The ease of never carrying physical discs and just logging into a console to play and pick up instantly was extremely useful. For two reasons.įirstly, I used to live mostly in Germany and a bit at my parents in the UK, I was between 3 different Xbox Ones as there was one at work. I’m quite late on this, but I do prefer digital to physical. Most of the time when these games go on sale they do match the cost of the physical version, but apart from this short window digital games seem not to have the adaptable pricing which exists within retailers. Of course, there are many sales throughout the year on the Xbox Store – most notably the Xbox Live Deals With Gold and Spotlight Sale – where you can purchase games at a severe discount, similar to that of Steam though not to that extent. So while the process of purchasing a game digitally is becoming more popular by the day, the cost of the game is not decreasing nor usually matching that of its physical incarnation. Stores are seemingly infinite in their capacity.
Only have a finite amount of space to display their games, whereas the online Purchase a game digitally you’re paying the publisher (who in turn will pay theĭeveloper a share) and the platform. Returns and the time it takes to deal with any customer queries etc.
You would also have to incorporate the cost of Having to pay the cost of goods for distribution, the retailer, the platformĪnd of course the publisher. Especially when it allows them to play the game at midnight on launch, hassle-free, without leaving the comfort of their own home.įrom purchasing a game in-store is divided into a fair few more parties than Because of the rise of the consumer’s desire to play digitally, Xbox has no reason to lower their prices when people are willing to pay their prices. Gamers prefer to buy packages such as Xbox Game Pass to purchase their games online, and to stream them both for entertainment and personal consumption though the latter has many needed improvements yet to be made. This is because people prefer to consume digitally. The issue with this line of thought, however, is why would Xbox allow a competitor to exist, let alone flourish, in the market in which it dominates?įurther to this, and this does link to the first point I made, physical video game stores will cease to exist in the way that we know them now, or the way they used to operate 10, 20 or 30 years ago. When more competitors are offering the same capabilities that the Xbox Store is, then we may see some more competitive pricing on the horizon. Not since the launch of the EPIC Games Store. The same can be said for PlayStation and Nintendo, but not for PC. There is no other place you would go to buy that copy of the game aside from a few dodgy online marketplaces selling digital copies of games that seem too cheap to be legitimate. If you want to buy Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice digitally for your Xbox then you will go to the Xbox Store and purchase it. Secondly, the online stores and platforms have a monopoly of the market, so to speak. More money *should* be going straight to the developer and publisher, but Xbox isn’t going to cut out the middle-man without taking some of the revenue, rightfully so. My apologies, I have forgotten to put the word *should* into that sentence. Cutting out this stage of the process, from getting the game from the developer to the consumer, means that more money will be going straight to the developer and publisher. Typically, we know them as GAME (in Britain) and Gamestop (in the US). To begin with, they cut out the middle-man that being the wholesaler (or reseller).
#Getting over it game cost drivers
In terms of digital games costing the same as physical versions, it seems that there are a few main drivers to why digital games are at least the same price or more expensive than physical copies. But that is another article for another time. There is an argument that game prices should be more expensive in general due to the high demand of all creative, physical, financial and emotional energies that video games take to make we’re now looking at not a 3-4 year development cycle, but rather one which takes 4-6 years.
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