PlayStation®Network General

[DeltaCmdr]

What's the point in selling games in the PS Store for £50 or more when you can buy the same products from retailers for £40 or less? I find this humerous as typically the retailer is the costly choice and you go online to save a few £'s. Sony I would like to point out that you have this concept backwards and after continuous problems on your end, for example the major breach in your security earlier this year, maybe you should listen to the people that buy your products which in turn puts lots of money in your pockets. I find it harder and harder to stick around in Sony's playground when XBox is offereing cheaper and more reliabale services. -- end angry rant.

[McNeilio]

go to xbox then and save a few quid

[CrustyJockStrap]

I wouldn't say xbox is cheaper (yes I own and am a gold member)

Halo reach is still £40 on XBL and you can get it for under £20 same with many others.

Also it is the Publishers that set the price not Sony/Microsoft!

[aaron9992000]

its very annoying, espicially comparing a lot of the pc digital downloads to consoles.

I guess there are enough people out there willing to pay the price to justify them to the developers.

[Muttykins]

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aaron9992000 wrote:

its very annoying, espicially comparing a lot of the pc digital downloads to consoles.

I guess there are enough people out there willing to pay the price to justify them to the developers.

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It's always been that way pc games have always been cheaper than console.

And since steam was created digital distributation on pc is probably alot easier & cheaper than on console.

[Khai-FX]

The idea behind digital distibution is to take out the middle man and save money on packing and shipping to stores around each an every country. The reality though is that these greedy people think it's acceptable to actually INCREASE the price for the sake of convenience. It's never worth it and out of date titles are horrendously expensive. New games at release under digital ditribution, in my opinion should be between £30 to £35, an receiving price reductions sooner rather than later - obviously dependant on the age and success of a game.

The other day I saw Black Ops on PS Store for something like £45. MW3 was already released. What the hell? Though I have no interest in those titles, but why sell old games which the majority are going to jump over to the newer title, at such painful prices?

I'm beginning to think the folks at Sony are still working in yen and are converting their stupidly high numbers into ours, seeing how daft it looks and raising them dramatically. That's my theory.

I will never be a part of digital distribution until:

The prices of games on release date are lower than the Internet prices, not the high street prices and especially not higher.

The prices of the games themselves decrease quicker than those online.

ISPs must provide better services on their more modest packages.

If I download a fully fledged 8 or 9GB game, I am well over the 3GB bandwidth limit for the 10mbit/s package I'm on, during off peak (morning / early afternoon) hours. Or, in the evening, between the hours of 4-9pm, I am miles beyond the 1.5GB download limit before Virgin Media throttles my connection by 75% for 5 hours. The only way to avoid this is to pay for the expensive and rather irrelevant 100mbit service which currently has no upload or download caps.

It surprises me that digital distribution has been around for so long, yet it's still so disasterous. If I didn't sell my powerful PC, I would have used Steam if they'd let me have a proper account name. It's a shame that Sony or Microsoft never seem to learn from others. Greed... makes the world go round.

[QuietlyWrong]

The issue of store prices comes up again and again. The reasons for the prices are all there if you do a search for them, some good and some not so good. These include:

• Blackmail from the high street stores
• UK prices in line with European prices; where in many European countries there just isn't as much competition and price slashing you get in the UK, the store prices are actually competitive (no, really!)
• Console competitors probably have clauses stipulating that product must not be sold at a lower price on PS3
• Some people buy them at ridiculous prices anyway so corporate greed takes over (BF3 and Rayman Origins are both among the store's top selling PS3 games at the moment. Go figure...)
• The furniture store effect - people will buy more products when they're discounted by 50% in a sale than they might have bought had the price been 50% lower at the start, so some publishers will happily charge high prices in the interim

This is early days in the online retailing of console games. My concern is that whereas with mp3 downloads and even PC games, there's some competition that eventually drove prices down, the monopolistic stores can charge whatever they like and know that no-one will undercut them. Best solution: more of those voucher code cards you can buy in Game these days (for things like WipeOut Fury and Top Darts, etc). If Game and Amazon and Zavvi and I dunno, Asda and Tesco all sold these cards, and could have special offers, then there would be the potential for competition again...

[JOHNY--BRAVO]

deus ex if thats spealt correctly is 17 pound in our local asda that includes disk, manual and box lol the playstation store digital downloads are a joke unless you live in a very isolated area or work on an offshore oil rig you must be mad to pay their asking price, their completely out of touch with reality.