JFD
Kathigitarkh
$36 NZ on Steam. $50 from NZ online stores.
steam pre-order available 10% discount
- Thread starter nea*Nicu
- Start date
JFD
Kathigitarkh
Agreed. Normally I buy games from the NZgameshop, which is usually considerably cheaper than MightyApe, but imports from the UK so naturally takes a lot longer. I got Fable III at thirty dollars cheaper on release, but it took two weeks to arrive. However, they don't seem to have a preorder for Gods and Kings. I mean to get a physical copy eventually though.
bryanw1995
Emperor
Bought
£17.99 on Steam, £12.99 on Amazon without delivery, £15.02 with First Class delivery.
I thought digital downloads were meant to be cheaper than physical boxed copies.
No, Play.com delivery is terrible, the free standard delivery can take over a week to arrive, and its worse than Royal Mail second class which is Amazon's free delivery.
Play's customer service is even worse, and they have zero clue about anything to do with video games, especially with anything regarding pre order bonuses (If something is advertised with a pre order bonus at play, be prepared to wait an additional 7-14 days of complaining, yelling and arguing over the phone with them to actually get the bonus codes sent to you).
I thought digital downloads were meant to be cheaper than physical boxed copies.
No, Play.com delivery is terrible, the free standard delivery can take over a week to arrive, and its worse than Royal Mail second class which is Amazon's free delivery.
Play's customer service is even worse, and they have zero clue about anything to do with video games, especially with anything regarding pre order bonuses (If something is advertised with a pre order bonus at play, be prepared to wait an additional 7-14 days of complaining, yelling and arguing over the phone with them to actually get the bonus codes sent to you).
anandus
Errorist
Why would you think that?
Digital downloads have never been cheaper. Just like buying a cd in the shop is cheaper than buying it on iTunes.
Because you don't need to produce the physical object and rent a physical store.
Boxed copies are actually more expensive to produce because they have to pay for the box costs, CDs, printing, distribution, and retail staff's wages.
Digital copies skip all of that and all you buy is a code to the game. Theoretically, digital copies should be cheaper because they cost an awful lot less to distribute than boxed copies do.
Buying a CD in the shop is actually much more expensive than buying the CD online, why do people in this day and age continue to ignore the biggest online retailers that sell boxed copies for dirt cheap like Amazon and Play?
Order from Amazon on first class delivery, get the game delivered by release day. If its going to activate and require steam to work anyway, why would I pay more to buy it through steam?
anandus
Errorist
True, but production cost is only part of the equation in a free market situation. At least as important is the willingness to pay that consumers have. The ease of use of buying a digital product goes a long way.
But the other side of the medaillion is that, indeed because of the lack of production costs, especially after the breaking even of development costs, digital providers can stunt with sales prices that normal shops can't compete against. You see that often in Steam sales.
anandus
Errorist
I always call it the lazyman's fee 
Carl5872
Prince
Any word on a predownload?
You have to see that in another way: The stores have to buy the games, which they sell. And would you buy something, if you knew that somebody else will offer it cheaper, and that you can't compete with that? -> Therefore, the prices online and in brick and mortar stores are the same, else the latter would not take them. And while this might seem to be their loss, you have to see that a big amount of the sales is not done online (not even considering that a box in a store is also somehow advertisement).
AljayBoy
Warlord
Pre-Ordered . . . from Amazon.co.uk for £12.99/US$20.10.
Hopefully it will right the wrongs and entertain me into the next decade like cIV did previously.
Hopefully it will right the wrongs and entertain me into the next decade like cIV did previously.
thadian
Kami of Awakened Dreamers
meh.
in a RL store, pre-order secures me a copy regardless of the lines or the store not having the product in stock etc. some stores don't even order the product, but it can be ordered at a fee.
in steam, pre-order simply means i can pay for it now but i still have to wait to be able to play it for no reason.
Steam does not have a limited, finite supply of product while using pre-order to give customers a reliable delivery of something that otherwise might be in stock.
I will wait until it goes on sale. Personally, i hate buying a box that has a force field to prevent me from opening it until DAY X.
Edit - since you still can't actually PLAY the game until release date, there is no instant gratification with a pre order.
