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Deals on Live vs Store Prices


Destro
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Would you buy digital even at Double/Triple price to avoid having to go to the store?  

109 members have voted

  1. 1. Would you buy digital even at Double/Triple price to avoid having to go to the store?

    • Yeah, one click and its done, i download everything
      1
    • No, i rather save some money
      27
    • No, no matter what, i want to own a physical copy if it exist
      23
    • No, can't sell back digital downloads...
      14
    • I would buy digital if it was same price as in store
      6
    • I only get digital stuff when it comes to huge sales (5$ or less)
      38


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I just want to start a discussion about prices of video games. Even tough some of us have more money than others, we all like to spare cash and pay the less possible right?

 

If like me you are mostly an old schooler , maybe you prefer to buy your games in stores, own a physical copy of the disc/case, would it be for shelving, the possibility of reselling, or simply because you don't want to bother downloading it and having it take space on your HDD. Usually when a game is release, by a year(or less) it usually drop price significantly. Of course huge games like COD, Halo and the rest of the very popular titles still sell for the full price for a while, but what i call "small games" (the games you more or less buy at low prices, play once then sell back for exemple) usually drop prices pretty fast.

 

At the moment i am doing Fist of the North Star : Ken's Rage. The game ain't stellar but not horrible either, i do around a level or 2 a day, and the game is pretty long to 1000 without being hard tough, as you simply have to play the game(even on easy) stories to unlock the achievements.

 

Thanksfully this game is a 1000 with no achievements for DLCs, even tough there is DLCs. I was looking at them by curiosity, i heard you could buy costumes for characters and missions... The first thing i notice is wow... 3$ for one costume for the main character, 6$ for 3 costumes for the secondary characters. A pack of 2 missions for 7$... Hell i paid that game 10$ brand new a year ago !!!(just decided to start it now)

 

And now the fun thing, the game sell for 30$ on the market place... wich 3 time the price i paid for a NEW copy, not pre-owned or whatever. A pack of 2 small missions would cost me almost the price of the full game on retail disc.

 

So of course its nothing new, but i would like to get your opinion on that. Of course like i said for this game, its pretty long already, no achievements for DLC so not really a point to buy stuff... so i can't complain too much, not like i would like to do that DLC so badly. But i must admit for 1$ i may had bough a costume for the female character... yeah pixel lover side of me, but well... for 1$.. but certainly not for 6$(even if i get 2 more costumes)

 

This is a Thecmo-Koei game, and another one of those is Dead or Alive that does that. Over the top pricing on costumes, and the worst thing is that they release so much of them, i wouldn't be surprise they actually sell a bunch of these... When they released the Ultimate version, they could have including every costumes they released in the original version... no no they didn't do that, would remove the possibility to sell them again.

 

Anyway where i am going is that why pricing on the marketplace and esecially DLCs neve go down? I know they have sales for one week, special sales also at christmas time or whatever... Now they even give free games(kudos for that) but i wonder why the DLC don't drop at a permanent price fitting the real price of the game, in store. Why the digital version, wich cost them nothing to produce(no case, no disc, simply storage on there server) never drop at the same price as the store also.

 

Instead of doing HUGE SALES for only a week, like when Max Payne 3 was 3.74$ couple weeks ago, why they just don't lower the price at a permanent 10$ or so...

 

I don't understand the huge gap between stores and marketplace. Even tough i have to move my ass to the store to get a game, i rather go buy it at 10$ (with the possibility to resell it when im done) then pay 30$ downloading it.

 

Of course, im more a retail disc type of guy from the start, even at lower prices im not sure i would buy games that much on the marketplace, like i said because i like to sell back my games, i don't have a huge storage space either.. (160 GBs) but i would probably pick some of them sometimes if they would reflect the real price...

 

So i would like to know what you think of that, what you usually do, your habbits and such...

 

I also added a poll. And one last thing, sometimes i see 75% off from the dashboard... i check it up expecting the game to be 5$ or less, only to see it at 10$... when the game REAL price is 10$ in store... hahaha ok more or less there huge sale represent the games true price...

