I’ve been mightily looking forward to Bionic Commando Rearmed, as I’ve mentioned a few times. So I’m not exactly over the moon to learn that Capcom have decided to charge more to PC players than those on consoles. $14.99 for PC, $9.99 for consoles. For the same game.
Talking to Shack News, Christian Svensson, VP of business development and strategic planning at Capcom, explained that the reason was because, well, other things cost more on PC.
“The typical downloadable price for digital-only games on PC is actually $19.99.”
To be honest, I’m pretty surprised it’s only costing $14.99 (£7.50), considering the work that seems to have gone into it. Let alone $9.99. I was expecting a much higher price, and would happily have paid it. So this is in no way a complaint about £2.50. It’s more an expression of confusion over why this is the case.
The reasons given are that download portals on PC charge a commission for the hosting and bandwidth (but surely Microsoft and Sony do too?), and that people are used to paying more on the PC. Which is a fairly awful reason. Console players are used to paying an extra £10 for their games – why aren’t you charging them more on that basis? But thank goodness, they don’t blame piracy.
“It has nothing to do with Piracy concerns. It has to do with different business terms/expectations in that sector and more importantly, generally prevailing pricing of PC digital games versus their console counterparts.”
Which does sound an awful lot like, “Because we reckoned we can.” Which isn’t particularly endearing. Business, but not endearing. It’s not a big deal. It’s an extra £2.50, for what looks like it could be a decent game. It’s not worth a hissyfit (although look below for some anyway). But it’s an odd thing to do, and then say you’re doing.
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Firstly, I’ll just agree that anyone pirating this over $5 is a retard. Either don’t buy it, or wait for a price drop (or if you absolutely must rip off the PC version, at least do what yns88 suggested and buy a console version so that you are still paying $10 for it).
Regarding “The typical downloadable price for digital-only games on PC is actually $19.99.”, I just wanted to agree with Frosty840: US$20 is actually really overpriced for most indie games (not all of them mind, and for some it’s an absolute bargain, but for the majority of them it is simply too much for what they offer). So for them to base a higher price on that is just frustrating.
The fact that $20 is more or less standard has actually resulted in me buying about one quarter of the games I would have bought, were they half the price (no, I didn’t pirate the remainder) which, if I’m at all representative, would mean the indie gaming industry is losing out big time by asking what they do for their games. I’ve no idea if I’m a typical case, mind.
I’m willing to pay a bit of a premium to support indie developers, but there’s a limit, and I am generally mystified by the $20 price point.
$15 for BCR is probably reasonable, and I will definitely try the demo. I suspect I would have snapped it up in an instant for $10, mind.
Jez: theft of a physical object doesn’t helpfully illustrate unlawful duplication of software. It won’t win this argument.
Actually, it does. In times of near-infinite reprducibility, and the worth of the data carrier you steal if you shoplift being absolutely negligible compared to the value of the content, there isn’t a difference anymore. Stealing a physical object that has value per se, like a hand-made piece of furniture, is something different, but stealing a data carrier or downloading the content is essentially the same.
Actually, I wish all pirates would shoplift instead of pirate. At least the devs and publishers would still get their money that way.
But I’ve argued this point so often, I can’t listen to myself anymore.
@Phil:
“(or if you absolutely must rip off the PC version, at least do what yns88 suggested and buy a console version so that you are still paying $10 for it).”
Actually, I wouldn’t do that either. It skews the numbers for piracy up, while you’d likely already be playing the console version anyway–this being a side-scroller, and thus not native to the PC’s strengths. It just discourages Capcom from being more PC-friendly, and let’s face it, it took a long time just for them to make a damn good PC-version of one of their console titles.
I’d rather not see that surprising amount of good faith on their part begin to dwindle.
If I’d get extra content for the PC version, I might pay the extra $5. Otherwise I may as well snaffle it on 360. It’ll probably control better with a gamepad anyhow.
And FYI, $1000 is overkill for a decent gaming machine. I just priced the core components of my PC, which has comfortably handled everything I’ve thrown at it since this console generation emerged, and right now they’d cost you about $200. I grant you that they cost more back then, but if you’re comfortable being a bit behind the bleeding edge and picking up games as they drop in price, well, you’d be set quite cheaply.
Or, to put it another way, PCs are arguably more expensive in the long run, but if you’re at all handy and don’t farm out the assembly to a third party, you can upgrade in bits and bobs and just about never lay out as much at once as you’d spend on even a single console, while maintaining superior functionality.
I think theres a truth to it, that many pirates kind of feel guilty about what they do, so any justification for doing so, no matter how minor that might be, is just the ticket for asuaging their troubled conscience. Basically, in my opinion its a psychology issue.
What’s worrying to me isn’t the people jumping on the Piracy alternative at the least provocation. What worries me is the increasingly common assignment of malicious intent to the companies involved in things like this. The “These guys are intentionally trying to screw us” thing.
