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[Guardian Monkey]

You are gonna be 100% at Sony's mercy. There is no competing digital storefronts like there is on PC with key sites. If you think that will be a W for consumers idk what to tell you. For instance Returnal is $70 + tip on PSN right now.

Returnal - Exclusive PS5 Games | PlayStation

Buy Returnal on PS5 and fight to break the cycle of chaos on a hostile, alien planet. In this third-person roguelike shooter, every attempt at escape is a high stakes journey – with the odds stacked firmly against you.

www.playstation.com

Or $25 for a Steam key

Returnal PC

Buy Returnal PC ✔️ CD Key ✔️ Instant download ✔️ Fantastic price ✔️ Digital Download ✔️

www.cdkeys.com

Since 90% of console game sales are digital and Xbox is dead, it would benefit Sony greatly to control 100% of the market and only piss off 10% of their customers who will soon have nowhere else to turn. Xbox already stopped doing physical games too.

Of course you are at Sony's mercy, its their game and it's the cost of doing business with a console storefront. The game must be getting enough sales for them to keep it at $69.99 still most of time. But over time the retail of the game will go down eventually with Sony. The game has been on sale for $40 through Sony directly a few times. You don't need to convince me the PC world will have cheaper options, that is not even in question.

 

[CrimsonTide]

gg.deals tells you the risks involved for each particular reseller.

I do not purchase ANY game without checking that site first.

It is a MUST

 

[BlackTron]

If anything, losing physical has had the opposite effect. There is always going to be more and more competition with digital as the library of available games grows and not fighting for shelve space. If something is too expensive for your perceived value. Just wait.

If games are fighting for shelf space, doesn't that also mean retailers discount games that take up room to make space for inventory of other games?

Not necessarily, I guess the alternative is to just send them back, but I remember noticing a bunch of copies of Star Fox Zero at the bottom of the case at Walmart for five bucks each. Obviously an extreme case but it does say something.

 

[Guardian Monkey]

If games are fighting for shelf space, doesn't that also mean retailers discount games that take up room to make space for inventory of other games?

Not necessarily, I guess the alternative is to just send them back, but I remember noticing a bunch of copies of Star Fox Zero at the bottom of the case at Walmart for five bucks each. Obviously an extreme case but it does say something.

Are they still there?

 

[Hudo]

Because companies know that people will still buy them. I wouldn't be surprised if T2 tries to sell GTA 6 for $100.

 

[Beechos]

Why drop it if they don't have to? They prob done the math like someone said earlier sell 3 copies at $70 = $210 or 20 copies at $10 = $200. It also gives off the impression its a "premium" product.

 

[Fbh]

More publishers seem to have realized that having their games be $19.99 a year after releases was devaluing them too much and encouraging a "just wait for a low sale" mentality among their customers. If the games weren't selling at these higher prices they'd drop them, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

Also we still get plenty of sales, what seems to have changed is that most publishers just no longer make permanent price drops, they just increase the sale amount over time. Which probably also makes the sales more enticing because a $30 game on a 60% off sale seems like a better deal than the $30 game that's only 20% off the regular price.

Of course you are at Sony's mercy, its their game and it's the cost of doing business with a console storefront. The game must be getting enough sales for them to keep it at $69.99 still most of time. But over time the retail of the game will go down eventually with Sony. The game has been on sale for $40 through Sony directly a few times. You don't need to convince me the PC world will have cheaper options, that is not even in question.

I think the new Ps+ tiers also play a role.
Returnal has been on the service since it launched, so I could imagine they try to keep the price high to push people towards the subscription.
When you go to the returnal page on PSN (at least the browser version) the first thing they show you is that instead of spending $70 you can subscribe to access "this game and hundreds more".

 

[Branded]

I do not purchase ANY game without checking that site first.

It is a MUST

To be fair (well unfair I suppose in this case lol) I've bought HUNDREDS of games via dodgy resellers and the only one that was ever removed from my Steam after the fact was Night in the Woods, which I bought from G2A. Otherwise I've never had any issue with even the most grey of the grey market sites hehe.

But yeah always good to check first as you said and there are plenty of resellers out there which have minimal risks involved.

 

[Guardian Monkey]

I think the new Ps+ tiers also play a role.
Returnal has been on the service since it launched, so I could imagine they try to keep the price high to push people towards the subscription.
When you go to the returnal page on PSN (at least the browser version) the first thing they show you is that instead of spending $70 you can subscribe to access "this game and hundreds more".