Edited by Destro
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I sell a lot of my games, so I went with "No, I wouldn't be able to sell my digital downloads."

 

I only played about 120 Xbox 360 games last gen and about 60 of those were bought (not rented) and there's only about 14 sitting on my self today. Thus, it's easy to see that I prefer physical copies over digital, and at the same time, I sell too many games to be bothered with digital. All the while I enjoy keeping what I feel like are quality titles to glance at on the shelf. So yeah, long story short; unless digitial games can be sold, I'll go with physical, and on top of that, if it's a game I REALLY like (Halo, Splinter Cell, Fallout, The Witcher, The Elder Scrolls), then I'll always go physical.

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I sell back most of my retail games so I'll only buy digital if:

 

+it's an arcade game

+it's a super cheap retail game

+the cost of the digital game is cheaper than what the retail game is after selling it

 

If a retail game is somehow $10 digital, and $20 for a physical copy that can only be resold for less than $10, I'll buy digital.

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When you said only 120 games i was like "only???" lol thinking its still huge but turned out i played 185 games so far !!! WOAAA didn't tough i played that much. Of course i count all the arcade games and such but still... i didn't had the impression i played so much of them. I rent very few games personally, cause im a slow player for doing solos. Most of the games in my list where bough, lots of them at small prices 5-10-15$ either in stores or from other players. Thats why im a proud defender of selling back used games lol.

 

I must have borrow 10-15 or so from friends and a while ago i was a member of an online renting service, wich unlike the video club let you played the game as long as you wanted, paying monthly but at my slow rate i realized i would do 1 or 2 game a month and therefore i would had paid the same price buying those in store at slow price(cause they rarely shiped me the game first on my list... if you wanted to reserve and such you had to pay more etc etc. Not to mention by period i was not feeling like doing any solo, would rather just play online so money wasted.

 

But any case, on all of those games, exept the arcade ones of course, i don't own many of those... probably 20 or so... i still have around 10 sitting on the shelve that i have not even started... so can't count them...

 

But anyway, im going kinda off topic there, point of the thread was not really to comapre who played the most lol.

 

Im just wondering why they don't adjust the pricing on the marketplace, or is it the store that decide what price they will sell? I mean does microsoft/the developers have any word to say? or not? I mean when they start lowering price, often they sell anyway new copies at 30 or so... i guess the developers agree to have them sell cheaper, cause the store would not make any money if the developers or editors(whoever is in charge of marketing) would sold them the game at full price.

 

I know after a while they don't carry copies of certain games, and more or less often the new games i get for 10-15$ are left overs that they lowered the price to get rid of them but still....

 

In any case, i would expect them to adjust a bit. Not saying they should give away everything, but its crazy when i go on the market place and see a game like Ghost Recon AW for 20$... the game is like the oldest 360 Game more or less and sell for 5$ in store... yet they ask 20 for it.. old games like that should be at a regular 5$... 10 at most.

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I prefer buying a physical copy any day, as I like to trade games in once they are finished. I have bought a couple of digital downloads, as there have been cracking sales. Bioshock for example. Now that game I will play again.

 

I don't own many arcade games, and the ones that are on this profile, I bought on my old profile a while ago, so I got more gaming time from them. Had a couple of the free GwG games too. But now I will take any cheap deal, as I have a one year old and one on the way in September, so gaming will be a rarity for me.

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Well, I pretty much never sell my games, so being unable to resell them isn't a problem for me. For me the problem of going digital has been the download times. However, having experienced a couple downloads on the One now, it seems a lot quicker than downloads of similar size on the 360 were, so maybe that won't be the problem I feared it would be. So as long as the download is the same price, or cheaper, than the cost of a NEW copy in store, I'll generally go with the download.

