What price of games to make you go all digital on console?

If we ignore the problems some people could have with download speeds and game sizes, what PRICE would be right for you to go all digital?

I know for me if the games were even £/$5 under the cost of a physical copy I'd never buy a disk again. Even with my piddly 5MB broadband I could download a game faster than a physical copy could be posted from Amazon or whatever.

Obviously I COULD go out and buy one in person but that takes effort, haha.

The other issue with digital is the games never seem to drop in price very quickly on console. There are games on Xbox Live and PSN right now that are several years old and still sitting around the £20 - 30 mark. That is ridiculous.

Cheap(ER) price for digital and a reasonable depreciation and I'd be all over it. How about anyone else?

$30 and I'd consider it.

I'd like to know the cost it takes to bring a game to retail. It is sad when I can get a physical copy at amazon cheaper than a digital download. My worry with dd is control. DD, with steam being an example, seems unstable--not set in stone. If I buy a game today and the distributor decides to update the TOS, that update should NOT affect my prior purchase--in fact, that seems illegal. As a consumer we need an answer, a form of reciept which STATES the details AT THE TIME OF PURCHASE.

...also I've just had so many hdd fail on me that i'd rather not go through the trouble.

I don't think I'd ever choose digital over physical no matter what the price difference was. I just greatly prefer having the physical copy even if the digital version was significantly cheaper.

Nintendo, specifically, seems to believe the convenience of digitally downloading a title far outweighs the cost savings of not having a case, disk, instructions, etc.., When it comes to purchasing a game in a physical format the options of where to go are numerous. Of course it is nice to get on whatever system and type in a few numbers and then have the game download but it isn't as if finding a B&M store is difficult. Perhaps I am wrong but I'd think buying something digitally eliminates the middleman and as a result the price should reflect accordingly.

-$59.99

I can not stand the middle man in DD. Worse is that you do not buy anything instead you lease it.

Worse off is the higher cost that DD can bring.

If gaming were all digital I'd quit gaming. I'd rather own the disc.

I dont care so much about standard prices, but their sale prices need to get more reasonable. I can buy the Lego Movie game for $15 on sale on PC right now, but at the same time PSN has it on sale for $40.49. That's just silly.

$5 unless I can find a disc for $5.

I'll do it when they pay me, since I'll be having to pay my ISP for going over my monthly cap after 2 games. A cap which, incidentally, is continuously going down instead of up.

Theres no price..... I always go for retail..... I only go digital when retail is not an option..... Like Trine and Lara Croft.

If I get a game on my PC then I go for DD cause I have the room to store my games, 2TB HDD ftw, but that's almost not enough for me. Digital download though can be way overpriced at times specially if a game is still $60 for a digital copy is absurd.

As for console games I always go hard copy since consoles still have low memory storage compared to PC's.

If we take out of the equation download speed & the fact I just prefer physical copies, I'd say around AU$60 instead of $100.

This.

The only time I go digital is for PC games. I would still rather have a boxed copy of PC game XYZ, but the hassle of handling PC discs and downloading a bunch of stuff atop of it is too much.

I think 25% less then a retail copy at launch, but prices also need to drop like they do in stores

Free - I would pay $9.99 a month just like Netflix and then be granted access to all the services available games digitally.

No other business model will work.

Nothing higher than £20, though I prefer the idea High-Res put forth as a rental service would be much better for download only.

@High-Res: Yeah I mean Steam hasn't worked at all has it?

@spike6958: My issue with that is it is actually cheaper in the long run to buy games. Renting digital games like Netflix means if I want to replay a game in the future I need to make sure I'm still subscribed, which means the amount I've spent ticks up and up every month, which means over a long time the cost of the monthly membership actually costs more. If I want to play one of my Steam games now, all I have to do is download it and it doesn't cost me anything for as long as Steam is a thing.

Look at it like this. I buy 3 games a year only in sales for £5 each, that means after 5 years I've spent £75. Five years for lets say £6 a month is 6 * 12 * 5 = £360. You'd have to play a LOT of games to make it worth it. And with the cost of games if it is only £6 a month I would be very surprised.

