this post was submitted on 14 Jun 2023
46 points (100.0% liked)

No Stupid Questions

35393 readers
4 users here now

No such thing. Ask away!

!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.

The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:

Rules (interactive)


Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.

All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.



Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.

Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.



Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.

Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.



Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.

That's it.



Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.

Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.



Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.

Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.

On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.

If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.



Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.

If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.

Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.



Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.



Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.

Let everyone have their own content.



Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.



Credits

Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!

The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
top 17 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

You don't calculate the price of something by totalling up the cost to produce it and then adding a bit for profit - you calculate it based on what people are willing to pay. That doesn't really change if it's digital or physical. Some people might be willing to pay a bit more for a physical copy, but probably not many and you'd turn off more people by having the higher price.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This. And a lot of people (myself included) are willing to pay more for the convenience and immediacy of digital. Sure, there's always going to be people that consider themselves collectors that will keep physical going, but I think a lot of those people would be surprised at how small of a minority they are among the general populace that just wants to play a game

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

Im just a cheapskate r/patiengamer that prefers to buy used or on sale and sell the game after Ive completed it and have no intention of replaying it.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago

Because manufacturing the physical copy is a very small part of the expense in creating the game. It also has no practical effect on a players enjoyment or likeliness to purchase the game.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

Prices are made up and capitalism is one big shell game

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

$60 in 2005 is $93 in 2023

Halo 3 cost $60 million to make and market.
Halo Infinite cost >$200 million.

Games have just become so much more complex, detailed, and expensive to make that companies basically took the relatively minor cost of printing discs to keep prices down a bit longer.

Plus, why would one company make less money on their digital games if no other company is doing it and therefore pressuring them to? Companies will charge what people will pay for. If people paid $60 to drive to GameStop for a copy, why would they refuse to pay it to get the game more conveniently?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

I remember games costing $60 in the 90s as well.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

Because price is not the main factor in people's decision to buy games, and so they can get away with it. It's similar to the move from physical tickets to download only, the cost per unit is lower for the provider but by keeping the price the same their margin is larger and they lose next to no sales.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

I think the better way to ask this question is “why do physical games not cost more than digital copies.”

Nowadays the majority of game sales are digital, which means that publishers are going to set prices so that they can sell a digital game with an optimal profit. According to this article, physical retailers cause price parity because raising the price of physical copies would cause them to not stock your game (which would of course open shelf space to other publishers). In all likelihood, physical copies will go up in price once they are only stocked by niche retailers and/or online distributors (who don’t have the shelf space issue since most folks already know what they want by the time they browse Amazon).

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

The price of the game is mostly the license (paying for the development), not making the box.

With digital games, the publisher controls the price; there is no competition. With physical copies, they have to share some of the profit with the stores, i.e. if the publisher expects that the retail price will be $60 (and is selling it for that price on their online platform), they may have to sell it to stores for $40 (I don't know what the actual numbers are).

Stores compete with each other, so a large online store like Amazon (which has lower operating costs than others) may decide that they can still make a decent profit when reselling it for $50 instead of $60, so they sell it cheaper so people buy from them (giving them e.g. $6 of profit if their cost to sell it is $4, rather than $0 because the customer buys elsewhere).

Now, you may have noticed that the publisher could sell the digital edition for $40 and still make the same amount of money. So, why don't they do it? I think it's a combination of

  • greed/"because they can" (if people will pay $60, why charge less)
  • not wanting to undercut retail too much, because otherwise stores may not consider it worth putting the game on the shelf, which is advertising the game and increasing sales. This may also involve agreements between the stores and the publisher.
[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Why should they be? As others have pointed out none of the prices are based on cost to make and distribute. At least not until you get down to the bargain basement, clearance level prices. The only thing making digital cheaper would accomplish is pissing off retail partners and shareholders.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Backend developers are much, much more expensive than warehouse workers.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

It's largely retailers that drive it. As @Nugget_in_biscuit said, retailers are going to be pretty miffed if they're selling a game above its digital price.

However, some games have found a way around this. Overwatch first came in two editions; Digital Edition and some kind of Premium edition that had a few skins. The only disc copy was the Premium edition; and it didn't even give you much more. This was their way of discounting the Digital edition by a bit, and get more people to buy it.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Consoles: You can usally play games on more then one console at the same time.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Retailers wouldn't be happy because a lot less people would buy physical copies. At least, that's how it started, not so sure how well that would hold up today.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Pricing is based off what you will pay, not what you should pay. You also don’t get a discount for using the self checkout in a grocery store. That one attendant is replacing 6-9 registers, and they’re saving all those salaries, but they pass the savings on to themselves.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

If they were cheaper, retailers wouldn't sell it, hindering the game's distribution and popularity.

load more comments
view more: next ›