Video gamers have a very childlike sort of greed. We see, and we want; if we see something that interests us, it’s a foregone conclusion that we’re going to play it. In other industries, consumer choices are primarily about value; am I getting the most value I can for the offered price? If not, then I don’t make the purchase, and I look for an alternative. With video games, though, if we want to play something we’re going to. We don’t say “Well, these two games are priced the same, but this one has ten more hours of story. I’m getting a better deal, here.” We buy not on value but on interest. If we budget, we budget by time, and interest. If money becomes a problem, we pirate.
There’s nothing really wrong with this state of affairs. What I don’t like, though, is the sense of entitlement that’s arisen with it. Because we will play any game that interests us, because our patronage is such a foregone conclusion, any complications that arise are an abuse to that patronage. They know we’re going to play it; raising the price is like shoving us, and answering our feeble objections with a sneer. “Oh, what are you going to do? You’re going to buy the game, and you’re going to give us your lunch money, too.” But oh, we’ll show them. We’ll pirate it, steal it right out from under their noses, and then see who’s laughing last. Show them they can’t just push us around like this. They’re taking advantage of us, they are.
I think we, as consumers, are honestly a little spoiled. Not all of us, true. But people who buy maybe one game a year and play it for a few hours each week aren’t the ones loading up torrents in righteous indignation.
Something to think about.
A lot of these fools were going to pirate this game anyway. They’ve just come out of the woodwork because they’ve found a reason to be snarky. I have a 360 as well as a pc which now leaves me in a dilemma. Buy a reasonably priced 360 version of an over priced pc version and support the platform I love.
I’m more inclined to go with the 360 version as capcom seems determined be looking for reasons to abandon the pc platform anyways.
hmm…. decisions.
Gonna buy it on PS3 then.
Don’t mind extra 5 dollars, but it seems, that game is better played with gamepad anyway. :)
Now I can understand why people are baffled with that … creative.. price policy. But to use this as an excuse for pirating software is low.
Really low.
@Dorian Cornelius Jasper:
Cheers, mate ;)
I’m off out now for a cooked breakfast at a cafe. it will cost me probably the equiv of $15 and last maybe 20 minutes tops.
WTF is wrong with people that a game they might enjoy is too expensive at £7.50?
Consoles pay license fees, the PC does not. its an open platform. hats reason enough for a price difference surely?
But I know some people are just looking for self-justification to take the game by pirating it. Fine, feel all smug, but unless you personally mail a check for the $9.99 you would have paid, to the developers, don’t think what you are doing is vaguely reasonable.
I think it’s probably going to be more that people expect a low price on the XBLA. Braid got a ton of criticism for going above the usual cost. So it’s likely that this is the price they feel their game is worth, but they have to lower it on the Xbox to compete with the other games on there.
ETA: I like roBurky’s idea better than my knee-jerk reaction (preserved below for posterity).
If they were asking for $65 on PC then, yes, the publisher is “asking for it”.* At $15 bucks though? I won’t play it at all. It’s a great middle ground – I want to support creative pricing and a release from the tyranny of the $60 game. It’s just that I’m not going to pay more for owning a scalable platform. But for that price, I can’t very well justify pirating it, can I? Because that would be the very height of wankery, considering how many games I’ve bought online for similar deals. No, the only thing to do is send my money to a publisher that doesn’t discriminate based on hyperbole, and save my piracy for people who aren’t trying new business models. Shame, really, this game looked like some fun.
* By “it” I mean piracy, insofar as “asking” is synonymous with “gouging”, if they’re jacking the price up for PC.
@John
“theft of a physical object doesn’t helpfully illustrate unlawful duplication of software. It won’t win this argument.”
Point.
Admittedly, mine was a poorly constructed argument. It’s just frustrating to see piracy justified by what seems to be little more than a case of broken expectations.
People are railling against the few idiots that said they’d pirate the game, and ignoring the wider issue that people are actually upset about. Namely that it seems that it’s OK to charge extra for the PC version over the 360 version “just because”.
Nobody like price gouging, nobody likes the idea that they’re being taken for a ride or being taken advantage of for extra money. You can couch in terms like “well it’s only $5″ until you’re blue in the face, still doesn’t change the fact that people are getting upset because they feel they’re getting the short end of the stick. In what way is that unreasonable?
I’m sorry, whoever they got to do their PR and make those statements just made the WRONG statements period. All it comes across as them being jerks and raising the price because you’ll happily swallow it. Why is it difficult to see that people will get upset over that? Stop crying about the few morons that said they’d pirate the game for five seconds, and even if you don’t agree with it, you might at least understand where people are coming from with this.
And then there’s the increasingly cynical part of me that gets to thinking. The game is cheaper on the 360? Guess what, people will BUY it on the 360, I sure as crap would. The devs will be shocked, SHOCKED to see that the PC version sold in “less than expected” numbers. I’d like to say I’m wrong, but I fully expect that the devs will come out with a statement saying that the game “sold less well than they thought it ought to”, and that this can only be attributable to one thing.