@Dannystaples14: That's like comparing apples & oranges. What happened to the PC industry is a whole other story. That's like saying "Origin" worked.

If you want a more appropriate comparison to the Console Market and Consumer well, let's look at that. Ouya was a total flop. Minecraft & the Walking Dead were out for over 2 years digitally, yet when they finally released physical the Discs out sold the digital versions a 1000 to 1.

Another issue is PC Market killed off Used Games in 1994 with the invention of the CD Key - It was sold to the public as a way to stop and deter piracy. The reality of it was to stop and deter Used sales.

The PC Market shortly crashed afterwards and consoles have been dominating ever since. Steam came at the perfect time. I launched when Counter Strike had total control of the shooter genre and was required to download and install steam to access the most popular game in the world. Also, every Big Box Retailer and Game Specialty store STOPPED carrying PC games...

@Dannystaples14: Well clearly the best idea would be to offer both services.

Personally, I buy most games that release, and almost always at launch. I will play it to completion and I never go back. The only ones last gen that I did go back to where The Mass Effect Trilogy, Gears of War (multiplayer) and Telltale's The Walking Dead. For me personally a rental system would be a much better option and would save me a lot of money.

Another thing I think is worth pointing out is that consoles and PC are not the same thing, and should NEVER be confused as such. I believe PC will always have Steam, or at the very least a way for people to access there steam games, consoles will never have that. If you build a new PC, you just re-install Steam and bang all your games are back, but when a new console is released all the games you downloaded for the last one don't transfer over with it, and once the service is shut down they are lost forever, this is one of the big problems console gamers had with the original vision for the Xbox One, if it was digital only like it was originally going to be, you lose your games in the end and all that money you spent was wasted, a rental service allows you to still play all these games and at the end of the systems life you've not lost anything.

There appears to be a Digital Threshold when it comes to pricing.

You buy a .99 cent song, a $1.29 song. A $2.99 - $4.99 app....it goes away, gets deleted , stops working, who cares right? Just buy it again. Not even worth the phone call to support.

But when you start hitting the $14.99, $19.99, $29.99, $39.99, $49.99 & $59.99 price points. People want TRUE ownership. They want something in their hand, to give, lend, trade, sell, whatever.

The real problem with Digital is the fact that companies want to SELL you something....yet they still want to retain ownership of it in some way shape or form after you have paid for it. The reality of it is, you don't ACTUALLY own a single piece of digital goods. It's not yours. It was never yours and it will never be yours.

They need to just be clear about it. Digital product is "Leased". It is not sold, it is not purchased. You pay X Amount for X Amount of Access to it. That is how it has always been and always will be. I wish these companies would just be more forth coming and stop hiding the truth in their EULA's.

You assume that steam will be around that long.

Second, steam can shut all your access to you profile and they will not break any law. That is stander for all DD out there. They are the middle men and they have more power.

It scary when you look at they can do and what can happen to you. A pure DD would be the worse thing for gamers.

Most of the games I play these days are digitally acquired. I've yet to pay $60 for a digital title but to be fair I haven't purchased any game at $60 since like November 2013 so it's less of digital price wall thing and more of a only one or two games a year are worth launch day price imo thing.

I don't trade games and I live in the modern world so digital is a better option for me. I honestly fear more for the physical hardware breaking than for a digital game to no longer be accessible. My 360 red ringed on me and stopped me from playing 100% of the games I had. I've also had it chew up a disc (my fault on that one though). I've lost zero digital games in that same time frame though. Physical items ceasing to function is a bigger threat to my ability to play games than digital services no longer being available. My Street Fighter 4 disc got messed up and my option was to buy the game again. If I had purchased it digitally and the install got corrupted or some equivalent to the disc being unreadable, all I'd have to do is download it again for $0. That's enough for me.

