| Cerebralbore101 said: I feel like the price needs to come down on digital goods by a large amount, in order to make it worth my while to go digital. Currently, digital games still sell for $60 at launch and you often have to pay local sales tax on them to boot (tax on digital goods makes zero sense). Meanwhile I can still get my physical games from Best Buy with a 20% discount, 8% cash back on my credit card, and double Best Buy points. In the end my physical games often cost me $33 to $43, depending on whether or not there was a $10 gift card for pre-ordering. I'm really rooting for Epic's new store, because I feel like a 12% take is more than fair for a digital storefront. A game could launch at $47.73 on Epic's store and still make the developer just as much money per copy as selling it on Steam for $60. And since lower priced games tend to sell more copies, developers would have an even bigger incentive to lower the price even further. I could easily see games launching on Epic's store for $45, and then permanently going on sale for half off a year later. Finally, we need to get rid of the JC Penny style sales that go on. Marking a ten year old game at $20 and then putting it on "sale" twice a year for $10 is not a sale. It's a scheme that is designed to force impulse buys, by only pricing the game fairly twice a year. This sort of "sale" is inconvenient to people that just want to buy the game right away. Even worse, these sales on digital games often aren't even as low as physical copies go for. DB FighterZ was $23 for a physical copy on Black Friday, and that's without any of my Best Buy discounts. MHW was $30. These prices were for the game brand new. A used copy sold for even less. Meanwhile the digital versions of both games were $4 to $10 more expensive than even the new physical copies. |
$60 at release is the standard, cost of making video games is going up and many video games (especially niche games) are struggling to turn a profit. if you want a viable industry, you should still be willing to support developers or we will get stuck with a bunch of crappy free to play style of games.
Cost of digital has similar deals right now compare to physical. I buy all my Microsoft gift card at Costco for 44.99 for $50 gift card. That's a 10% discount, + what ever cash back on credit card (I don't know how you get 8%). If you don't buy games on release day, they quickly get discounted on the store front, I bought Assassin Creed Odyssey at $53.59CAD compare to 79.99CAD at launch that's a 33% discount not adding in the Costco discount and Credit Card cash back. I bought Mad Max for $7.50 compare to 29.99 (75% discount).
I also bought 6 month of Xbox game pass for $35.97, That saved me buying Forza Horizon 4 it's on for $51.99CAD, the value of game pass is harder to quantify but for me it's already saved me 30% or 55% if I would of bought at launch on just Forza Horizon 4.
You haven't mention the benefit of re-selling your game to make some money back, but considering I share my game library with my nephew and we both get to enjoy every single digital purchase I make. I can guarantee that i'm getting more bang for every digital purchase I make compare to your single user physical copy.
Digital landscape are constantly having deals year round that rivals any brick and mortar.
