PierceLee
Master Member
- Joined
- Dec 8, 2005
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the US PSN flash sales is quite a joke. before the flash sales even happens, most of the games can be found cheaper on Amazon. damn... disc version cheaper than digital. either something is wrong here or Sony is just being greedy.
and also damnit, no indie games for sale.
Digital and physical prices are not coordinated, especially across regions. Digital prices are set by the publishers, and Sony works with them to set sale prices. Of cos Sony gets a cut on the transaction but the bulk would still go to the publishers, so the publishers actually control the prices. (That's why "Activision sale" is always an oxymoron, on PSN, Steam and anywhere else.)
Physical prices are set by the publishers. However there are additional parties involved, from distributors to retailers (not to mention government/state taxes). Usually retailers have their own sales and can discount further. Publishers control day 1 price (and release date too) -- Amazon/Gamestop/etc, if you don't play nice, we wont play nice the next time. But after that their control diminish (apart from via stock supply). Retailers can discount as they wish, basically cutting into their own profit, but if it can boost quantity during a sale, they still make more. (Not to mention ebay, used sale, etc. where anything goes.) So physical prices can be very different from digital, they are a completely different supply chain.
And this being end of year, holiday season, game publishers have warehouse loads of physical version of recent big releases. They have to shovel them out now, before the holidays, before financial year closing. That's the whole idea of Thanksgiving/Black Friday/Christmas shopping. So if a latest AAA game doesn't sell too well, the publisher will offer it cheaply to Amazon/etc for a big sale. You can expect some physical to be cheaper than digital at this time, for they quite literally have a sell-by date.
Fact is, often digital sales do do better than retail. But of cos you can always find one physical retailer selling a handful of titles a bit cheaper, for limited quantity (perhaps leftover stock, back from when the publisher offered them cheap, that's still taking up warehouse space), limited time etc. There are always exceptions, but looking at bigger picture, in general digital sales (and that happens weekly) do offer better deals than physical (not just PSN, but also Steam).
Actually what I don't understand is during release week, why the digital price is same as physical price (when physical version may even have additional goodies like steel box, art book etc.)? On day 1, price is still fully in control of the publisher. Digital is so much cheaper in terms of production cost, shipping, inventory management, etc. Why isn't digital much cheaper in week 1?
As for indie games, there are different digital sales every week, indies are featured often enough, at great prices too (and there is usually no physical retail to compete with it). Indies don't have to be featured in every single sale. Usually Sony US runs a flash sale once a month and definitely during black friday. This time they have a bigger scale black friday sale week long, so this flash sale is focusing on relatively recent AAA titles.
