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Fenixp: Yea, well, RAGE is not available in my region :D
I know we are in the same shoes. But fortunately it's only around 18 USD here in the stores.
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lukaszthegreat: But they do not have infinite demand sans they are not exempted from forces of supply and demand.

Furthermore publisher do think games age sans drops in prices for older games. Not for every game. COD games for example slowly drop in price but the reason is that Activision does not want people to buy older games.
That's not the same thing. The price is set, reduced or increased by a publisher as a strategic means to sell the digital product to maximise income over a set period of time. The only things that are really taken into consideration when publishers drop prices are competition and customer goodwill. More can be produced at a whim at no cost for an indefinite time.

With physical products, they are in finite supply and have a "limited shelf life" (in the sense that they need to be sold at some point to make room for new products). Therefore, if a retailer keeps selling them and more have to be produced, supply exceeds demand and there is little incentive to reduce the price.

If, however, the retailer can't shift them, they will have to provide an incentive to sell them by reducing the price. While competition and consumer affinity does factor into this as well, there is a firm element of supply and demand applied to the retail product. I mean, just look at how much copies of Final Fantasy 7 - a comparatively rare game - are going for these days.
Post edited February 10, 2012 by jamyskis
Okay. But in no way what you said suggest that games are exempted from supply or demand.
In fact you just confirmed by saying that publisher are able to adjust demand sans supply by adjusting the prices.
They can achieve equilibrium aka maximize the profit much easier and quicker than retail but there is no exemption of the rule of supply and demand (My professor joked that if you can prove that it is not valid then there is a Noble prize with your name out there)
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Roman5: I remember reading an interview with Gabe Newell about how many publishers did not release games in Russia at all because of "Piracy" and so on

Now that Steam has launched over there it's Valve's second biggest EU market, after Germany I think
Wha! When did that happen? ;)

I agree with the guy who said that the most important thing is for how much they sell it here, not necessarily if it can be purchased somewhere else even lower, even if I don't like such practises. For e.g. 2€ games, I probably don't care that much if it costs $1 somewhere else. For a 20-50€ game, it would mean much more, or if the disparity is even more than the mere €=$ conversion rate.

If they don't sell the game for a price I like, fine, I will not buy it.
Post edited February 10, 2012 by timppu
At least you can buy it overpriced. In Poland its not avaible because publisher deal prohibitted digital copies. So every time there is dlc for a game like that we are in trouble.
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Fenixp: Yea, well, RAGE is not available in my region :D
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klaymen: Well, which sane legendary developer would sell his game to some Eastern Europe communist scum? :D
Now, that region restrictions piss me off like nothing else in modern gaming.
I pre-ordered FNV US edition because i knew that Cenega (eastern-european distributor) will not be bothered to release DLC on time. Besides cenega's releases, for no obvious reasons, are famous for being incompatibile with mods. Guess what happened now? I can't buy any of the four DLC's because steam can sell me only eastern-european versions and i don't have the appropriate version.
Imagine how fucking stupid is that. I'm a customer who wants to spend some money on DLC's to my favourite game and i can't buy it. And no, i'm not going to fork over the money for the ultimate edition which is going to be published by cenega.
If we had a thread for every time this happened... we'd have a lot of threads. (strong argument)
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Fuzzyfireball: id Software allowed Apogee to publish Commander Keen & Wolfenstein 3D. They departed with Apogee after Wolf3D.
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Roman5: Could anyone please remind me exactly why this happened? ID was not happy with Apogee for certain reasons?
Apogee showed id the shareware model, and funded both CK and Wolf3D. After Apogee gave them their kickstart and showed them how to make money with their games, they simply thought they could do it themselves and split.
Apogee wasn't Apogee then. They were Softdisk Publishing.
Nope. All of this has to do with tax policies of foreign countries. On a web forum with pay options I used to hang out at alot of European countries put tax on digital purchases and set rates. So that forum didn't want to do business with non-US because it was above and beyond difficult to sort it out for each individual country in the EU and for some users it would have been very costly. Blame your country wherever you are for trying to milk every last kopek out of you. Canadians have this problem too and often blame American companies when this is not the case. American companies have no problem selling at American rates it is just your socialist countries that are screwing you. They need to pay for social services somehow!
^^ VAT in Europe is usually around 20% (depending on country), not 120%.

I'm totally fine in paying about 20-30% more than the US price because of VAT or other taxes, but I'm not in paying twice as much, or even more than that, especially for a digital product.

In the specific case of Rage this is totally up the Publisher/regional distributor, and has little to do with taxes.
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BoomKing: Nope. All of this has to do with tax policies of foreign countries. On a web forum with pay options I used to hang out at alot of European countries put tax on digital purchases and set rates. So that forum didn't want to do business with non-US because it was above and beyond difficult to sort it out for each individual country in the EU and for some users it would have been very costly. Blame your country wherever you are for trying to milk every last kopek out of you. Canadians have this problem too and often blame American companies when this is not the case. American companies have no problem selling at American rates it is just your socialist countries that are screwing you. They need to pay for social services somehow!
VAT or to be more precise GST is only 10% in Australia and prices are higher by 20-50%
therefore everything you said is wrong. publishers and their agreements with retail shops and their desire to milk as much as possible is the sole reason for high prices.
Post edited February 11, 2012 by lukaszthegreat