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Its price point alone for me. I don't keep/collect games unless it's something I intend on playing again, and if it's cheaper to download then i'll download it, play it, then delete it. I constantly trade in my physical copies, I only have about a dozen right now on my shelf and all are expendable if there is something out that I want. Most games can be had again for a cheaper price down the line, so I don't see a point of clinging onto them just to have them drop in value while I never play them again.

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When you said only 120 games i was like "only???" lol thinking its still huge but turned out i played 185 games so far !!! WOAAA didn't tough i played that much. Of course i count all the arcade games and such but still... i didn't had the impression i played so much of them. I rent very few games personally, cause im a slow player for doing solos. Most of the games in my list where bough, lots of them at small prices 5-10-15$ either in stores or from other players. Thats why im a proud defender of selling back used games lol.

 

Yeah, I was very selective in my games during 7th gen and never played a lot. That's why when some people say they've played or even COMPLETED 300, or 500, or 600+ games, I scratch my head. I could never play that many. There's so many games that are just nonsense and not worth playing or spending money on.

 

Anyways, yeah, to avoid going off-topic, I also never have gotten into Arcade games either. I will probably always go physical as mentioned. I'll only go digital if the game is $20+ cheaper and it's not something big like the games I mentioned before.

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I hate buying digital. A friend of mine had bought a crap ton of games on his account and his idiot of a brother got his account permanently banned. And all his games went out the window when the Xbox 360 he had died and had to go buy a new one.

 

Thats another factor indeed i didn't tough about. Of course my account is a nogo for anybody. I live alone but even when i had roomates, girlfriends or whatever, they knew to NOT touch my account, even tough once a girlfriend did on a small arcade games and i gave her one hell of a speech about it... lol

 

But thanks the password system there is, or i remember when i was staying at the girlfriends place after she played on my account, i was aways pulling away my HDD for a while when i got to sleep... since the box was in a commune area.

 

In any case, going back to arcade games... im a bit disapointed the way they changed it so much with the years... at first arcade games where old classics that you could download for 400 MS points and 50 mb, or small new games. Now you download one and its almost a freaking retail game... as muchas 2 GB sometimes, some games are pricing for so much.

 

SOUL CALIBUR 2, i want to buy that, i want to replay that and unluck achievements, play it online, but holy cow 20$ ... when they released Quake 3, Perfect Dark and other classics they where 800 pts... That game shouldn't be more than 15$ at MOST.

 

So its VERY rare lately i buy arcade titles, because of the price they are release along the fact i can't resell them...

 

It piss me off to know in a few years these titles will go down the toilet... Not saying i keep everything i buy, but hey at least i make a few bucks of the stuff i sell back and what i keep i usually replay it eventually, when i feel like it.

 

With those games, if they take down the market place, and my HDD crash or whatever... then its done... gone and out. Very irritating... I wish they would sell physical copies as compilation and such...

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For console games, I prefer physical. There's just something satisfying about having the game in your hand or looking at your library of titles. Out of the nearly 300 retail 360 games in my collection, I only have 3 titles I purchased digitally, and that's only because they were stupid low sales.

 

My 3DS has a better digital to physical ratio (2 out of 12 games), but one was a promotional giveaway, and the other just made much more sense to have the digital version (Animal Crossing).

 

Now my PC on the other hand, is almost pure digital, with just under 300 games tied to my Steam account.

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I hate buying digital. A friend of mine had bought a crap ton of games on his account and his idiot of a brother got his account permanently banned. And all his games went out the window when the Xbox 360 he had died and had to go buy a new one.

 

 

 

Lol ouch. This is why I watch my nephew like a hawk when he is on my 360. If I ever became account banned I would be crushed. Ontopic I have a 250 gig hardrive with 74 gigs left so space is not a problem. I would choose the save money option. I tend to buy physical copies as they are usually cheaper then digital. I love how Dishonored is 30$ on demand yet 20$ new everywere else. Gears of war on demand is 20$ yet 3$ used at Gamestop lol. If there is a game I have been wanting that is on sale on demand like Borderlands 2 for 10$ then I will buy it digitally.

