NOTE: This blog is ONLY referring to full retail games being sold on XBL and PSN. Not Arcade games and PS Mini's. 
 
its the 21st century and Digital Distribution is in. I like many gamers would love to buy my games digtaly vs going to the store all the god damn time. Not that there is anything wrong with box copies, its just nice from a  convenience prospective. i was excited when retail games started showing up on XBL, but then became  immediately disappointed to find all of them are still set at retail price... Game companys love to talk about how the used games  industry is hurting business and blah blah blah. but can you really blame a logical person for going out and buying, say Resident Evil 5 for 10 - 5 bucks used VS dropping 29.99 on a boxed/digtaly copy?  
Cue STEAM. Valves digital store is by far the best way to not only fight used game sales but also treat its customers right. free to play weekends, crazy sales and bundles. its the best damn thing ever. yet the console makers continue to charge outrageous prices for there Digital games. Gabe Newell spoke to a school of  business about... well the  business end of Steam, and here is a fun fact for you. when ever they have a Steam sale, like say Torchlight for 2.99. not only do they make a better profit then if they were to keep it at the MSRP, BUT when the game goes back to normal price 14.99 it continues to sell like gang busters. meanwhile a few years ago both Sony and Microsoft said they could sell there games cheaper online because they no longer had to pay for retail space, printing disc, shipping disc ect. It would seem they have scene back peddled on that idea and kind of hoped no one would remember them saying that... its a shitty  business model and it just pisses me off all to hell.  
i about laughed when i saw Halo Reach was going on sale on Games on Demand this week. only to find out what they considered "sale" was 49.99... Amazon price used 27 bucks. if they went nuts and said HALO REACH ONLY 19.99 THIS WEEK i bet you they would have made a killing in terms of sales... i mean i would have bought it.      
 
 
  

I really wish that they did steam-like crazy sales on XBL/PSN. They sometimes do them but theres hardly ever anything that I don't already own in them.

There are several different things going on here. They are charging full retail price because if they get anyone to buy those games they are making almost 100% pure profit as opposed to manufacturing and shipping a disc and splitting profits with a retailer. So, I don't see digitally distributed console games getting any cheaper anytime soon. As for Steam PC games are an entirely different market. They have virtually disappeared from retail and many can only be found readily on Steam.

" @Zidd: most of the time it sales on the crap no one wants. like Hydrophobia for 400 MSP.  "

XBLA has regular sales, its fine. 
 
Games on Demand on the other hand is completely overpriced. Every game on there can easily be bought for half the cost preowned in a shop. The only On Demand game I bought was Beautiful Katamari because I couldn't find it anywhere. In retrospect, I could have just gone to Amazon instead, but I was impatient. Also, Beautiful Katamari is rubbish and half of the on disk levels (the most interesting ones) are DLC. Yes, seriously. Half.

" There are several different things going on here. They are charging full retail price because if they get anyone to buy those games they are making almost 100% pure profit as opposed to manufacturing and shipping a disc and splitting profits with a retailer. So, I don't see digitally distributed console games getting any cheaper anytime soon. As for Steam PC games are an entirely different market. They have virtually disappeared from retail and many can only be found readily on Steam. "

i agree. i haven't looked at games on demand or psn store in a while. when i first heard about games on demand i was kind of excited to see it but the prices were overpriced. if i wanted a game i would go buy a physical copy of it. i do enjoy steam, i buy a couple of games hear and there. 
 
one thing i don't  understand with sales on consoles is that they put the crappy games on a cheaper price than say a good game. this crappy game is on sale for $2. but look at this awesome game for $55. it's not like they have to get rid of the games because it's a physical copy. pretty crazy stuff in the business of digital.

That interview with Gabe is crazy. And that answer he gave about TF2 is crazy. The TF2 market is crazy.

Agreed XBLA games on demand needs to be more like steam. Another improvement would be to put games up on games on demand on their release date, if Halo Reach had been released on demand on its release date i would have brought it off that.

" That interview with Gabe is crazy. And that answer he gave about TF2 is crazy. The TF2 market is crazy. "

My favorite example of all of this is Sony charging varying prices for their PSone Classics, obviously based on nostalgic demand. Even then, the logic is flawed - Resident Evil 1 came out and sold for $9.99, while Resident Evil 2 came out later at $5.99. They do this with any title that they feel has enough nostalgic value to drive people to a higher price. FF7 came out at $9.99 as well.  
I understand wanting to make a little more when you have the chance - but an almost 100% price increase seems a little drastic.

I don't remotely understand Games on Demand pricing. Some games I'd consider getting are priced way too high to justify. Prototype isn't worth $30. If it was $20, I'd consider buying it.

convenience fee

I'm probably the only one who buys games using Games on Demand.  
Games like Bayonetta(ugh) and Darksiders weren't expensive at all. And at the time of purchase it actually made way more sense to buy Borderlands on Games on Demand and then buy the add-ons separately (at least around here) so I don't mind it. I could see it being a problem for like students or something, or even kids who really want a game but the game is expensive and they can't beg mom or dad to buy it since it's a little pricey. I liked some of the crazy deals Microsoft had on Games for Windows Live marketplace a while ago though. Those were great, a buuuunch of games for less than $1 total

" @ThatFrood said:

" That interview with Gabe is crazy. And that answer he gave about TF2 is crazy. The TF2 market is crazy. "

yes the world of TF2 is crazy! the best kind of crazy "

Sony and M$ need to take notes from valve. Even though PC is a terrible way to play games at least they know how to sell games digitally. 

