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With this generation of consoles, Sony and Microsoft increased its emphasis on digital downloads in an attempt to push the industry forward from physical discs. However, despite the fact that digital games are cheaper for publishers to release in the long run, we often see digital copies remaining fairly expensive on console for a long time, while physical copies get fairly cheap.
So why does this happen? Well according to Ubisoft CEO, Yves Guillemot, it's because digital has not yet been fully embraced by console gamers as it has on PC: “Digital is more reactive than what we put in stores, but at the same time, it doesn't react as fast on consoles than it does on PC”, he said in a Ubisoft earnings call.
“What we can say is that when games are older than one year, digital is a lot more dynamic on console because there are less units in stores. It's a new business, a new trend, and we think all this will get more in line with time, but for sure, at the moment you see all sorts of prices depending on who is doing a promotion for that specific week.”
Eventually, digital games on console will have prices and discounts more in line with the PC, once console gamers embrace digital downloads to the same extent. Unfortunately with physical media, price drops need to happen in order to shift stock and make room for new products, whereas on digital stores, you don't have that problem, meaning the price can be left higher for longer.
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KitGuru Says: Right now, digital games on the Xbox One and PS4 are a fair bit more expensive than they are on PC, though the price of new games has slowly crept up to the £50 mark. Hopefully as digital becomes more popular, we will hopefully start to see console game prices drop faster as they do on the PC.
Maby if they reflected the disk price (- you cant re-sell to a friend later on) then they would have more interest?
ofc it hasn’t been embraced like for the reason that the guy said and one more important factor is with digital we can’t trade our Games i for one would hate digital only for Consoles and i am sure i am not the only one
What a load of bullshit. They’re expensive because they can keep it that way long after all the new copies are sold from stores.
This is publishers holding got at ransom “bit more digital at inflated prices and we’ll lower the price.
There’s no cost that the retailer had invested in digital copies (other than the delivery mechanism). A retailer will have spent £x on each disc that sits on his shelf. He’d like to sell them for £x+10 but in the end he’ll settle for £x+1 or even £x of it means he doesn’t lose money. Selling digital gives no incentive to discount because there is no unit cost to invest up front from the retailer.
Load of Bull..
– why not be honest, ” they like money and they want YOU to pay them as much that they need&want.”
( has little or nothing to do with they getting paid for the game, the development or sale promotion-shit…)
aka. ofc they as anyone has to get paid for the product, Butt ! 🙂 that said, there is a VITAL difference between getting paid and getting Rich in the process…
– and so on and so forth.
First publisher to drop their DD prices to reasonable levels (£35 new on release for AAA) wins
Yup, got to agree with everyone else; this is utter bullshit. As usual, he seems to think he can treat gamers like idiots and they’ll just roll over for him. Digital distribution isn’t “dynamic”, “reactive” or any other marketing buzzword; they simply have more control over the price of digital and keep it high because they can.
I’d like to know why their AAA titles for PC still launch at $60 then. I don’t give a flying meowmix if it goes on sale 3 months later if it didn’t sell well. The point is that PC digital download costs the same as retail copies 99% of the time.
Is Yves surrounded by Yes Men too scared to tell him when to keep his mouth shut?
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like he said but didnt it is because of gamestop and other retailer if they see a company trying to do that they will punish them because allot of console game are sold in physical copie since it is the same price
That doesn’t explain it. That simply means they want to keep digital prices high because the 5% of retail copies sold would cost more? That’s utterly stupid.