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Lol ouch. This is why I watch my nephew like a hawk when he is on my 360. If I ever became account banned I would be crushed. Ontopic I have a 250 gig hardrive with 74 gigs left so space is not a problem. I would choose the save money option. I tend to buy physical copies as they are usually cheaper then digital. I love how Dishonored is 30$ on demand yet 20$ new everywere else. Gears of war on demand is 20$ yet 3$ used at Gamestop lol. If there is a game I have been wanting that is on sale on demand like Borderlands 2 for 10$ then I will buy it digitally.

 

I know what you mean by watching him like a hawk. My idiot cousin went on my account and decided to mod it. Was it ever a surprise when I came home to find my Xbox account banned forever. Now he wonders why I never let him go on my 360...

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I love how Dishonored is 30$ on demand yet 20$ new everywere else.

 

That's where the sales come in. I bought Dishonored and all DLC last year on the marketplace for a total of $25. Since that's less than a GOTY edition it works out as a good deal.

 

Unless there's a better sale on Xbox Live than a retail copy would likely get to, I buy at a store. The price on the marketplace is always so high for a long time. If you just wait a month or two the games usually go on sale in one of the stores. The only issue I have with digital is the amount of space it takes on my HDD.

 

Trading in doesn't bother me because I'm slow to finish my games. By the time I'm ready to trade-in a game it has usually lost most of its value. I have traded in a bunch of games before and I'm glad I could, but that's not going to determine which way I buy. Plus, I keep the majority of what I have if I ever want to play it again.

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I always want a physical copy.

 

I don't sell my games - though lately I've considered selling the games I absolutely will never play again - but I like that I have the ability if I so choose. That's one plus. Unwrapping a game and taking in that new game smell if really awesome too. The main attractions are that A) they're cheaper, and B) I will always be able to play them, regardless of whether Live is down, shut down, or I get banned.

 

Until Microsoft figures it out and starts offering Steam-like prices and deals I won't even consider switching over to digital content, but even then point B will always be a large consideration.

 

However, I have recently started buying GoD titles. Sometimes the price is good enough to outweigh my preference, but for that to happen the game needs to be $5 or less, so naturally my digital library of retail games is quite small.

Edited by dakisbac
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I'd rather save some money. I'll start going fully digital once digital games have cheaper prices by default.

 

Sure, being able to say "Xbox Go to..." is amazing, but I like saving money; plus buying discs saves some hard drive space, even with the external support coming it's something I'll worry about. Got dat OCD man.

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I hate seeing games. Have a collection of about 120, plus the 50-60 games on my console.

It all depends on the price. Say Thief on sale for half price, you would be stupid not to take that, even though it is digital only, you saving 40 to 50 bucks.

I also only buy games I know I am going to want to play, if it doesn't appeal to me within 10 seconds of reading about it or picking the case up I don't bother with it.

 

Another thing you have to deal is even though a game may be 5 bucks in store and 0 online, is that game going to be easy to find, if it is get it, if not don't worry.

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I think i will always choose a physical copy over digital ( unless its an arcade game, hugely discounted or game with gold ) , i like having something to show for the money and cant beat breaking the trusty xbox seal tape and cracking open a new game, and even though it seems to be a bit of a rarity these days i love a good instruction manual.

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As much as I like buying my games used, I'm slowly leaning towards buying games digitally, and you could say Games for Gold got me into that bandwagon. Still, unless a game's part of GFG, I only buy a game digitally if A) it's a game I really like, B) it's on sale and/or C) it may be delisted (especially true if it's a digital-only game).

 

Take Marvel vs. Capcom 2, for example. I've wanted to play it for awhile (after all, I played it a lot on the Dreamcast and PlayStation 2), but once I heard it was getting delisted and a heavy discount, I had to jump on it.

 

While this means my physical game collection may be smaller, with digital games I don't have to worry about scratched discs and if I ever delete it from my hard drive, I can always re-download it. Of course, there's the matter of long download times...

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