" I think a lot of you are missing something here. The big difference between Valve and MS/Sony is that they are not a hardware manufacturer. They don't need to maintain relationships with retailers in order to ensure that their hardware will be sold there. Stores don't make a lot of money off of consoles, they make it off of software and accessories. If MS and Sony were to undercut the price of retail discs, then retail chains may not want to carry their hardware anymore since they aren't seeing money anywhere else. Nobody is going to stop selling computers because Valve decides to sell everything they had for a penny "

" I think a lot of you are missing something here. The big difference between Valve and MS/Sony is that they are not a hardware manufacturer. They don't need to maintain relationships with retailers in order to ensure that their hardware will be sold there. Stores don't make a lot of money off of consoles, they make it off of software and accessories. If MS and Sony were to undercut the price of retail discs, then retail chains may not want to carry their hardware anymore since they aren't seeing money anywhere else. Nobody is going to stop selling computers because Valve decides to sell everything they had for a penny "

" @MildMolasses said:

" I think a lot of you are missing something here. The big difference between Valve and MS/Sony is that they are not a hardware manufacturer. They don't need to maintain relationships with retailers in order to ensure that their hardware will be sold there. Stores don't make a lot of money off of consoles, they make it off of software and accessories. If MS and Sony were to undercut the price of retail discs, then retail chains may not want to carry their hardware anymore since they aren't seeing money anywhere else. Nobody is going to stop selling computers because Valve decides to sell everything they had for a penny "

The only chain that would freak out over Microsoft and Sony going pure digital would be GameStop. The game industry has been looking for a way to cut the umbilical with everyone's favorite sweaty nerd middleman.  Fry's, Best Buy and Walmart and the like could still very much function by selling game boxes that give you an installation disc and/or a CD key just like the PC market went. "

The following is a complete list of games worth the price they are being sold for on the Games on Demand marketplace:
 
1. Earth Defense Force
 
This concludes the complete list of games worth the price they are being sold for on the Games on Demand marketplace.

On consoles, everyone is so confident that digital distribution is the future, they've just gone nuts. Your only recourse is to support your local bricks-and-mortar vendor.
 
The PC market is markedly different. Those who sell their wares through Steam aren't concerned with used game sales. Their main worry is that you can download and play hacked versions of their product for free from naughty torrent sites, without having to jump through a truckload of DRM hoops. 
 
Valve's motto should be 'Please, Be Nice'
 
The crazy thing is, it just about works.

For consoles, digital distribution is still in its infancy. Microsoft is still gauging current interest in buying games digitally and is playing with pricing models. With two or three titles hitting Games on Demand every month or so, it's far too early to consider Microsoft's current model concrete. Should things continue this way, I will agree with you. 

ACiI with all the DLC is $30 on PSN. That seems like not too bad a price. It's the same with Burnout Paradise. I mean, sure you can go buy Burnout Paradise for $15 used, but the DLC still costs another $10-20, so you're really not saving that much money. 
 
The reason why Sony is selling PS1 titles at sometimes ridiculous prices is because they can. Like, literally. Are you really going to risk buying a 12-year-old copy of FFVII for $2 when you can get that sweet, sweet discless file for $10? Also, good luck finding FFVII for any reasonable price for a used 12-year-old disc, based on Page 1 of the Amazon search results. The lowest GH version used is $38. So I could literally sell the game, buy it on PSN, and make profit (yeah, I still have the PS1 discs, and they're scratchless as far as I know).

Guess I'm the only one who still likes to have a nice shelf with colorful boxes of games lined up....oh well.

" Guess I'm the only one who still likes to have a nice shelf with colorful boxes of games lined up....oh well. "

" @CenturionCajun said:

" There are several different things going on here. They are charging full retail price because if they get anyone to buy those games they are making almost 100% pure profit as opposed to manufacturing and shipping a disc and splitting profits with a retailer. So, I don't see digitally distributed console games getting any cheaper anytime soon. As for Steam PC games are an entirely different market. They have virtually disappeared from retail and many can only be found readily on Steam. "

but they are looking at it from such a narrow prospective. i am the king of impulse buys. They could be making even more money if they dropped the price every now and then. more people would buy them. Look how much Vinny has bought on Steam sales. if XBL and PSN started having sales more often they be making even more money and everyone wins. but instead they keep the price locked to retail get a few sales every now and then and most of us use our brains and just buy the damn game used from either Amazon or Gamestop or buys it new and M$ or Sony one gets a chunk of the earnings.  "

" The following is a complete list of games worth the price they are being sold for on the Games on Demand marketplace:  1. Earth Defense Force  This concludes the complete list of games worth the price they are being sold for on the Games on Demand marketplace. "