September 8th 2009 11:16 am PT

LOL @ £19.99 for Bioshock.

Please don’t encourage MS by buying these.

could agree more faultrd, these prices are stupid, please dont buy these, 20quid for a game i can pick up for as little as £7 from certain retailers. Boooo Hisss M$

Keep the negativity up and hopefully they’ll get the message that we won’t stand for it.

Crazy prices for old games Microsoft. Try £8 – £10 http://tinyurl.com/mfuxs8

I think Civilization is the first game to actually have the correct price, now if they could only lower it because it’s not physical media. Microsoft should start thinking about meeting customers halfway with these digital games… nothing should be worth full price just because you downloaded the game.

Hey Major. You messed up on the links for the Japanese ones…

https://mail.microsoft.com/redir.aspx... = Access Denied

I think they are missing the point on Digital Distribution which are:

1) Being Digital it costs nothing to Manufacture/Distribute etc’ Hence allowing larger profit margins and cheaper prices.

2) Because it can be potentially accessed by everyone, region restrictions shouldn’t exist. (Unless it’s a language issue, you wouldn’t want to sell an English-only game in Japan for instance).

3) Because there is no Manufacturing, Time to release should be allot quicker, for instance a new game is released (Halo 3 ODST anyone? Imagine how well that would sell on Games on Demand!), it would be relatively easy to release the Digital version at the same time as the non-digital version.

4) Stop price gouging, allow people to feel inclined to think they are getting a bargain which in turn will want them to purchase a game, or several. (I have paid for Halo Combat evolved, and Gauntlet so far because they were at a good price, not $99/6000 MS points like Mass Effect).

Hold on – Civilization Revolution is still being sold for $40 at GameStop. That’s some deal.

not buying these

epic pricing FAIL

Pemalite: I disagree with your second point. There’s nothing wrong with selling an English-only game in Japan. There’s also nothing wrong with selling a Japanese-only game in the U.S. There are plenty of people in Japan who speak English. Heck, I once knew a guy in the U.S. who was studying Japanese so that he could watch anime movies without subtitles.

Also, you misspelled “a lot”.

Jonah Falcon: it’s $30 at Amazon, and used copies are even less.
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The problem with GoD is that the pricing should be LOWER than the disc versions because A) the games eat up valuable hard drive space, and B) because of DRM, you can’t share, give away, or sell the game when you’re done with it. Because of these limitations placed upon the customer, the pricing needs to compensate the customer for his loss. Otherwise, it makes no sense.
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The “convenience” argument is complete B.S.

Instead of buying DD games I would like to be able to rent them, like with the movies. A good DD rental service would be really useful, whereas this overpriced DD Marketplace is pretty useless when you can buy even Civ at £14.99 on Play.com and then sell it back to Gamestop.

Have to agree £19.99 is a ludicrous price point for Games on Demand…

they’ll be one heck of an uptake if they were at a sensible price

You won’t steal from my MS ! Way too expensive !

Another one saying LOLNOTHANKS

€29.99 lol

You can pick up Bioshock new for £10-£15 and there’s also the Bioshock/Oblivion double pack for around £25.
I find this site pretty handy for comparing prices http://www.gamestracker.com/

I’m surprised that the first Knights of the Old Republic isn’t there since it was just released again on Steam and Direct2Drive. I guess I’ll get it from one of those.

HA HA – £19.99

Nice joke Microsoft.

So compared to the physical copy, the digital version costs more, takes up valuable HDD space, & has no box or manual.

Microsoft is heading in the right direction regarding Digital Distribution, but makes one crucial mistake.
Lowering the price to £9.99-£12.99 would increase sales dramatically.

Ouch, this is sad. I really wish they would get a clue on the pricing structure. This is just horrible as there are games I would love to have, but why would I pay MORE for a downloaded game than I would pay for a copy at my local store that I can take anywhere, and isn’t shackled by the DRM restrictions? Whoever is in charge of this should not have a job, simple as that.

Great games – terrible prices. EVERY US retailer has these for no more than $19.99 and you can then trade them in when you’re done. MS and their partners are missing the point about game downloads and need to stop worrying about upsetting their retail partners.

While I wholeheartedly agree that the pricing structure of the GoD service is seriously skewed, complaining about it here will accomplish nothing.