The other difference between brick and mortar vs online stores is online business can allow ONE copy of something to be sold thousands of times over, which is piracy in my opinion. However, i digress - the sham will continue. To me it just makes sense if i am ordering a product NOW that can be delivered to me NOW i shouldn't have to wait to use it.
in a RL store, pre-order secures me a copy regardless of the lines or the store not having the product in stock etc. some stores don't even order the product, but it can be ordered at a fee.
in steam, pre-order simply means i can pay for it now but i still have to wait to be able to play it for no reason.
Steam does not have a limited, finite supply of product while using pre-order to give customers a reliable delivery of something that otherwise might be in stock.
I will wait until it goes on sale. Personally, i hate buying a box that has a force field to prevent me from opening it until DAY X.
Edit - since you still can't actually PLAY the game until release date, there is no instant gratification with a pre order.
The other difference between brick and mortar vs online stores is online business can allow ONE copy of something to be sold thousands of times over, which is piracy in my opinion. However, i digress - the sham will continue. To me it just makes sense if i am ordering a product NOW that can be delivered to me NOW i shouldn't have to wait to use it.
elprofesor
Pluri-editing poster
As has been said, online distributors have to sell games at the same price as shop retailers because most of the sales are still made physically, and you don't want to anger the big shop retailers selling games at half the price online, unless you want to sell less than 40% of what you expected. And the video game industry, especially with AAA titles, requires a much bigger initial investment for the development of the game than for the final distribution of the copies, so every copy sold counts.
The online preorder is just a nefarious device that those companies have found to make back a part of the initial investment sooner than they should. To sweeten the deal, they usually give a token bonus to those that preorder. Unless you are preordering the day before the game is released, there isn't any real reason to do so (1$ now is worth more than 1$ in three months...).
"Instant gratification" means that you can start playing the game at 00AM, instead of going to the store, doing the line, buying the game, going back home, installing the game, then finally play it, which can take a couple of hours depending on your situation.
And claiming that online distribution is the same as piracy is nonsense. The millions of lines of code are worth something, the same as a song or a movie, and they have a right to make you pay a fee to enjoy them. I wouldn't call movie theatres "pirates" because they are showing you time and time again the same movie :/
Sorry for the -slightly off-topic- wall of text.
The online preorder is just a nefarious device that those companies have found to make back a part of the initial investment sooner than they should. To sweeten the deal, they usually give a token bonus to those that preorder. Unless you are preordering the day before the game is released, there isn't any real reason to do so (1$ now is worth more than 1$ in three months...).
"Instant gratification" means that you can start playing the game at 00AM, instead of going to the store, doing the line, buying the game, going back home, installing the game, then finally play it, which can take a couple of hours depending on your situation.
And claiming that online distribution is the same as piracy is nonsense. The millions of lines of code are worth something, the same as a song or a movie, and they have a right to make you pay a fee to enjoy them. I wouldn't call movie theatres "pirates" because they are showing you time and time again the same movie :/
Sorry for the -slightly off-topic- wall of text.
thadian
Kami of Awakened Dreamers
Actually, its the owners of the game selling the store one copy thousands of times over so that the store has to treat this "file" as separate products for each transaction.
This is the root of the scam, because the file is created ONE time, then sold multiple times. This would be more fair if each digitally sold file had to be separately manufactured.
I think this is more about the market and appeasing investors by showing early purchases as increased value or preemptive success. I could be wrong about this.
From what i have read it is usually the afternoon and not 00:00 that the product works. This is the difference between industry definition and personal definition of terms. My term of instant gratification means i can get i now and use it now. Industry term of instant gratification is INDUSTRY gratification of getting pre-paid now.
What makes it piracy is when something made ONE time can have multiple copies of itself appear from thin air at no cost. It is like painting a picture and charging people to see it, which is reasonable. - then taking a picture of the painting and charging people to see the picture.
In the case of G+K, i just wish that making a pre-order would allow me to use the product NOW. It makes me wish i could issue them a post-dated check for the release date. That way they have the gratification that they will get paid instantly the moment i can use the product i just paid for instead of paying now and waiting forever. i would rather wait, and when its released we will see if any promo's come up. One good thing about CIV games in general is the content stretch
Sporaticus
Drooling Barbarian
I pre-ordered mine from Amazon and payed extra for 2-day shipping, so I get the disk on the 19th and don't have to suffer the hell of overloaded servers.
