Topic: What should the price of a digital retail game be?

We've had discussions about this before, but I don't think we've had full topics about the price alone. What better time to start it then the eShop release of Pilotwings Resort in Europe?

Here's my stance. A brand new game, released at the same time or slightly later or earlier should be the same price as a physical copy if the developer so desires. Some people would view it as lowering the value of their own product, and retailers wouldn't even stock it. While I think that situation is a bit ridiculous, it at least has reason.

However, older games like Pilotwings Resort and Star Fox 64 3D NEED to be cheaper then the MSRP prices. Every other service that offers retail games for download typically puts games that have already been out for some time as much cheaper then MSRP, especially if they didn't sell well or have been devalued already. Example of 83% devaluation on Steam: http://store.steampowered.com/app/21670/

at least 5€ cheaper.
and there should be sales from time to time when the game gets older.

nintendo has a different opinion...sadly

It's not that Nintendo has a "different opinion" to others - as many, many others have said in the past, it's more likely to be the case that Nintendo has no choice but to publish these games at their recommended retail price to ensure they don't anger retailers (in the UK at the very least). It'd be nice if they could decrease the price after a year or 18 months or something, but for all we know they might not be able to do that. Third-party developers can price differently if they want because they most likely have separate agreements with retailers. Nintendo can't afford to get on the wrong side of major retailers, hence the digital pricing at standard RRP.

I'd say well below retail price at least 20% below, they should be trying to please the consumer more than the retailer.

As cheap as possible.

10% lower is fine in my opinion for most games. You don't want to get on the bad side of retailers after all. What bugs me is games that weren't worth the MSRP prices to begin with. I'm looking at you PilotWings Resort! You should have been a $20 launch game for the eShop. Likewise, do Star Fox 64 3D and Ocarina of Time 3D need to be the same price as all-new games? I'd think they could knock off up to 25% of the price.

Well, at the very least, games like ones featuring Mario can stay at MSRP if they so desire, though I doubt sales will be high, because practically every retailer still charges $40. $29.99 is considered sale price for those, while most would consider it a rip-off for Pilotwings.

For the US
3DS $40
WiiU $60

The retail price Amazon sells it new for minus packaging and shipping costs.
And the price should go down to reflect how old the game is.

This is all common sense, unfortunately game publishers don't have much of that these days...
I mean seriously, £45 for Dishonoured on PSN when i can get it for £25 on Amazon? £40 for Pilotwings on the eShop when I can get it for £20 used on Amazon? What are publishers thinking?

How cheap the digital games are should reflect how old they are. Sony and Microsoft do better jobs of this than Nintendo, to say the least, and Steam does an awesome job at it.

However, digital games should be cheaper anyway. It's absurd to charge the same price when the publishers are making so much more money on it.
From Eurogamer:

"If you bought a game in the run-up to Christmas and it cost £39.99 to buy, approximately £7 (17.5 per cent) went on VAT (that figure increased to 20 per cent as of 4th January), while £10.50 (27 per cent) went to the shop and £12 (30 per cent) to the publisher.

The rest goes on what's called cost of goods: the nuts and bolts of videogame publishing. 65 pence (two per cent) goes on distribution, £1.75 (four to five per cent) on marketing, and an £8 (20 per cent) licence fee goes to the platform holder (Microsoft, Nintendo or Sony). All these costs are paid for by the game's publisher. If a third-party is behind the game, approximately £3 goes to the developer, or 25 per cent of the publisher's revenue after deductibles, although developers are often paid in a series of advances as they meet milestones."

Why in the world should it cost the same to buy digitally when the publishers don't have to charge nearly the same amount to get the same amount of money out of it?

That's effing idiotic when you compare it to the likenesses of PSN and Steam with their permanent price drops and sales.

Well, to be frank, I don't think anybody cares about the box and inserts nearly enough to want to buy the game for $15 (dev + publisher costs) over $40. If the game is brand-new, it could be the same like PSN, or they could already get a start by charging $5 less. If old, it needs to drop. Seriously, that Pilotwings price is ridiculous.

@rayword45 I think we can all agree on the price of older games. If I can buy stuff for $20 or less physically, there's no reason to charge $40. It's keeping people from buying digitally.

As for charging a little less, that's the way that it should be. That's how it is for Vita games (granted, you have to put them on overpriced proprietary memory cards, so that kind of offsets the price).

Bumping, because finally a publisher (Aksys) has an ounce of sense about retail pricing (not counting Order Up because the physical release didn't exist in US).

Bit. Trip SAGA Original MSRP: 39.99 USD
Current price on Amazon: 16.49
eShop charge: 14.99

Pilotwings Resort Original MSRP: 39.99
Price on Amazon: 12.99
What Nintendo charges: N/A in USA, but in Europe, 45 freaking Euros (which would end up as 39.99 in US)

...Using the 2009 Bionic Commando as an example? Wow, I even forgot that game existed...

ANYWAYS: While I do feel that there should be a price reduction for downloadable versions of retail titles, I feel they shouldn't be more than anything above 25% of the MSRP. 25% will entice those digital shoppers while not breeding a Steam-like culture where some individuals constantly say "Eh, I'll wait until it's cheaper" when a game is 75% off. from the reduced MSRP of $10 US.

I think they should be the same price as retail, until the retail goes down then be the same as the price drop

Nintendo doesn't have the digital numbers to be lower than retail.

I've seen some obscure programs offer PC games for pretty cheap downloads. I'm sure they can afford to be ever so slightly lower then retail, especially for old games that retail really low now like Pilotwings and Star Fox 64 3D.

Retail MSRP - Manufacturing/Shipping/labor costs + 15% extra profit over retail = a good price imo. Hopefully we'd get a $5-10 discount on that model

$15