Despite the fact that Major is supposed to be our contact with the Microsoft machine, he has steadfastly ignored every single one of these threads full of people voicing their displeasure over this issue. He will no doubt continue to ignore this one as well. Perhaps he is following the advice many of our mothers gave us long ago – if you have nothing nice to say, don’t say anything at all. At the very least, though, it would be nice to know that our comments are being read and hopefully passed on to someone…

Though, to be honest, the fact that the GoD service has been in effect for a month now with this kind of pricing structure tells me that there are people throwing their cash away and encouraging this. We are a small yet vocal minority in this case; in the end, we really mean nothing to Microsoft as we’ve already given them money, and will no doubt continue to do so for other things. Business is business; you don’t make money by caring about a small minority of your customer base.

PRICING FAIL.

I cant believe Major just ignores how outrageous these prices are. Your the community man, speak up about what we all think about this ridiculous pricing.

I’m not usually one to whine, but I do hope people dont just lazily purchase these games and instead go down to their local video store and look through the pre-owned section instead…..

So where’s the NPD numbers. You guys better talk about those in the next cast so we can hear how PS3 Slim dominated Xbox 360 in sales!!!

Absolutely pathetic, please stop posting Games on Demand on the main blog.

I thought all Platinum hits were $20 anyway. (and even that’s still too much for games this “old” that you can find for even less) Give us a reason to buy them online!

Remember that DD games don’t fill warehouses with their boxes and that they take very little virtual space. It’s clear that MS don’t need this business model to be successful right now.
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They know that the prices are too high, they didn’t even show the service at the last E3 conference. When MS and their partners will be ready to transform the Xbox Marketplace in a real alternative to the traditional retailers we will know.
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But in the meantime showing our dislike for the service could help speeding up the process. At least that’s my hope.

Civ REV better come to Europe as well!

what a joke. you can get BOTH titles from Amazon UK resellers for a combined
prize of less than £15. You can buy the “tin box” special Bioshock on Amazon UK
for less than £10

Pricing is outrageous for a digital copy! Rather buy a used hard copy for half the price!

So what do you do when you want to trade the game in?

@Pemalite

I dont think you understand how digital distribution works, especially on a large scale like xbox live. Firstly you have the server costs which have to be running 24/7. You also need to have a backup for these servers. Then these servers need to be placed in different locations for each region Then there are the bandwidth costs which increase every time someone downloads a game.

But still all these costs aside, and the fact that we are pretty much already paying for them with our subscription, and these servers should have already been in place, all the games are still way overpriced. And there is a massive lack of consistency between all parts of games on demand.

i love the games on demand service. unlike most of you i am homebound and cannot go out to the stores to buy my games. i hate waiting for a game to arrive after i purchased it. any service that gives me a game immediately after purchase gets my money even if it is more money. i love reading all these complaints because most if not all of you can just drive yourself to a local store. my only wish is that they would release more then one game at a time. its not like microsoft makes you buy anything on their service if its too high just move along….nothing to see here.

come on major, you know the prices dont make sense, if you agree with us then “COUGH” on your next podcast.

I think Microsoft and the game publishers have to keep the prices high to keep from alienating Brick-and-Mortar stores. But ultimately it makes them look really bad and alienates the customer.

The only solution is to pull the Games on Demand service. It is creating ill will.

I think a key point is being missed here – this is the future. Publishers do not want you to trade used copies of games. They do not receive anything for secondary sales which is one of the bigger issues in the gaming industry.

GoD stops this second hand market, therefore the publisher gets all the royalities as the second hand market is finished.

I don’t agree with this and I think the prices are also too high. Although Civilization is one of the first offers that is closer to the real market price – but it is still not good enough.

Too bad Earth Defense Force 2017 (EDF 3 in Japan) isn’t available on GoD outside of Japan too – that game is a blast!

Yeah that’s right BrooksterMax, this is the industry’s way of trying to get back profits lost in the used game market. But judging by the profits GameStop and other used-game stores have been getting lately (esp. with the current state of the economy), it looks like they’re fighting a losing battle.

@Haukke

Haukke, I’m surprised that you’re siding with MS on this one. You’re paying a premium price for an inferior product.. one that comes with DRM and no possibility of trading it in to regain some of your investment. I understand the ‘I want it now’ mentality, especially as you aren’t able to just go out and pick it up used.. but paying as much as double what you could get it for elsewhere is a bit steep.

