Impotent Rage: Gamestop

[shiney]

Is there a significant price difference in digital distribution? My experience has been that a game which is $59.99 in store is also $59.99 online.

[Grandmaster_Skweeb]

Originally Posted by shiney

Is there a significant price difference in digital distribution? My experience has been that a game which is $59.99 in store is also $59.99 online.

Typically not, but it depends on the digital storefront a game is bought from. Steam, gmg, humble, whatever. So I keep an eye out on different storefronts for the best price. As a result, I generally avoid paying physical prices on digital goods on account of it being a shiesty practice to force the price of a digital product as if it were the physical equivalent. Physical product markup being due to material costs of media, ie disks, packaging, box art, manuals, shipping, what have you whereas digital has, well, none of that.

Example: because a buddy of mine made a number of purchases on Green man gaming he received a discount of 23% discount on dying light, which is the standard fare of 59.99.

[Aerozord]

Originally Posted by Grandmaster_Skweeb

Typically not, but it depends on the digital storefront a game is bought from. Steam, gmg, humble, whatever. So I keep an eye out on different storefronts for the best price. As a result, I generally avoid paying physical prices on digital goods on account of it being a shiesty practice to force the price of a digital product as if it were the physical equivalent. Physical product markup being due to material costs of media, ie disks, packaging, box art, manuals, shipping, what have you whereas digital has, well, none of that.

Example: because a buddy of mine made a number of purchases on Green man gaming he received a discount of 23% discount on dying light, which is the standard fare of 59.99.

Not really, printed paper and molded plastic isn't that much of the cost. Shipping is also not too much because its just a small percentage of what they are already shipping. Stores are mostly just taking their share of the cost. Steam or other services will take their chunk.

Its more of something forced on the stores by the developers to keep them from undercutting each other. However thats just in the short term. Notice after a month or two prices often drop even at physical stores.

Now obviously digital distribution doesn't have as much overhead just that price fixing isn't on their end. Thats also why digital distribution has over sea prices as the same but I've heard they are working to circumvent high taxes in places like Australia and Brazil

[Grandmaster_Skweeb]

Originally Posted by Aerozord

Not really, printed paper and molded plastic isn't that much of the cost. Shipping is also not too much because its just a small percentage of what they are already shipping. Stores are mostly just taking their share of the cost. Steam or other services will take their chunk.

Price per unit, no its not much and it's easy to dismiss that. For the amount of sales they want? That shit adds up real fast. Like my business mathematics instructor explained it: it's the little dollars and cents not factored that can sink a business quick. Those examples I listed are the encompassing umbrella of Markup On Cost. Further modified by Markup on Price on the sales side of things.

[Arcanum]

Originally Posted by MSperoni

I tried trading in some sports games

Well there's your problem right there. Those things tend to lose value rather quickly since there's a new one out every year. I mean, Gamestop's trade in value for games is still awful, but with sports games it's especially bad.

Originally Posted by shiney

Is there a significant price difference in digital distribution? My experience has been that a game which is $59.99 in store is also $59.99 online.

On PC, yes, definitely. Or rather, prices can get lower, or receive discounts, much faster. On consoles prices tend to be the same for a long time, or maybe see a brief 20-25% sale.

Originally Posted by Grandmaster_Skweeb

Example: because a buddy of mine made a number of purchases on Green man gaming he received a discount of 23% discount on dying light, which is the standard fare of 59.99.

I get an email from GMG every month (or sometimes every two weeks, depends on how often they feel like doing these) with a 20 to 25% off code. The percentage varies, depending on the promotion. I've only bought like six games from GMG, but I was getting these emails after my first purchase. The code is also not exclusive to the receiver, it's the same generic discount code sent to everyone, so you might find some sites sharing that code (I know Destructoid does when they do their game deals articles). And while they encourage you to use the code on pre-orders, or newer games (i.e. the expensive ones) it usually works on pretty much any game on the site.

---------- Post added at 04:41 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:13 AM ----------

Speak of the devil, just got a 20% voucher that's valid on anything (20PERO-FFDIGI-GAMESX), and a 25% voucher that's valid for Life is Strange (25OFFL-IFEISS-TRANGE).

Both expire on the 26th.