pokoko said:
Goatseye said:
pokoko said:
It's not price fixing unless there is a communicated agreement. If everyone does the same thing simply because that's how things settle out, then it's fine. Everyone charging $60 for a new game, for example.
The answer to the first part of your question, about why digital games cost full price, is simply that the market seems willing to pay it. That's all. Capitalism in pure form. Bringing ethics into it really doesn't serve a purpose. In an ideal scenario, the consumer base wouldn't support full price, but that doesn't appear to be the case.
The second question, however, seems to imply that digital and retail should have the same cost structure over time, which really doesn't make a lot of sense. The two things are very different and there is no real reason why digital prices should fall like retail prices. Retailers have money tied up in inventory, money which they need to roll over into more inventory. In any retail business, almost everything you make goes right back into stock. That's your life's blood. In that sense, old, slow-moving stock is wasted money, as it could serve you better if invested into another product. Likewise, it's taking up space, both on shelves and in storage, that could be used for product with better flow. With that in mind, it makes sense to liquidate old stock. Sometimes a retailer can ship back unsold product, if there is a lot, but it's more likely that the manufacturer will given them credit against it, so they can sell it at a cheaper price-point. After that, stock of that product will be kept to levels that mirror demand, which can be easily tracked and automatically adjusted. If those items aren't moving at all, then they won't be stocked, so it is necessary to given them a price that results in sell-through. Inventory equates to money invested and requires money to maintain.
None of this is true of digital, at least to any real degree.
In my opinion, the better digital structure would be a lower initial price, then the publisher could use some kind of model that drops the price a tier as demand diminishes. Trying to match it to what retail is doing just seems artificial and impractical. They might already do the second part, but they're going to need a clear message from consumers before they do the first part. |
So do you believe people are flocking to get MW3 on XBL? After almost 3 years of keeping the price at $59, people don't need a communicated agreement to know that MS is saying go buy it at a retailer.
You explained the price and demand relation well but you forgot to say that with the prices high on digital barely nobody will download a game they can get much cheaper at their local store. If MS was looking for profit they would've cut the prices on the mediums to maximize their profit and probably bring in higher revenue compared to the physical medium. So this doesn't benefit MS tha much, so who benefits from this?
|
I'm a bit confused. MW3 is Modern Warfare 3, right? The price would be Activision's call, not Microsoft's. Also, I have no idea how many copies they sell digitally, but I would imagine it's significant and only going up.
|