I really do think that DD is what the future holds for gaming.. and it looks like many of you here feel the same way. Now if MS could just get their pricing structure under control, I think they would be surprised with how many more purchases they would see. I’m used to seeing the comments about the steep pricing on just about every purchasable item.. and I’ve even made some of those posts myself.. but the amount of those posts found here really shows how extreme these prices are getting. I hope that MS finally realizes and corrects their mistakes in pricing soon!

Well, that’s a step in the right direction. A quick look online suggests your Games on Demand prices for these games are about equal with what I can expect to pay for a new in box copy. That’s an improvement. However, it is NOT ENOUGH to get me to take the plunge. As several others have already noted, your GoD version is a DRM-limited version of the game, requires hard drive space (and my 60-gig drive is already about 2/3rds full), and is solely in digital form; it has no resale value to me, it has none of the bonuses a retail copy comes with. You must charge significantly less than retail for me to buy a GoD title, because you are inherently selling an inferior version of that game. Until then, No Sale as far as I’m concerned.

While I’m not happy with most of the prices for these games (I’d like a 19.99 max for old releases and the HDD prices are outrageous), you have to understand that Microsoft is a business and is probably getting lobbied by major retailers and publishers like crazy.

I’m thinking about getting an elite for the extra hard drive space and extended warranty, but until your GoD prices fall more in line with the actual market price of these games I’m going to hold off. No reason for a bigger hard drive when it’s cheaper for me to buy the game on amazon and keep the disc.

epic pricing fail, europe:29,99€ for all the games, games that can be buyed at 9,99€-19,99€ at retail shops, must be joking.

oh joy, Bioshock for $10 more than what I can find at any store, or even find cheaper on line

@MACPH1ST0

Agreed, EDF 2017 is one of the best $20 I spent back in the day. I could never convince any of my friends to play it Co-op though, they just didn’t get it I guess.

http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.do?product_id=8217161

No cheaper than retail… too expensive. Not too big a surprise at this point, though.

I’m hoping Dead Space will be part of this list soon!

I know a lot of people here dislike these prices, but the cost of bandwidth, sever upkeep, etc etc etc. People seem to think DD is completly free with no strings attached and cost Microsft nothing to give, these are multi gig files. I work for a small company and these prices can get rather large in a short time, thousands of people downloading terabytes of data gets in the insane price tag.

@Metal Advent

But what they DON’T have is the cost to manufacture discs, cases, manuals. They also don’t have the multiple markups that come with manufacturer to distributor to store (and ones I’m likely missing) to you.

And our $50 or so per year is what’s SUPPOSED to be paying for the server cost/upkeep.

PSN does the same marketplace things and their service is FREE. These GOD could be 2x as cheap. Screw G.O.D.

Major…

I notice the announcement on the show that new GOD’s are coming but there is never a mention about the community anger exists about the pricing. Love your show mate but I would like to hear you, e etc discuss the issues of the day. This is one of them. Everytime you post a GOD thread, it attracts the same comments because people are genuinely pi$$ed at the pricing.

I know the xbox team collect the stats so could we please have e tell us what the stats are for GOD uptake. Maybe you’d also like to include a table for GOD downloads on the ‘Live Activity for the week thread’.

I am with Jasu78 above – your silence is deafening and could be misconstrued as contempt of your audience. If we are the minority, let us know. Personally, if majornelson.com is ‘representative’ of the wider community, the comments are balanced heavily towards an indicator that the pricing policy for GOD is seriously flawed.

Thirty freaking dollars for BioShock?!

Can I have some of whatever good stuff the folks at M$ are taking?

Someday I might buy a GoD. Someday, when prices drift towards the realm of SANITY.

– Rok

What about regional restriction? That suck’s. I want Bad Company in Portugal now. Please.

Well SOMEBODY must be buying them, otherwise the prices would have dropped by now!

STICKY, its the idiots. They will buy anything if it seems “cool”

Lol, I got BioShock Pre-Owned for £12.99.

Your charging way too much for these games and it’s extremely infuriating.

….and when is M$ going to get real about the price of a HDD.

120GB for €120!

That’s nuts when I can buy a 1TB for €80.

Come on M$, FFS, if you wan’t to get into to this ‘Digital Distribution’ don’t you think cheap HDD’s would be a fundamental part of it.