeit, only recently.)
...And I doubt anyone will read this wall of text, but hey, I had time to kill while baking a pizza. No loss for me. ;p
Though I chose to address the division between the two sides of the mainstream business (PC and Console) as a lack of adaptation as a whole since the Oligopoly is going to thrive depending on which side succeeds more.
Proprietary control is the hallmark of Monopolistic/Cartel behavior in the realm of digital goods.
There's a duality in the mainstream game market:
-Retail System: Sells Console Games almost exclusively.
Unless it's a game with mountains of hype and marketing behind it, you won't see most PC games in retail anymore.
Just a casual stroll through a Best Buy, Gamestop, or Walmart will prove this. Even PC games sold as hard copies, are STILL bought online from overstock sites and referral lists (like Amazon).
-Digital Distribution: PC does nearly all of its business here now. Again, it's incredibly rare to see a PC game in a box set or DVD, and even those are just going to point you to an online DRM system to register your game. The upcoming Diablo 3 is going to retail, yet it's entirely online anyway.
And the problem stems from this: Publishers aren't entirely sure of who to back.
Consoles? Or PC?
The Big Publishers have made a KILLING on Consoles due to the ease of use appeal and innate market control (psychological DRM) consoles provide. It's been such a consistent stream for profits that they've integrated the console-factor into EVERY PART of their business model from marketing down to game design itself.
They're VERY dependent on consoles for success; far less so than PC (again, MOST publishers; Blizzard or Valve are obviously more PC-oriented than EA, Activision or most of the Japanese Publishers, but they are the exception and not the norm).
So put the two points together: Big Publishers need retail support even though it bites them with Used Games (and they LOVE to complain about it).
But now they're in a unique crisis; the Big Three Console Giants are shuffling their feet VERY nervously at the prospect of launching their next consoles (well, two of them anyway. Nintendo is only too happy to play from behind, technologically).
And this is key: because if there aren't any new consoles to cater to the Publisher's demands and the mainstream market that they've built around them, the symbiotic relationship collapses, and with it, so does their source of easy profits.
So what's the problem? Just make new consoles and repeat the cycle.
Sony and Microsoft are scared. They're worried deeply about the cost of another Loss Leader strategy. They LOSE money on each console sold, but hope to recoup the costs* in licensing and game sales.
(The initial launch price for either version of the PS3 was ridiculously high, precisely because of that; Sony was taking a loss even when selling them at about 500-600 USD. They hoped to use hype and deliberate limitation to pull another shortage-powered launch like they did with the PS2, let word of mouth and hype build even further and sell the systems at hiked prices for the next year or two to smooth over the initial investment.
What Sony didn't expect was the Wii to come in and eat their lunch by doing the same thing, AND without selling units at a loss. Sony's arrogance cost them, and they're worried the same thing is happening again, only WORSE.
Incidentally, this is a big part of why Sony stripped the Other OS feature out; because some people and companies were using PS3s as cost-efficient mass-processing. Those PS3s were could NEVER recoup their loss in game sales, since that isn't what they were being used for. So, Sony flip-flopped and that lead to a whole series of events culminating with a high level intrusion of PSN last year.
See how fucked up and complicated this marketing stuff can get?
What Sony didn't expect was the Wii to come in and eat their lunch by doing the same thing, AND without selling units at a loss. Sony's arrogance cost them, and they're worried the same thing is happening again, only WORSE.
Incidentally, this is a big part of why Sony stripped the Other OS feature out; because some people and companies were using PS3s as cost-efficient mass-processing. Those PS3s were could NEVER recoup their loss in game sales, since that isn't what they were being used for. So, Sony flip-flopped and that lead to a whole series of events culminating with a high level intrusion of PSN last year.
See how fucked up and complicated this marketing stuff can get?
