1st Party Price Increases- Not For The Players

1st Party Price increases seem to be creeping up with very few seemingly taking notice.

Asa from GameOnDaily discusses the trend and why the gradual shift towards the digital marketplace is not heralding the change in pricing one would expect.

[Senor_Spidey]

I say we go back to bartering

[rpvenom]

I rather this versus microtransactions

[DivineAssault]

YAS! Id much rather pay $75-$80 for a complete game.. Getting a base copy and having them figure out ways to rip you off is getting way too intrusive

[subtenko]

I will trade you 1 egg and a small cat for Farm simulator VR

[G3ng4r]

Oh look, another thing I called months ago. Gaas is an unpopular way around climbing aaa development costs as are microtransactions, but games are getting bigger and more graphically intensive all the time so something has to give. Expect $80 ps5 games and forced gaas on xbox.

[Zer0Flinch]

Bro THANK YOU for this article! Where are the savings on new games!? Where are the savings on old titles even? I see 2-3year old games almost the same price they were when they came out! Sales on games but not season passes screwing early adopters. The whole thing was a farce and people are not nearly upset enough about it.

[getbacktogaming]

Yeah.. Got me thinking about PC gaming more and more... Cdkeys, steam sales, etc. Consoles are only cheaper if you buy physical, which makes no sense! Can't let go my PS4 only because of amazing exclusives though...

[subtenko]

CD keys be the same price pretty much .....even games there are 2-5 years old are near same price. You could have got the game new for that price and a little less if you are apart of some game club like best buy or amazon.

Thank goodness I waited tho because sometimes you get good deals on stea, (in this case publisher decision...rainbox 6 seige for $10/$15 bucks)

[rainslacker]

It always was a farce. People have been saying for a long time now not to expect game prices to go down if digital became a thing. Digital allows publishers to control the content, and if they control the content, they control the price. The reason retail drops, is because they're trying to move stock that's already been brought. There is no impetus to move stock in digital, because it's one copy, on a server, which gets downloaded as many times as needed, and there is no cost to keep it there.

The sales come when the publishers want to make a bit of money off a game which isn't bringing in much, as it can drive new interest in the game.

[Zer0Flinch]

This is true. Don’t get me wrong tho I get some great deals but they are just that, deals, prices hardly ever see a serious hard drop. It’s a lot like apple if not as sophisticated where they charge based off an algorithm that tell them what people will pay. Like how “a christmas story” is 2.99$ every day except the day before or of Christmas when it is 5.99$

[Army_of_Darkness]

It's true that new releases cost the same, which is ridiculous and all but in the long run I've noticed how the price of the digital versions drop a lot faster in comparison to the physical ones. I've saved a shitload of money by just waiting a few months and purchasing the games for 40-60% off during those PS+ sales. You do that you'll be golden ;)

[Zer0Flinch]

Yeah I’ve gone from a D1 gamer to usually waiting a few months.

[zaherdab]

Game price increased on canada by 20$ from 60 to 80... its like the US price is the benchmark and all other countries should pay thr price in usd which is silly its not like ppl started making more money coz the currency rste in their country dropped...

[execution17]

Thats the main reason why I go digital for most games since I don't have to pay the taxes for a $90 hard copy

[zaherdab]

Yep tell me about it ... with 15 % tax the 80$ game is 90 ... ur right

[Iceball2000]

i much rather pay the tax to have the convince of selling, trading or lending out. i honestly don't think ill ever go fully digital... i just rather stretch my Canadian dollar.

[BrianOBlivion]

I buy A LOT of games every month but I haven't paid full price for a single game since that price hike (30% overnight?!?... f*ck that). I now ONLY buy games either deeply discounted or used. That essentially equates to zero profits out of my hard earned wages and that's the consequence publishers pay for being so greedy.
I have a backlog of 4 or 5 hundred games, so I have all the time in the world for a game to drop to a reasonable price.
I might possibly pay $90 for a new Bioshock or maybe Half-Life 3.

