Topic: Pre-purchase digitally - The Pros and many Cons: But I have a solution

There are some products that have a high digital price because the publisher won't bend: Disney and Nintendo are two examples. I won't buy Star Trek on iTunes because CBS/Paramount insists on pricing the series downloads at double the price I can pay for the DVD box sets for some reason.

Again the reason is about revenue control and trying to maximise it. If Nintendo games were selling zero copies via digital download I expect they would take action to change that. I think that the Club Nintendo replacement is going to do a lot more to reward customer loyalty than Club Nintendo did, but I've never felt hard done by because Nitnendo makes good games and that's what it's all about.

I think I am more butt hurt than anything. I love Splatoon and support it full heartedly. I pre-purchased it before playing the testfire. However I won't get the awesome Splatoon Smash Costumes for free makes me a little sad. But just like the other Mii costumes I will buy them day one

In my book the value of anything is determined by what someone is prepared to pay for it.

To me I'm more likely to pay full price for a game if I know that I can recoup some of that money if I want to by selling it on. In the case of many Wii U games, the used price is often very close to the retail price. So a physical copy is the better investment. End of.

What if I take a chance on a download and don't like it? I'm stuck with it. Money down the drain. No customer satisfaction, no refund. Bummer.

Physical, from a financial perspective, is the no-brainer choice. So if the majority of game buyers think like me, it makes sense to charge more for physical copies to exploit that popularity.

From the developer's perspective, physical is a bain because profit is lost to middle men and sales are lost to the used market. So again, it makes sense to charge more for physical to account for those losses.

I want physical more. Developers want physical less. Keeping physical prices equal to digital seems strange. Having physical cheaper than digital just seems downright stupid....

...apart from the point made by someone else that it may be out of loyalty to bricks & mortar retailers.

That is under a narrow lens. Physical games have a change of being scratched and/or lost and they take up storage space. Digital games take up no space and I don't have to worry about a game being lost or scratched. If my hard drive fails I get a new one and download all my games again. A lot of people point out that digital store servers may not be active forever and that might be true, but I know Steam isn't going anywhere any time soon and the Wii Shop is still active since its launch almost 7 years ago. Once these servers shut down it is similar to once a game is out of print. It might be a little easier to find a game out of print than a game that is off a server but I believe it will be easier to hold onto my digtial games longer than physical ones, with how much I move and how little storage space I have plus if I ever have kids. There are bonuses to both physical and digital and both hold value for different people. If physical benefits have more value to you then you will hold more value in a physical version. If the digital benefits have more value to you then you will hold more value in a digital version. Since they both have value and the product we receive is virtually the same, shouldn't they be the same price?

Please spell check before you repeat yourself and add nothing to the conversation. Also as far your scratched disc defense as to the benefit of going digital is silly. They have several products, both consumer and professional, where you can get a disc resurfaced. Plus Gamestop, Walmart and other stores offer a couple dollar insurance deal for physical discs where they will outright replaced damaged discs.

Gcunit gets it, he/she understands that the only real reason a digital copy of a game is the same as a physical copy because they have a partnership with a lot of the big box stores and they don't want to hurt that.

@Quinnsdaddy11

According to my spell checker, I miss spelled digital once... shame on me. I am sorry that you feel like you have to defend your stance so much. I am trying to express how there are advantages and disadvantages to both physical and digital. If you don't want to listen that is your choice. There is a reason why I am going completely digital and why I am ok with paying the same price as someone that buys physical. You don't have to agree with my reasons but I was hoping you could at least acknowledge them, I guess I was wrong about that. Feel free to keep having this conversation with others, I am done talking to a wall that keep repeating herself.

@DefHalan
You just repeat exactly what you want over and over without responding directly to any new points brought up. You also hammered onto the idea that I somehow want to pay next to nothing for my digital games, which is also untrue. You do not have the capability, or at least don't express the capability, to really read a response and then come back with a question or statement about that response. From the beginning I simply stated it would be great for all pre-order DLC to be given as a digital pre-order, or to give us a slight discount in cost, such as $5 or $6.

Overall I am excited that you will finally leave my thread alone and move on with your life, I wish the best for you but I will not miss you.

Which completely defeats the purpose of pre-order DLC...

If you like digital, get the digital version. If you like physical, get the physical game. It's not that difficult, both have their pros and cons. To me this entire thread comes off as ''I want to pay less for my games''.

How shouldn't I recieve any reward for pre-ordering it digitally? Also in the UK for playing the testfire they get 10% off getting the digital copy. This again was never about paying loads less for digital copies this was wondering why we aren't given the same level of appreciation for buying a version of the game we can never trade in.

Not everyone flips their games as soon as they've beaten them. The way I see it I don't sell my Blu-Rays, DVDs or CDs as soon as I've experienced them once. I don't even sell them if I didn't thoroughly enjoy them. So I don't do it for games either. I have never done this even back in the 90s where every kid sold their entire collection of SNES/GameBoy games just to get an N64 with one game. It just always seemed like a stupid thing to do. Why trade in 5 games for 1 new one when these 5 games I have are still playable? Or even worse an entire collection just for a new console?

And here's the thing you haven't taken into account. People are lazy. On previous platforms I'd usually play whatever game was in the system at the time. Because when I turn the thing on I don't usually know what I'm going to play. If the disk is already in there? I'll play that. And it'll usually be something like Mario Kart because it's the sort of game you play for 10mins after playing something else for an hour. On my Wii U? I got Smash and Kart digitally so even if I buy a game on disk it'll stay in there for longer. Which means I beat more games, which means digital games give me "more value". On my Wii I obviously got everything on a disk, I've beaten only half of those games. On my Wii U? Between having digital copies of Smash and Kart and the convenience of off-TV play? I've beaten over 90%.

Are we talking about Nintendo games or not? Because except for Hyrule Warriors, I don't recall any Nintendo game ever coming to store with pre-order DLC (and HW's pre-order DLC was included in the DLC packs and available in the eShop later iirc). When it comes to Nintendo, it's usually the digital version that gets the better deal at launch, getting the 10% off of Splatoon for downloading the global testfire, or the 10% discount on Kirby and the Rainbow Paintbrush if you had bought a Kirby game from the eShop before. Although both discounts are only for Europe, I give you that.

Anyway, to get back the the pre-order DLC, the entire point of pre-order DLC is that retailers can make their ''version'' of the game more attractive. ''You can get Hyrule Warriors everywhere, but if you want that fancy Twilight Princess costumes, you need to buy the game at our place.'' Retailers pay Nintendo to secure these deals. If the digital copy came with all the pre-order DLC, then why even bother buying the game from a specific store that only comes with one pre-order bonus?

Also, I never claimed that you're arguing for bargain prices, we know that by now. By getting the digital version, you're getting the advance of nothing having to store all the discs or care for them. You're getting reduced loading times (at least in XCX). The advantage of not having to swap a game every time you want to play something different. No harddrive noise, etc. If it wasn't for the neat box-arts we get with the physical games, I would've gone completely digital.

@Octane

Yes I love the benefits of digital hence why all my Wii U games are digital (thanks in part to my 128 gb flash drive plugged in the back of my Wii U). I think even if digital pre-orders through the eShop were given all the DLC, it wouldn't stop people from buying physical discs from Gamestop and other stores. A lot of people love the ability to have a physical disc, and the chance to trade it in if they hate it. Also I stated a great solution is to give digital DLC to digital copies of the game for a preorder bonus and give physical preorder bonuses for physical copies of the game.