Exactly. So I was going to bring that up, but I didn't want to get into the whole you don't own it debate. You are spot on, it basically is an AD to get you to upgrade to PS Extra. The normal price is $70 but if you subscribe/upgrade you can play it and other games.

 

[Sooner]

They are realizing that teaching consumers that prices will drop 75% if they wait a few months will teach them to rarely buy new. Nintendo was smart in this aspect.

 

[PlayStaytion]

Why are games not getting price drops like they use to?

I am talking in both base price and sales. Yes it still happens, but it seems to me a much rarer thing than in the past. Especially on ps5.

I remember last gen and the gen when a game would come out and a year or two later it would be $19.99.
Others would get a GOTY or Complete edition and be a cheaper price.

Look at God of War it was $19.99 on ps4/5 and on sale now for $9.99 on psn.
If you look at it's sequel , Ragnorok, it still sells on psn for $69.99, a game that came out 3 years ago.
Returnal (close to launch game) released 2021, 4 years ago is still $69.99 on psn. ( a short game, a rougelite basically, it should of been $40 and 20 now).

These games would of been 19.99 after 2 years on ps4. If you want to adjust for inflation and price uptick at least make it $29.99 and then on sales make it $19.99 or $14.99

Due to this I haven't played Ragnorok. The only GOW game I have missed. I won't until I can get it cheap as I heard it has bad writing and woke themes.
Only reason I got the Last of Us 2 was it was $9.99 on sale on psn. I'll buy a game i am not entirely interested in if its on sale. My steam and switch account will vouche for that.

Steam and Switch have prices drops all the time (well for non first party). Every week i see price drops and deep discounts. PSN when they do drop the price its either temporary or not by much.

Then there is game pass and Xbox very rarely doing sales anymore.

What changed?

Has anyone else noticed this?

Is this the all Digital future you all signed up for?

There is a reason taking out the disk drive was a bad idea. Good for bean counters, bad for gamers and price conscious people. I buy a lot of games, even if I don't play them. I won't if they are expensive.
I only buy day 1 if its a series I love and know I will like. Games going on sale physically pushed down prices for everyone.

OR if its's at a reasonable price. Games like Expedition 33 and Oblivion remastered were insta buys due to the cheaper price tag.
More games at $50 would be ideal I'd take more euro jank AA rpgs and sci-fi fps games for a cheaper price.

I really hope that is the future, smaller teams, smaller budget, more passion, and less marketing for a lower entry point.
Expedition 33 is the example. If you make a $70 game it better be worth that and have the content. Baldur's Gate 3 is worth $70. Returnal and its insta death is not.

Usually they know when gamers running out of choices and look back instead, I'm not there yet with Xbox.

 

[GriffinCorp]

I feel like digital PS5 games hardly go on sale or at least the good stuff. The best digital games deals has to be Steam. They always have something going on sale.

 

[kruis]

I think the new Ps+ tiers also play a role.
Returnal has been on the service since it launched, so I could imagine they try to keep the price high to push people towards the subscription.
When you go to the returnal page on PSN (at least the browser version) the first thing they show you is that instead of spending $70 you can subscribe to access "this game and hundreds more".

Same reason why MS now wants $80 for Outer Worlds 2: the outrageous price on Steam for that game is hidden advertising for Game Pass PC.

 

[Guilty_AI]

The issue is not really Playstation though, it happens all official stores. Steam sales are nowhere near what they used to be in the past and Playstation third party sales are a very close match with the equivalent Steam ones more often than not. The only stores that break the mold are key sellers like CDkeys.

This is what OP himself said:

Steam and Switch have prices drops all the time (well for non first party). Every week i see price drops and deep discounts. PSN when they do drop the price its either temporary or not by much.

I merely provided a possible reason. If your perception is any different take it to him

 

[FoxMcChief]

 

[DownLikeBCPowder]

It is still happening. My Ps5 collection is small, but almost all were purchased at physical ddiscount.

Forspoken - 10 USD at Walmart.
Miles Morales - 20 USD
Resident Evil 2 and 3 - 20 USD each...
AC Mirage - 20 USD

Not sure what you mean, price decreases are definitely happening in historical fashion, Ubisoft games drop like rocks like they always have, more prominent titles take a little longer or are slower. And Nintendo still maintains premium for longer but the games are still found on sale.

