f13.net

I suspect that Steam is just implementing a price point coming down from other channels.  This was probably initiated by Aussie retailers, who made their displeasure at being undersold echo back to the publisher.

--Dave

The primary reason why digital games are more expensive then retail games:

First off retailers make threats to publisher/developer. If publisher says we are going to sell it less then the retail price then retailers will shoot back and say either we won't carry your product at all or we will limit the shelf space and will order a hell of a lot less of the game.

For example lets say bestbuy usually buys triple AAA titles in bulk of lets say 100k and then distributes it to all of its stores. Well lets say activision says were going to sell it less through over steam. Well bestbuy can shoot back and say you know what instead of taking 100k I'm only going to take 10k orders now of that game.

Now lets say that the game would have sold out at the 100k bulk order but it now gone struck down to 10k. There is no gurantee that activision would be able to make up that 90k in sales through steam.

Due to the fact that the marjority of sales of games still happen retail wise, retailers have the leverage when it comes to pricing.

But here is the problem more and more are buying through digital means like steam. So what is happening is retailers are becoming very protective of their market share.

Here are some things that Steam does that are just things retailers can never really do. For example Steam can do free weekends or free weeks of play of a game, those are basically free full game. Retailers can do demo's of a game but they are not the entire game. If it were the entire game then all anybody would do is get the demo.

As long as steam has bandwidth it can never run out of a product, how many times have you gone to the store and have something sold out?

Steam can release a game and sell a game when it wants to, allow you to download a game and then play it. Stores are not going to stay open 24 hours a day just so you can buy the game and play it.

Also you can't really steal a game from steam unlike a retail store where you open the box and run.

Steam doesn't have to really worry about damaged discs or damaged products. Retailers do.

Steam doeesn't remove a game froms its list of games to buy, retailers have limited self space so they can't carry old games that haven't been selling as well as they used too. Good example are the old quake and doom games. Or even the return to castle wolfenstein games.

There are also more reasons why steam is better.

But as you can see the only real thing that retailers have when it comes to competeing with programs like steam or d2d is just price.

So when it comes to just that price and the fact that the majority of sales are still done through retail. Your going to see retailers threatening publishers and developers to sell games at a higher price through the digital avenue compared to the retail part or else retailers are either not going to sell the game or buy less of the game to sell. Because of this retailers have the leverage because they are where the majority of the money publishers and developers make their money from.