[letsa_go]

Meanwhile, in the US, we get new games for $47.99 or less with best buy gamers club. This generation is the cheapest I have ever paid for games! No price increases here.

[AntiZeal0t]

Best 30 bucks I ever spent to be honest. So many people are unaware of it too.

[Minute Man 721]

PSX it use to be $40, PS2 era $50, last gen EA wanted to charge $100

[edeprez]

I thought i remembered paying $49.99 for PS1 games like GT and MGS. My memory could be failing me though.

[CrimsonWing69]

Yet, N64 games near launch were 79.99 usd.

[Kribwalker]

Turok on the N64 was $129.99 at launch lol.

[Z501]

I seem to remember my Gamecube & PS2 games costing $39.99.
Strider for the Genesis was $70 or $75.
Don't get me started on Neo Geo prices. Sheeeeesh!

[crazyCoconuts]

Right. And the US list price for a full-size game has remained at $60 for a long time. Currency and tax changes in other countries probably effect the prices a bit there, but they seem to peg the US price. I do expect the price to go up at some point though due to the increased costs associated with making these incredibly detailed games

[subtenko]

yea its actually under $50, what ps2 games were, or was it $40? Its been so long but its close with those deals. Of course thats if you buy, what, 2-4 games minimum a year to warrant the cost. With playstation thats easy to do

[Aenea]

No price increases in rest of the EU either! Not even digital! Same as always, must be a currency thing...

Also I rarely buy digital, it's either €70 digital or €45-55 physical on day 1...

[Youngindy21]

Amazon Prime does the same for preorders.

[rainslacker]

Same here, except I use Amazon and pre-orders. Retailer doesn't make as much this way, but the publisher is making the same amount.

I'm still curious how long these types of plans are sustainable though, because the retailers still will want to make a profit off the games, and at that price, they can't be making more than a couple bucks per copy.

But take advantage while the getting is good. At least these companies aren't wholly reliant on games to make a profit, which is why GameStop just can't compete with a similar program.

[Mr_Wilson]

Gamers can be a different breed. . ..we often accept and defend things we shouldn't.

[Minute Man 721]

All these people that want digital there you go

[No Way]

It makes absolutely NO SENSE why digital games are more expensive (servers, maybe!?), but they cut the cost of having to make the case, cover art and the CD..

[Angelin]

CD must be more expensive than servers... multiply the price of a normal blu ray disk by 3 million and compare to 60gb of rented server space :)

[DarkZane]

That's only for Europe. In US and Canada, digital games are priced the same as physical copies. Of course, in Canada, you don't pay taxes on PSN, which can save you a lot of money depending on where you live (so the games are actually cheaper). This also applies to the US, but some states have starting charging taxes on PSN.

Also, US has Best Buy Gamer Club or Amazon Prime for a 20% discount. Gamer Club doesn't exist in Canada and Amazon Prime lowered their preorder savings to 10% (which means you don't even save enough anymore to make up for the huge taxes).

Apparently, Amazon service is also becoming shittier every year, whether you're on prime or not unless you live right next door to your warehouse.

[Mr_Wilson]

Case, cover art, CD are small costs.

Distribution and retailer take are way more significant, and yes digital should definitely be a lot cheaper than physical.

[rainslacker]

The console makers, and Steam, take about the same cut of a sale as a retailer would get from a physical copy. Depends on the retailer though, and their buying power and whether they go through a distributor or not.

[Mr_Wilson]

The console makers take their cut on physical sales as well as retailers. Besides which, this article is about first party games, so Sony taking their cut of the sale isn't really a factor.

[subtenko]

honestly i forgot about their bandwidth cost for digital downloads

[Mr_Wilson]

Changes to RRP will trickle down to retail as well. Retailers might choose to absorb it to an extent, but the increase is across the board.