The biggest issue I'm having is that availability is not what it used to be, a lot of games are receiving smaller prints and therefore I'm forced to buy them closer to release and then miss out on a depreciated price for the unit later on due to lack of a larger print or standard print like we used to receive for just about any game releasing.

 

[Felessan]

Talking about Playstation specifically, this is what happens when there is only 1 market the games are sold on and no competition. The prices don't drop because why would they?

Wtf
Every publisher doing it
Skull and bones full base price with 80% discount. Robocop is full price with 85% discount. There are tons of 60+% discounts, those normally (previously) should be translated into base price reductions but no more.
It's the whole market strategy of digital sales now, not "Sony is evil and greedy blablabla"

 

[R6Rider]

Deals are happening all the time still though.

I've spent over $1k on games so far this year and most of them were at least 50% off.

 

[near]

If you miss a PSN sale, you're out of luck until the next sale. If you want to play a particular game and the current price seems unreasonable, wishlist it and you'll get a notification when it's on sale. The downside is not being able to buy and play the game you want, when you want, at a reasonable price, and you'll be reliant on the next sale arriving within a reasonable timeframe.

 

[Trogdor1123]

gg.deals tells you the risks involved for each particular reseller.

I always wonder about this. Are there any to absolutely avoid?

 

[Guardian Monkey]

I always wonder about this. Are there any to absolutely avoid?

I would suggest to start below to get some baseline knowledge.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Steam/wiki/dangersofkeyresellers/

 

[StueyDuck]

I remember like late PS3 and early PS4 gen when sales weren't always like "month long events", and would change every wednesday (or maybe it was thursday).

i grabbed the first helldivers on a random sale of the week, and it wasn't even that much cheaper, but it was like yo this games a couple of weeks old and it's a bit cheaper, i'll scoop it up.

now you have to wait many months before you get a decent price drop and you have to wait for the "Sale Event".

Honestly though, just wait. Give it as long as it needs, it'll either eventually be so cheap it's almost free or these pubs will just give it away on Gamepass or PS Plus...

 

[tr1p1ex]

games prices are going up. you just don't know it yet

 

[Hollowpoint5557]

Wtf
Every publisher doing it
Skull and bones full base price with 80% discount. Robocop is full price with 85% discount. There are tons of 60+% discounts, those normally (previously) should be translated into base price reductions but no more.
It's the whole market strategy of digital sales now, not "Sony is evil and greedy blablabla"

I understand you are a member of the Sony defense force, but in speaking of them directly, what you didnt say was why I was wrong. "Everyone else is doing it too" isn't an answer.

Sony Facing Class Action Lawsuit Over PlayStation Store

A consumer group in the Netherlands files a class-action lawsuit against Sony for allegedly inflating digital game prices on the PlayStation Store.

gamerant.com

 

[Alebrije]

Maybe it's an strategy. You can play most of great Sony's exclusives if You join PS Plus extra. So they keep "hight" the price of the base Game so it's service has more appeal.

 

[Itchy Tickles]

When I still gamed on my PS4 I was full digital only. For me Sony stopped allowing third parties to sell game codes in my region, so you had to buy directly from the store for full price, usually £50.
The only work around I had was to actually buy top up cards for my PSN Wallet as third parties still sold them. I could get a £50 code for about £42 or something (the bigger the code cost the more savings) which made buying from PSN not as expensive. The physical games were always cheaper still, at around £35. Backwards stuff.

As for sales, yeah maybe once a year at Christmas I remember PSN having a worth while sale for games I didn't own. It's expensive on console in the long run.

 

[dragonyeuw]

I spoke on this in another thread a few weeks ago. Last gen was the big push in the console space to establish digital ecosystems that will carry forward to future hardware. They had to entice you with cheap games in order for the consumer to bite on that strategy. And now that that most games are sold digitally....mission accomplished. They no longer need to entice you as much because they've got you locked into the ecosystem(s), right down to buying all digital systems where even the *option* of a physical game purchase is not there. And in Sony's case, it seems like they've gone the Nintendo route of not deeply discounting their games. They occasionally go on sale to $30 but Sony hasn't dropped the MSRP on any of their PS5 first party stuff to my knowledge.

Frankly, it's not as if people weren't sounding the alarm bells years ago that this would be an eventuality of an all-digital future. Too late now....

