Could Vita games cost 40% more at retail?

December 6th, 2011, 01:35 Posted By: wraggster

We already know that games for the PlayStation Vita will cost less to download than they will at the shops.
But US price aggregation site Thrifty Nerd claims to have word direct from a Sony representative that digital Vita games will cost a staggering 40 per cent less than their physical alternatives.
“I was told that games would be capped at $39.99 retail while the same game would go for around $23 if you downloaded it,” it claims.
“According to the rep, the lack of hardware and packaging can be thanked for the price drop.”
The part of the puzzle that doesn’t fit together, however, is that retailers such as GAME now include digital as an important part of their offer. Is GAME really expected to offer both a boxed version of a game at one price and a code to download it for far less in the same store?
Regardless of the legitimacy of these particular claims, the fact that digital Vita software will be cheaper than retail represents a stark turn of policy for the console sector.
Both Sony and Microsoft currently offer a wide range of full-game downloads over their networks for PS3 and Xbox 360 respectively, but more often than not the prices are absurd – often twice the price of buying the equivalent game at retail.
This is down to two factors. Firstly, platform holders are very curious about how many of you, the paying the public, are prepared download a game at a premium cost.
Secondly, until this point platform holders had been wary of attacking retail too directly. After all, while retail can theoretically be cut out of the software loop, they are still central to the sales of hardware.
Until they figure out how you can download that.

http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/could...-retail/088117

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