By using this site, you agree to our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use. Close
yo_john117 on 10 June 2013
Edit Thread
oniyide said:
yo_john117 said:
Zero999 said:

it's already imoral to charge the same price for a digital game, since the download version doesn't feature disc, box and other lesser costs. so at minimum, digital sales should be $10 less than phisical copies.

I think it depends. When digital services first come out, it is more of a convenience so they charge more. But as something becomes mostly digital, they should (and do) become cheaper than retail (or at least have way more sales than retail).

you keep saying this, but ive yet to see ANY evidence of it being true. Music went digital awhile ago. Eve, cheapest price is 7.97 bucks new,2 cents less than the digital version. books, hunger games i can buy new for 2.07 dollars, kindle? 5 bucks more than twice as much. Movies are a bit complex, Transformers 3 10 bucks digital, DVD version new is 8.50. Blu ray 13 bucks, but the value is still better since the bluray comes with DVD AND digital in the first place, with those special features, so in that case i dont see why someone wouldnt buy the Bluray.

On average prices for digital are the same as retail (except when that medium is still mostly physical sales, then digital is more expensive). But the thing that really sets digital apart are the sheer number of sales that they have. 

Music is probably 20/80 or 30/70 in regards to physical/digital and they have quite a lot of sales every week. I know Amazon and Google Play always have deals of the day/week and plenty of other sales where you can get full albums between 99 cents to $4.99. Being able to buy individual songs for 99 cents is also the biggest draw to buying music digitally because you don't have to buy an entire album just for a few songs.

Books are probably about 60/40 physical/digital and they too have decent deals on Amazon and Google play where you can get books for 99 cents to 2.99. Overall they still cost slightly more for digital.

DVD's and Blu-rays are still very much dominated by physical (probably 80/20) so they, on average, cost quite a bit more than retail. Even so once in a while you get decent sales on Vudu, Amazon, and especially XBL (where every few weeks they have a bunch of TV shows and movies for 33-50% off).

PC gaming is probably 80/20 or 90/10 in terms of digital/physical and we all know the crazy amount of deals you can find on Steam (and to a lesser extent, Origin and others).

The 360 is probably 80/20 in terms of physical digital and they are having increasingly better and more frequent sales where you can get games for much cheaper than retail.