Why are digital downloads expensive?
Matt35
Posts: 30,033 Forum Member
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As the title says. Surely they should be cheaper than disc versions. Standard version of fifa on PS store is £60 which is ridiculous when its in game for £47.99. Hopefully prices will start to drop although I won't hold my breath on that.
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It has always been like that, I don't understand it either. Like you said its cheaper to ship the game via digital download, so you would think they would reflect that in the price. Although saying all this I think on digital downloads Sony may take a cut of the proceeds if bought on PSN Store.
Sure Sony could come out tomorrow and lower all the store prices to £19.99 but then Game, Grainger, Asda, Tesco, Shopto, Amazon etc would be on the phone saying ''what the **** is this get the prices higher than our prices or we'll stop selling the hardware''
You might think oh well do away with these shops then if Sony could charge lower without them, but do you really think Sony or MS (i'll throw them in as well) would charge less if they had 0 competition or do you think they would charge more
Sony doesn't need to sell for lower although that would be good. Sell at least the same price the other stores like amazon sell them for.
Its the same problem, if you can't get the game for cheaper in stores then why would stores sell them or the hardware
This is it.
The likes of Game / GameStop kicked up a fuss before when the likes of Sony tried to sell games cheaper digitally. As awful as these shops are, they're still needed for console gaming. They're needed to sell the consoles, and they do contribute a lot towards game sales. It's much different to PC gaming.
eurogamer article
So with digital downloads you can theoretically be getting two copies of the game, so the publisher is going to add a premium onto the price paid. Also as Aye Up mentioned, if Sony get a percentage of any digital download purchase then publishers may increase the price to compensate for that cost.
Retailers sells some for under the RRP, obviously not all.
Same here.
They all go for $60 there for the regular editions.
I pay around £40 at asda and tesco, then I have physical disk yo trade in and don't have any worry about Sony possibly kicking up a fuss with me using Us account in the UK, although its very unlikely Sony would do anything.
I don't like discs anymore taking up space. Also I never trade as trade in prices are a joke.
Just my personal preference now is to download
Never understood £59.99 when it is £45 from the online stores. How they expect us to embrace going 'digital only' when they charge those kinds of prices.
GAME in-store prices are riddiculous, dont get me started on that!!
With digital I want to be able to buy the parts of the game I want, on a game like COD I want to be able to buy just the campaign and co-op modes and on something like Battlefield I want just the online mode. This is where digital downloads should be heading.
Physical still has its place in the market and should be selling what became GOTY editions last generation, ie the complete package. There should be different models for digital and physical.
Battlefield Online should just be one version which gets new content often and is sold as a premium type subscription and each years new content is packaged on the disc version of the game.
At the moment buying digital is really only for lazy people who dont want to go to the shops or get up to change a disc, physical disc still offer more benefits and quicker price drops. Digital is pointless and not the future until it actually plays to its strengths.
the stupid thing about all this is that no matter how much we get charged in the UK for digital downloads of games, some people will still purchase them. It's as simple as that. I have bought a few digital games, The last of us remastered, being the most expensive so far but there's no chance in hell I'd spend £60 or more on a digital game.
You don't ask for much do you ?
Buying digital isn't for lazy people. Buying from the US store is considerably cheaper than buying anywhere else, be it digitally or physical. I'm a cheapskate and will go where the lowest price is.
I guess I could sniff the ethernet cable while its downloading...
We keep been told digital downloads are the future, but from what I can see they are just the past repackaged
I think there is space for physical, digital and streaming all to deliver content in different ways to different customers. Its just at the moment nobody is trying to make that a reality which is why digital is a let down, what exactly does it offer that is new and exciting.
If you look through your ps3 library (assuming you have ps+) you'll see various games like Hitman and Uncharted split into different sections for downloading. So what you're proposing isn't impossible.
But .......
Why would Sony sell you, say, Uncharted 4 single player campaign for £25 and the multiplayer for £25 when they can take away those options and sell you both for £45.
Maybe when all digital finally catches on, we might see some bright ideas, but that will be a while.
Because companies might make more money selling things separately for digital and it would mean they can price them a lot more competitively. It also means rather than seeing tacked on multiplayer modes for traditionally single player games those type of mode could start life as cheap or F2P products. The other thing is how many single player games do we see sell badly at £45 then sell really well when the price drops to £25 - £30, the whole game pricing structure is broken and needs an overhaul IMHO.
I would argue that we need more bright ideas for digital to finally catch on. As it currently stands I will continue buying all games physically unless the PSN store offers some crazy prices. I would be prepared to pay slightly more for a physical version as well because I like to borrow and lend.