Cost of game downloads for PS4/Xbox 1

[westtra]

Is there any ways of getting the games cheaper via the online stores? As they are rediculously dearer than my nearest shoo that sells games(tesco)

To give you an idea

fallout 4 - tesco £40. Xbox store £49.99
Star wars battlefront - tesco £42. Xbox store £54.

[molineux1980]

Have a look on cdkeys.

http://www.cdkeys.com/

[Bigkahonies]

Amazon do some electronic codes too, worth a check as its not all games but deffo some.

[aquarianone]

Have a quick Google on changing your xbox.com region and buying from an overseas store.

[RobDickinson]

Its the problem with official console online stores. and it will only get worse as they lock it down.

No sales or discounts etc.

[westtra]

Having a look amazon and cd keys selection is poor unfortunately.

You would think they would be cheaper as there is no physical media to pay for/ship and no cut for the distributer. Just profiteering and too much extra in my eyes to not be able to sway me away from buying the disc its self.

Will have a look at region chaning. Will curent downloads to from UK work that I picked up during sales etc. still work?

[Petrol Only]

Can't speak for UK retailers but in America they see $6 on a $50 title. So company's already taking a big cut from physical copies.

[Guvernator]

Yep, never really understood why a digital copy especially if it's a first party title direct from Sony\Microsoft is more expensive than a physical copy. I love the convenience of digital downloads but hate getting shafted, sorry but no game is worth £50. They need to take a leaf out of the PC\Steam experience. Almost all of my PC gaming content comes off Steam as it's cheaper, they often have massive sales and it just works so well. I've even bought stuff of Steam that I'd never had bought purely for the fact that it's so cheap.

[Baryonyx]

The online store prices are ridiculous. I've never understood why Sony and Microsoft haven't decided to undercut the physical media stores here. Perhaps they simply value the presence of their product on the highstreet too much? It makes no sense though, that you'd pay more for a game and sit around downloading it when you could pay less for a physical copy that you could trade in afterwards.

[P-Jay]

The reason they cost so much is that they still need physical retailers for people with slow internet, or like tangible thing or any one of the other endless reasons why some people prefer buying physical media - if they started to undercut them they'd fall out with retailers very quickly so it's full RRP for games for the foreseeable.

PC games have gone the other way, Steam is a brilliant platform for buying games and the are very good VFM - pretty much killed the retail market for PC games though, you never see them in the supermarkets or the like, some of the GAME stores have a couple of titles, but not many.

Last physical game I bought was GTA V for the PC, I though that as I had a crappy 4meg connection at home it would be quicker, WRONG - a day of swapping discs got me to 40GB of game data, it wanted another 20gb downloaded - I'd have been better off downloading it and leaving it run overnight.

[Guvernator]

PW said:

Crazy that games have been the same price, roughly, for decades, despite inflation, the fact that by today's standards they were utter garbage, created by a team of 6 people, a marketing budget of "yelling loudly from a roof top", were often glitched with no way of being fixed.

Now you get something that takes hundreds of people years to create, with massive global marketing campaigns, amazing graphics, massive open worlds filled with rich story and detail, top quality sound & music, Hollywood stars lending their acting and voice talents, free multiplayer*, free updates and patches yet people think £50 is ridiculous price gauging, and any time there is the smallest of problems with a game there is untold outrage.

What else can £50 buy you that offers better value in terms of entertainment?

• The game developer/publisher doesn't charge you

OK fair point but also take into account that they now sell millions more copies than they used to. Fair enough games may have Hollywood level budgets these days but they also make Hollywood level returns, in fact I'm pretty sure triple AAA titles make more money than most Hollywood Blockbusters.

I agree that a decent game which engrosses you for hours on end is definitely good value for money but £50 is where I usually draw the line, let alone the new practice of releasing half a game and then charging £50 more for "DLC". Perhaps I am just tight though, luckily with a bit of shopping around I don't think I've ever paid full RRP for a game in years.

[Zoon]

Guvernator said:

OK fair point but also take into account that they now sell millions more copies than they used to. Fair enough games may have Hollywood level budgets these days but they also make Hollywood level returns, in fact I'm pretty sure triple AAA titles make more money than most Hollywood Blockbusters.

I agree that a decent game which engrosses you for hours on end is definitely good value for money but £50 is where I usually draw the line, let alone the new practice of releasing half a game and then charging £50 more for "DLC". Perhaps I am just tight though, luckily with a bit of shopping around I don't think I've ever paid full RRP for a game in years.

When you think how much a cinema ticket costs they are good value.

[davek_964]

RobDickinson said:

Its the problem with official console online stores. and it will only get worse as they lock it down.

No sales or discounts etc.

That's not quite true. At the weekend, I was toying with the idea of buying Dark Souls II since I loved it on the PS3. Looked in Tesco on the way home, and it was something like ~£30-£35 (can't remember exactly). Decided not to bother.

That evening I looked online, and there was an offer on (think it said between 18th - 28th November) and the price was £19.99. So I bought it.

[RobDickinson]

There might be the odd exception especially as there is still a retail channel but...

Remember when sony and microsoft wanted to kill off the used game market entirely? When microsoft was going to require the xbox one to have an internet connection?

next gen will they still have disks..?

[davek_964]

RobDickinson said:

There might be the odd exception especially as there is still a retail channel but...

Remember when sony and microsoft wanted to kill off the used game market entirely? When microsoft was going to require the xbox one to have an internet connection?

next gen will they still have disks..?

Interesting question. Considering the general shift to streaming music and video I guess buying discs for games consoles is a bit old-tech. By the time the current generation are being retired, maybe they will have gone to online only.