I'll do it also but if something seems a good deal I'll take it. But it seems like you see more better offers with the physical copies than with digital. I remember when the digital talk came out a lot of people "assumed" we would see some savings...even if it were $10....would be passed along. The question that needs to be asked is why not?

Pretty sure the question was answered earlier.

If Best Buy and Amazon can have a paid program where as a benefit the retail price of games is discounted by 20%, why can't Playstation or Xbox as well?

Yeah, why aren't Playstation and Xbox making a more concerted effort for people to go digital, like they truly want us to? They think we will just pay full price for digital with no discounts while giving up any stake in ownership of the content. Imagine if you were told that you had to pay regular prices for other goods like coffee makers, a pool table and even a vehicle but were told that you are not allowed to sell them and recoup some of your expenses if you are not truly satisfied with the product months down the road. Well, with games there is a chance you will not be satisfied two hours after you get it or even mere minutes after you start playing. I don't want a 60 dollar turd stinking up my hdd. I have seriously thought about trading in my No Mans Sky, which I have on disc, after realizing that it is not the game that I want to invest time in playing at the moment. If I had bought a digital copy then I'm just stuck and shit out of luck. No thanks!

Why should they? Best Buy and Amazon are retailers competing with each other and they're the ones lowering their profit margins to sell games, whereas it doesn't benefit Sony and Microsoft directly at all. Either way they're getting their licensing cost from the publishers already (there are small fees that go to Sony/Microsoft for a game release), and for Sony/Microsoft published games they would just be eating at their own profit with a direct discount.

From a developer/publisher perspective too, makes sense that they would want the additional profit rather then passing it on to consumers too given the high cost of game development these days.

I imagine the number crunchers have figured that whatever first week sales boost they would get from a discounted digital sale first week isn't worth it.

I know the conversation here is largely geared towards new games, but digital discounts on old titles are pretty satisfying to me on both consoles, at least as someone that only plays a few of the major releases right away.

Because digital games aren't ever re-sold or physically manufactured, you'd think the publishers would have some financial incentive to discount games sold that way -- even if they provided them to B&M retailers as digital cards to sell in-store at the same price (the way they do with PC versions of Minecraft).

If I'm the supplier and I'm screwing the people I'm supplying by selling directly to the public at a discount, why would any store bother to stock my stuff?

Even if they did discount the digital games, it isn't likely to kill the physical market for games. There might be a small shift in the market but there will still be people that prefer physical copies of their games. We could say the same thing about digital movies and music, which are still sold in their physical format in stores, at usually an even higher price than digital.

Agreed - due to connectivity, or data caps, whatever, there will still be a market for physical.
I have bought more digital content than I thought I would, but I buy almost all of it at sale prices. I lean toward physical release most of the time.
If there were some resale mechanism for digital content I would likely buy a lot more. As it is, I only buy stuff when it's free or really discounted.

The Division is the Amazon DOTD today for $25. I HIGHLY recommend it for that price.

Yea...for that it's worth it. I enjoyed the campaign storyline and if one can find a friend to go thru on the co-op part even better which two of us did. The game does look good and I just liked looking around. The detail of the city, streets, walking in buildings...even the trash looked good...really set the tone for the game.....cannot comment on the Dark Zone since Ubisoft has toyed with that as much as Bungie has with Destiny......

Count me as someone who prefers the digital versions. The reality is that 80% of games today, if not more, rely on some server infrastructure to keep running. You probably won't be able to play Destiny on a PS4 in 20 years. The audience for games also moves around so much that any game with a multiplayer component has a hard time getting an audience 12 months later. I remember trying to play MP on a lot of the XBLA arcade games and sometimes I'd stay in the MP queue for 20 minutes.

So there's not a real draw for me to keep the game for more than a year. I refuse to support Gamestop, and selling a game is not worth the hassle. Additionally, I like to be able to bring up the game I want to play without looking for discs. So I don't mind paying a bit extra for that.

I was mostly in for the all digital revolution... under the condition that stores like Best Buy or Target could sell the digital codes, as a card, at a discounted price.

They win because customers still come into the stores, Publishers and Microsoft win because it's cheap to print out those activation cards, and customers win because we still get the game cheap.

Sure it's mildly counter productive to being all digital, but I would have taken it.

It is such a hassle to walk into a Best Buy, walk to service counter and get a gift card for your trade in. I can't believe people even still do that!

Exactly. Before this gen started I had envisioned stores having a wall or endcap of gift cards (like they already do for restaurants and such) just for games. It seems like a no brainer. Assuming the same discounts/deals apply for the consumer, it's a win for everyone.

I also thought this would be the way to usher in the complete digital console for next gen (X2, PS5). It would ease consumers into the digital realm and away from physical media(instead of the brute force method MS wanted to implement). Seems like a lost opportunity to me.

Wasn't there also talk of taking a thumbdrive or other portable into a Gamestop or something to purchase and load up a game at a kiosk instead of using your own bandwidth?

Wasn't that the rumor around E3 when Microsoft announced the all digital XB1? I think that was just one of the things going around that they just threw out there and never gave any more details on.

I'd totally be the guy with a super slow writing 64gb USB 2.0 thumb drive

Get the PC version of Rayman Origins for free.

https://club.ubi.com/#!/en-US/ubi30

Yep! When I copy all of my teacher files over at the end of the year to my USB, it can take anywhere from 1-2 hours to get them all done. I can't imagine having to drop off a USB and return a few hours later just to pick it up. With the sizes of the games, the net caps companies put on us along with the still not quite as fast as it should be PSN, I will continue getting the hard copy for retail games. Indy games are a completely different matter but they are also a lot cheaper. The only indy game I regret paying as much as I did for it was The Witness.

Thanks!

Star Wars Battlefront is $19.99 ($15.99 GCU) and Mirror's Edge Catalyst is $29.99 ($23.99 GCU) as part of Best Buy's Labor Day Sale.

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/promo/video-games-20160902

Aren't thumb drives cheap enough to just have them preloaded with a game and a logo thrown on? Buy, take home, done.

Why not just load a blu Ray type disc with the game and sell those? Or was there going to be some authentication method on the usb copy to prevent piracy? What's the difference?

Remember when PS games came in space saving jewel cases, and then they went to these DVD cases to have more shelf presence? I don't think game makers want just a bunch of tiny cards on the shelf, but maybe times have changed.

It depends on the shelving. Cards pretty much have to be facing out, no spine, which means they could be the same "size" as a facing out DVD case or PC game box.

Game cards just work differently than physical copies though, in terms of retail. Typically, they have to be "activated" at the register before they're usable, to prevent otherwise rather easy shoplifting, so there's no real cost to unused game cards to the publisher, reducing the likelyhood they'd drop the price on the game rather than just let the unsold copies get destroyed. Also, the retailer typically doesn't pay any money to the publisher except for the sold copies, so they're not invested in clearing out stock via sales vs destruction either.

But mostly, I don't think retailers typically get as much of a cut from game codes as physical copies, and there's no reselling of used games possible.



Nope, discs are still way cheaper, especially when looking at the 50GB capacity of Blu-ray, which is probably $1-2 per disc vs something closer to $10 on USB, even at wholesale. It's a 5x-10x increase in cost.

I do wish there was a way to maybe at least load updates onto a USB from a place like Gamestop, where they could have a kiosk preloaded with the updates to be transferred. That'd probably ease the burden on those without fast internet and/or bandwidth caps considering the multiple-gigabyte patches some games have this generation. It'd also allow for those games to be patched long after the online servers are taken offline.