Their current console loss leader strategies finally evened out in 2009, and took off from 2010 to present, where the cost of production was being vastly outstripped by the growth rates of revenue from software licensing/sales. But now, their consoles are moving too far behind the tech curve; they're horribly obsolete and everyone knows it.
Yet, the cost for the NEXT generation looks to be staggering. Proportionally worse than the previous generation, and that investment was painful enough. Nintendo's Wii U looks to be under control since it's essentially playing "catch-up" to the other two and that's been shown to be financially sustainable (especially with reduced manufacturing costs compared to 5 years ago).
And this hesitation is having profound effects on the entire market, because most major publishers, again, got married to consoles yet there might not BE "next-gen consoles" outside of handhelds and the Wii U.
The price to subsidize hardware might be too steep for either the Console Giant OR the average Customer. Imagine if launch-era PS3s were the standard price just because they couldn't risk any further loss than that!
So even if there ARE next-gen consoles, now they're worried about their ability to compete with PC (for the first time in over a decade), or how the market might react to consoles that essentially force you to get married to an online DRM system. (at which point why not just buy a PC anyway? Cheaper games, cheaper hardware. Same bullshit DRM either way.)
The longer the wait, the more appealing PC looks as its market share grows; a continuing trend that started over two years now, after years of tepid MMOs (well, *ONE MMO* cloned a dozen times) and second-rate port jobs from consoles.
(part of the appeal of current generation consoles is tangible security and the fact that the DRM of consoles is obfuscated to the average consumer. Eliminate that, and suddenly, PC doesn't look any worse. Now it's just a PC with an idiot-proofed GUI run by controllers instead of a keyboard and mouse.)
They're worried about market backlash, and with pricing schemes like this, rightly so.
So for now, everyone is just doing what they've been doing for the last six years, only now some of the publishers are preparing contingencies; if the next generation of consoles fails, fails to exist, or fails to dominate PC again, then they will have a system in place to continue marketing their games.
And until such a time as they KNOW which move is the dominant strategy, they're going to price evenly between the two. They won't get rid of Retail until it's no longer essential to the dominant strategy.
(Sony FINALLY noticed this and is adjusting their online market (since they own their own online market for the Vita and PSP-GO) to compensate for this, albeit, only recently.)
...And I doubt anyone will read this wall of text, but hey, I had time to kill while baking a pizza. No loss for me. ;p
I agree with that sentiment, which is why I frequently refer to the Big Publishers as an Oligopoly (very similar to a Cartel; can exist AS a Cartel even).Therumancer said:
Though I chose to address the division between the two sides of the mainstream business (PC and Console) as a lack of adaptation as a whole since the Oligopoly is going to thrive depending on which side succeeds more.
Proprietary control is the hallmark of Monopolistic/Cartel behavior in the realm of digital goods.
They might for you, but I don't have storage issues and I love being able to redownload games if I need to.OldDirtyCrusty said:Okay, then it`s delivery vector. The retail versions for console games have still more advantages than the digital ones. I`ll buy them as long as nothing major changes.
While this isn't entirely gaming related, because I'm less digitally oriented with them, but my last place was in an apartment building that caught fire. Now, my place didn't burn, but half a million gallons streamed through my floor. All my shit was ruined. Physical books, some CDs/DVDs/Games even cracked, etc.
But I redownloaded all my ebooks to my kindle, recovered my MP3s from Amazon's cloud, and got back all my Steam games.
I don't get, I mean when a physical copy of a game is the same price when it includes a disc, a booklet, and a plastic cover with pretty little pictures, as a digital copy that is just mega-bytes, fairy dust, or what ever data is made of.
Mass producing hundreds of those game packs and manuals can't be cheap, so why wouldn't the retail copies cover that difference in the price?
Perhaps they are covering the price of the website that you buy the game from. If that's the case then websites must cost a whole damn lot. For that matter how does the Escapist get it's funds? Surely if website maintnence is this expensive then the Escapist would need to sell far more than Zero Punctuation t-shirts, maybe the Escapist owns a chain of oil refinaries and drilling platforms.