 

[NeoIkaruGAF]

Forget big games. Why is Cave Story never on sale for less than €9.99? Why do Cave shooters never get more than a 20% discount?

 

[mayham2199]

To play devils advocate, digital sales are a lot more frequent now than they were a few years before.

Check xbdeals.net and psdeals.net to see whenever hundreds of games and/or DLC go on sale every other day.

Came in here to post this as well. Don't know about the other ecosystems but Sony is constantly running some sort of sale. Once a sale ends another starts up like right away or the day after.

 

[GermanZepp]

Steam gives me shouts every week on one or another of my whishlist games being on sale. So i'm cool.

 

[asdasdasdbb]

The biggest issue I'm having is that availability is not what it used to be, a lot of games are receiving smaller prints and therefore I'm forced to buy them closer to release and then miss out on a depreciated price for the unit later on due to lack of a larger print or standard print like we used to receive for just about any game releasing.

I think that's the future of physical is. A small run at the game's launch at the MSRP (or maybe even higher...) for people who just can't quit. Small enough that retailers don't have to unload inventory at a loss (which is where the deals are)

 

[DragonNCM]

For consoles Xbox has best sales last 3 years.
Even with Gamepass I'm regularly getting games on big discounts.

 

[DownLikeBCPowder]

I think that's the future of physical is. A small run at the game's launch at the MSRP (or maybe even higher...) for people who just can't quit. Small enough that retailers don't have to unload inventory at a loss (which is where the deals are)

Yeah, sadly it's not just the future, it's already the present in many cases. I am having this problem at an extremely accelerating rate starting about 1-1.5 years now. I always stayed half gen or more behind in order to scoop up large quantity (outside of must have Day 1 games) and it is increasingly impossible to do..

 

[Calverz]

Just get cheap codes from online resellers.

 

[Shadowstar39]

Gamestop, walmart, amazon, best buy, target, etc always have discounts around holidays and alot of them do summer deals and spring deals as well. You can get used games off gamestop for really good prices if you know what you're looking for.

True, thing is this doens't work for digital. With disc drives going away, it will be worse.

I remember a few years back when this was brought up people would point to steam and say see they do better sales. Yet even those have gotten less good. The thing is though steam digital has compeition from cd key sellers and other storefronts. Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft don't have this. If you want a digital game you are stuck with what they sell you.

The whole "well no case, plastic and storefront, means they will pass the savings on to you" was bullshit and anyone with a brain should know that they will try to get as much out of you as they can.

 

[Shadowstar39]

Just get cheap codes from online resellers.

Works for steam games (if in stock) but not for console.

I made this thread as I remembered years ago people praising digital and saying everything would be cheaper. Things were until physical started going away and then Sony and MS got their players in the eco system. They now have people by the balls. PC is the only place digital games have competition.

 

[Shadowstar39]

Yeah those days of quickly grabbing a few games for 20 bucks a piece a month or 2 after launch seems to be gone. I bought a lot of PS3 games because of this. I would find games I skipped, like Dead Space 3 or Rage, for like 15/20 bucks new and take them home.

Yep, I have been doing that since the NES... I remember older games would be way cheaper, its always been this way until this gen. PS1 was the best with this. I would get paid and go in with $50-60 and leave with 3-5 games sometimes.

 

[BlackTron]

Are they still there?

No, they got sold making space for more games, and some of those games go on sale as well.

It's still kind of like this in stores with physical Switch games, older third party ones spammed outside the glass security case.

 

[Killer8]

 

[MrKainobi]

PSN Store has always a sale event going. Feels like games are every 2-3 months on a discount rotation. I can imagine that they keep base prices up to be able to offer frequent discounts which from a psychological perspective works better than just lowering base prices.

 

[Danjin44]

Really? I recently bought both RE7 gold edition and RE8 gold edition bundle for $20-$24 CAD.

 

[Shadowstar39]

I mean it must have been insane too back then the number of refunds that these sales generated, you could buy a game on Friday at 33% off, then ?, Sunday you could see 50% off. Just refund first item and buy again. Imagine the mess.

Easy solution to this would be to prevent rebuying the game you just refunded.

 

[Rivdoric]

More interesting for some companies to sell 3 copies at 70$ than 10 at 20$

10 people playing your good game will advertise it 3X more than 3 though.