[brando008]

I paid $80 CDN for God of War, making it the second game I've ever payed that much for. Worth every penny

[AnubisG]

I'll stick to my BB Gamers Club 20% off. Even now I don't buy games at full prices. I stopped doing that. I rather wait a few months or buy it at Best Buy. They can increase the price if they want. It just means that I will have to wait a few more months so the game drops to a price I deem it's worth buying for.

[subtenko]

months? try years. Every retailer even game consoles still charge full price for games but i guess its the publisher, vs the few that do more reasonable time-span deals.

[AnubisG]

What are you talking about? Within a month or two you can buy most games $10-$15 less rhan the original price. Than there is ebay where I can buy games for even less. Plus Best Buy gamers club where on day one games are 20% cheaper. Don't look at PSN as the standard. PSN sucks when it comes to prices.

[subtenko]

@AnubisG No you cant, I can prove it right now with new games that are 2-14 months old...

GTA V, More than 2 years old $59.99

https://www.bestbuy.com/sit...

YOU WERE SAYING?

Here's my qote again: Every retailer even game consoles still charge full price for games but i guess its the publisher, vs the few that do more reasonable time-span deals.

Whats that in that link....FULL PRICE. Even for others games that arent full price itll drop a FEW bucks if anything, YEARS later. Its BS

[manabyte77]

If you’re using your head, not your heart, why would anyone think prices would go down? There hasn’t been an increase in game prices since the PS2 era when games went to $60. That was pre-HD. So you now have the cost of making games in HD, which has been recently jacked further by the PRO/XOX with 4K and HDR. Teams have expanded exponentially in size since PS2. A 200+ man dev team would’ve been laughed at Back then. And games are taking infinitely longer to make. That’s a TON of extra cost. Compare the number of devs back then to now? It’s a fraction of what it was. Again, using your head and not your heart, games are way overdue for a price increase and we all know it. They should probably be $70 now, but they know the industry won’t accept it. And thus DLC, MT, online passes (remember those?), etc were born. These publishers HAVE to recoup that money to survive. It’s not greed, it’s survival. Its no surprise that publishers would sell digital games at the same price as physical as its one of the few ways they can recoup costs. With the exceptions of your major releases like God of War, most titles are done on super skimpy budgets or with the afformentioned “after the sale” practices listed above. I don’t like rising prices any more than anyone else, but what are they supposed to do? I’m sick of hearing about corporate greed when we haven’t seen a game increase in fifteen years. I’m more concerned about the health of my hobby. So if it means pocketing the savings of digital games over physical, so be it. Im sure I’ll get bombed with disagrees, but I’m sorry it’s true.

[jjb1981]

I remember my grandma paying $64.99 for Super Mario Bros. 3 on Nintendo when it came out. Games are actually cheaper now.

[franwex]

Yup. That’s not even covering inflation either. They were more expensive then in numerical value too.

[chris235]

first larty price increases but not for the players? what is this article about? seems too weird for me to click.

[Jinger]

"It is hard to speculate what they will do next with their pricing, since… you know… they haven’t actually got any games coming out that we can check."

Couldn't have checked State of Decay 2 instead of making this fanboy comment?

[Mr_Wilson]

But that's a budget release. Does Crackdown have a pre-order price?

[Jinger]

Even if it's a budget release, wouldn't the price still increase above the USD 29.99?

Also, no I don't think Crackdown 3 does, but I'd imagine it's going to be $59.99

[rainslacker]

I think the point is the cost in comparison to retail. Some people claim that digital is cheaper, but that isn't usually the case outside of sales on the various market places. Overall, retail is either the same price, or becomes cheaper much quicker.

To date, nothing has really shown that digital only would mean cheaper prices for the consumer overall. Retail is what it is though, and at retail, the powers that be will want to move their existing stock, even if it's at a loss, which results in savings for the consumer. There is no real need to try to move stock with digital though.

[Silly gameAr]

Did I miss something? I pay the same price i always did.