Mass producing hundreds of those game packs and manuals can't be cheap, so why wouldn't the retail copies cover that difference in the price?
Perhaps they are covering the price of the website that you buy the game from. If that's the case then websites must cost a whole damn lot. For that matter how does the Escapist get it's funds? Surely if website maintnence is this expensive then the Escapist would need to sell far more than Zero Punctuation t-shirts, maybe the Escapist owns a chain of oil refinaries and drilling platforms.
That's the point. Digital distribution does not cost however much it costs for manufacturing, so the fact that digital distribution should cost as much as a physical copy is stupid, especially since, in most cases, there are more incentives to buy physical, like special event DLC, etc.Brett Bowling said:
The point is that in an age where the industry is trying to move more towards digital distribution, making it more attractive to buy retail is shooting themselves in the foot.
And bandwidth doesn't cost THAT much. It costs money to order units of games to keep on the shelves of a brick and mortar store. It doesn't cost as much money to offer it online, otherwise Valve would be out of business a long time ago.
A) No, bandwidth is not free and despite what you may think, it's not a trivial price either. I work in Telcom. Go research 'Optical Carriers', and remember that digital distribution requires 100% availability until you can chart usage patterns. (People do not take kindly to not being able to download something they just paid for.) You're talking six figures a month for an operation like Steam. They soak much of their cost by charging the developers to list on their service-- go look at how many games they have available. Even at only a thousand dollars a month (probably much more for a AAA title), they have a really lucrative business going on there.Taunta said:
But at first? They didn't. It's well-documented how much of a risk Steam was. Again, just go Google it.
As far as the brick-and-mortar display costs, those are born by the retail establishment, not by the publisher, so your argument isn't relevant.
B) The entire foundation of Capitalism is "Goods will cost what people are willing to pay."
So, no, an argument that digitally distributed games should be cheaper because they don't require packaging is ignorant and/or naive.
Do you have to like it? No. But the absolutely only way to express your displeasure is to not buy digitally distributed copies... not that the publisher will really care unless you don't buy the game at all.
Complaining about it? You may as well be tossing bricks into the Grand Canyon.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IxBjzCXAyo&feature=g-all-u
Diablo 3 amazon 35 pounds shipping included and next day delivery
Diablo 3 cd key without packaging 45 pounds
Australia $100
Origin battlefield 3 $80
CDKEYHOUSE $20 but also online cd keys so wth
Buy any AAA game at all in Australia close to release $100
Anywhere else at all $30-40 less almost guaranteed
Steam Max Payne 3 $90
Amazon $60
This is retarded yo, I thought they wanted more people to buy online
Diablo 3 amazon 35 pounds shipping included and next day delivery
Diablo 3 cd key without packaging 45 pounds
Australia $100
Origin battlefield 3 $80
CDKEYHOUSE $20 but also online cd keys so wth
Buy any AAA game at all in Australia close to release $100
Anywhere else at all $30-40 less almost guaranteed
Steam Max Payne 3 $90
Amazon $60
This is retarded yo, I thought they wanted more people to buy online
You wanna see something retarded?I.Muir said:
Diablo III digital download at battle.net: ?59,99
now here it comes
Diablo III key at a site selling game keys: ?69,99
yep. You're paying them extra money for some extra inconvenience.
I wonder if someone actually fell for that
Edit: I should add that retail prices are set from ?44 to ?49 (or rather were set, as it's sold out everywhere)
The reason they're not leaping to take advantage of monopolizing the market is twofold. First of all, it'd be illegal for them to own all the distribution channels for a product that they produce. Secondly, even if it wasn't, distribution channels already exist that it's easier too just continue to use rather than setting up and maintaining, at their own expense, new ones. Thus, they must keep the maintainers of the old channels of distribution happy by maintaining price equality between digital and physical retailing, or even skewing the pricing in the favor of physical retailers.