@wiouds: Steam will be around for as long as Valve is, if not longer. There is no way for game distribution to improve beyond it anytime soon, aside from faster downloads, without some insane jump forward in technology, and Steam is insanely successful, and I know people who simply won't buy a game for PC if Steam isn't one of the options they can buy it from.

Yes, Steam can shut your access, but unless you are breaking there T&C's there not going to, If they block you, you can't buy games from them, so there not going to just randomly lock people out of there accounts for the fun of it because it loses them money.
Consoles on the other hand will always come to the end of there lifespan and at some point after the launch of there next system they'll shut down there services for the last one and your games are lost just because they want you to buy there new system.

@High-Res: Yes the console market needs time to acclimatise to them but once they have I bet they work just as well as Steam ever has, but it just needs the right pricing to make it happen.

Also you don't own your games? I don't tend to lend my physical copies to people, but other than that I've never had a game on Steam that was simply removed, or changed or taken from me, where my ownership of it felt abused. Not once. Plus it only takes Microsoft or Sony to change the no trading policy. Just because Steam hasn't doesn't mean Microsoft or Sony won't.

Sure at the end of the life cycle of Steam there might be issues with ownership but how do you know they won't waive the digital rights at that point? Or it would be up to the developers to decide if you get to keep your game. Say all of the games you have bought you now own? It could happen, I'm sure if everyone rallied together it would happen. You can't base you choices now on something that is years away at this stage and has never happened before.

@spike6958: The Xbox One was never going to be all digital. When it was released we had the sense that Microsoft wanted to go in that direction but if they released a console that was all digital now they wouldn't have even sold as many as they have.

Well if you think about it, you said you don't replay that many games, so what does it matter if the consoles are backwards compatible or not? I mean backwards compatibility is nice when there is nothing to play on the new consoles but when the games start coming out playing old games isn't going to be at the top of people's list.

Honestly if console gamers were given the same benefits as the PC people have terms of price and sales even with the differences from PC. I bet the number of people who went all digital just for the convenience it brings of being able to buy a game and start downloading it immediately and then not needing to swap disks and things between games, will be significant.

Hell the PC crowd all said the same thing about physical copies and look at them now. Most game stores don't even stock PC games any more. Or at least the ones near me have stopped doing so.

@wiouds: Unless Valve want to be seen as the villain of gaming for the rest of time, they aren't going to do that. Digital rights are nothing more than software and fluff, it can be taken away as easily as it is enforced. It might be the developers job to let us have the rights to our games when Steam goes away, but no one can predict that future. Sure not worth basing your decisions on it now when it is so far away.

I'm not bad mouthing Steam, I'm just saying PC consumers and Console consumers have entirely different levels of expectation.

Also, I'm sure it has something to do with their experience or their lack of greed but Steam absolutely seems to get it's consumers. With Discounted options for Purchasing and sharing multiple copies with friends and family? They are light years ahead of the best deals and models the consoles offer. (Hell the XBOX One does not even let you Demo before you buy!!!).

However, I switched from PC Gaming to Console gaming long ago. Just for the simplicity, consistency and ease of use. I sit on the couch and press a button. No more video cards, drivers, compatibility issues, all that jazz. I was an avid PC Gamer back in the day.

BUT, Just like the home console technology caught up to the Arcades (and killed them) It seems to be just about caught up with the PC's now.

I don't know where Steam is at in regards to their "Box". As a gamer and a consumer I would really just prefer they Ship and Mouse & Keyboard that work on the Ps4 & XBOX one and release a Steam "App". You would think Sony or Microsoft would be willing to spend an ungodly amount of money and do whatever it took to get Steam on their Platform.

@Dannystaples14: @spike6958: They can shut down for any reason. Just read their EULA. That is stander part of most DD EULA.

From what I understand it not just your DD that can take away your right to use the software but also the publishers. It is too much power to the middle man and publisher.

A pure DD market is the worse thing for gamers. From the normal price of games staying higher longer to control middle man companies have.

I normally only buy digital when it is much cheaper that the retail version of the game. I'd rather have the disc, but sometimes it's hard to pass up DD sales.