[masterfox]

huh?, every new release is still 59.99, God of War just bought it for 59.99, others are below, for example Shadow of Colossus is 39.99, mostly only games that goes above 59.99 are the ones with ridiculous special edition tags, so what exactly they are talking about ?, will not read the article with such ridiculous assumption and generalize it saying not for the Player, freaking webpage desperate for clicks.

[gangsta_red]

"will not read the article with such ridiculous assumption and generalize it saying not for the Player, freaking webpage desperate for clicks."

CLICKBAIT!!

[Kribwalker]

in the USA it’s consistent, but this article is talking UK pricing

[masterfox]

Exactly that's why they shouldn't generalize with such article title, it just makes it a clickbait.

[Gazondaily]

Lol! Read the article and you'll see it's about UK prices....

"freaking webpage desperate for clicks."

😂 As if the Killzone avatar wasn't bad enough

[masterfox]

so is indeed a webpage desperate for clicks, why not specify that is for UK only then?, generalizing the way they do with the articles title makes you think is happening everywhere but is not, in the end I was right with my initial comment ;).

And what's wrong with my Avatar ?, yes I'm super fan of Killzone a game not mean for noobs, also at least my my avatar name is not Septic, you should it google it first, first thing comes to mind is a Septic tank. Sorry lol ;)

[gangsta_red]

"..why not specify that is for UK only then?"

Well if you actually READ the article you would know this...but since you have already stated you haven't it's no wonder you're so confused and upset.

[Aenea]

EU prices are still the same as well...

[Gazondaily]

Lol keep embarrassing yourself...why not specific if it's for the UK only? Lol it's in the article you genius! 😂

[masterfox]

Is obviously you don't get the point, is not about the article's content, but oh well not wasting my time explaining it, are you new to the internet ? lol ;)

[Christopher]

Starts by saying they buy SP games on sale for cheap months after release, wonders why company is raising prices of new games to make up for people buying games at discounted prices months later...

Honestly, if you expected cheaper digitally, you haven't been paying attention. Look at digital media elsewhere, it's no cheaper than the physical and sometimes it's even more expensive. Why are we suddenly expecting digital games to defy the general theme here rather than in other mediums?

Edit: Where are the people who, when discussing lootboxes, say that games should cost more? Where did they go?

Edit 2: Also to note, there has been no price increases in the U.S. So, this is a territory-specific issue.

[Mr_Wilson]

Someone not being willing to pay the full RRP is the reason publishers raise the RRP higher? 🙄

[Christopher]

I'll combat RRP by never paying it at full price and complain when they raise the prices anyway?

[Mr_Wilson]

Yes, if the asking price is more than you are willing to pay, you don't pay it. Common sense prevails.

I'm surprised you're actually trying to suggest otherwise.

[Aenea]

Perhaps this is a currency exchange rate thing since this is about UK prices, in EU they are still the same...

Perhaps something else is to blame here? Brexit??

[Skuletor]

The funny part of this article, is that it's cheaper for me to buy physical first party Ps4 games from the UK with free shipping than to buy them digitally here on the Nz Playstation store.

[foster426]

Far Cry 4 is $40 on the playstation store. I bought it physically 2 years ago for $9.

[tontontam0]

I think these companies will start reducing online price if games are all digital and no physical copies.

Pricing makes sense if you think that these companies are just preventing overstock of physical discs, if digital games are priced too low it may encourage a lot of people to go digital. they already spent tons of money on shipping to retailers and manufacturing of the discs don't you think that it is such a waste of money if suddenly people started ignoring these physical discs.

[rainslacker]

Why would you think that? People will buy them at current retail prices, despite getting less of a product, so there is no reason for them to reduce the price.

On top of that, if there is no physical option, then the publishers control the entire distribution system, thus they can charge whatever they want. The market can only bear so much, but the publishers surely will push that as far as they can, and they don't reduce prices very fast now, so they aren't likely to just start because there are less options for them.