And RPS will run yet another article on you-know-what. I’m not one to say that it isn’t an issue either, it’s a frigging huge issue, it’s not the elephant in the room, it is the room, but people seem increasingly reluctant to even consider that lower than expected sales may have other factors attributable to them. The P word has become the de-facto explanation for any failure of any software product on the PC. Jerk moves like this just aren’t considered as a even a possibility as to why people might go for another, cheaper version elsewhere.
Having just done a rough points/cash conversion here, that’s a whole £1.00 premium for the PC version over the 360 version at the current exchange rate. Rates may differ for PSN, obv.
One Earth Pound. Not even two choccy bars worth of premium.
Those intent on pirating/boycotting the game on principle, still feel justified?
I’m always surprised at seeing people defend multinational IP holding corporations. They already have “Le gros bout du bâton” as we say in my homeland and deserve every bit of criticism they are basicaly asking for.
I’m pretty sure that ms points are worth different amounts in different countries, so if the game costs 800 points that may be $10 in the US but I don’t think it equals £5 in the UK, and according to wiki it comes to about £6.80 or $13.60 whch would mean that for the UK the price increase is pretty much nothing, particularly when you have to buy 1000 points rather than 800 on Xbox live. Though I don’t know if Capcom are charging Europe more on the pc as well.
Two chocolate bars cost more than a pound?!
Good grief, I need to spend more time in newsagents.
Unless you get Cadburys Frogs.
They’re only 15p each.
It’s hilarious watching people using moral outrage at being charged “too much” as an excuse for downloading a game. Look, if you’re going to pirate something, at least have the moral decency to feel a bit guilty about it.
P.
Again, if anyone missed it the first time, the producer has confirmed that the PC version will be getting some free addon levels at a later point that the console versions may, if they ever get it, be charged for.
Plus, in the grand scheme of things, you may be paying $5 more for Rearmed, but when the 3D sequel comes out (which is looking lovely, AND owning Rearmed unlocks bonuses in it) you’ll probably save at least $5, closer to $10-15 if you get it for the PC.
if you made all games £0.01 and DRM free, there are a lot of internet dicks who would torrent them anyway because “all game developers drive gold plated ferraris” or some such bullshit.
Hey, if there’s extra content to go along with the higher price, then I’ve got no real complaints.
I still think the reasons they gave earlier were pretty much a good example of how NOT to do PR on their part. It really does come off as sounding “Well we know we can charge you guys more for no real reason, so lets go with that.”
Cliffksi: Yes there are. Doesn’t change the fact that charging more for one whilst saying “well, it’s because we can get away with it innit?” Does NOT engender goodwill from your consumers. If people feel that they’re being taken for a ride like that, then they’re going to be upset about it. Doesn’t matter if it’s $5 or $500.
Yes it really does come off that way.
protip: the various posters crying about other commenters indicating that they will pirate this are more than likely admins of their own private games bt sites and the worst of them all.
Yeah, if that’s the case, then fair play to them. ‘It’s only such-and-such pounds’ is a red herring, however — I can’t blame anyone who’s now decided not to buy the game (I wasn’t really interested in the first place), as you don’t want to set a precedent for developers arbitrarily screwing PC gamers with impunity, however pettily the trend might begin.
15p! They used to be 10p… The economy really is in ruins…
I hear that they’re still 10p on consoles.
And you can eat them from the comfort of your couch instead of dripping melted chocolate over your keyboard.
Subedii, price gouging only works if you’re selling necessities. You can price gouge food, you can do it with gas, and you can do it with rent. The process works because people have to buy it, unless they want to be starving, immobile, and homeless.
You can’t, price gouge wine or candy. Or movie tickets, or limousine rides, or those nice leatherbound journals, or MP3 players, or video games. These are luxuries; you can buy them, but you don’t have to. Even if you want them, if you’re worried about the cost you can find alternatives that give you a similar value for a lower price.
If you read an article that claims that the price on, say, Moleskine notebooks was going up, but that copies on sale, say, by the checkout of Barnes and Noble were staying the same price, you think for a minute, and say “I guess $10 is a sort of sweet spot for a throwaway purchase for people waiting in line, but the price of full-fledged notebooks from people specifically shopping for that sort of thing is generally a little more.” Then you shrug, and say “It’s business,” and decide to either buy a Moleskine at Barnes and Noble or go buy a different, cheaper notebook. You don’t accuse them of price-gouging, and of having the tremendous arrogance to not even bother to pretend that they aren’t, actually running a business.
To summarize: we’re not being “screwed.” We’re not being “Price-gouged.” We’re not being cheated, or conned. We’re being offered a luxury for five dollars more than it was originally priced, on our platform of choice. That is all.
Noc, If you charge one subset a higher price and then effectively say “it’s because we can”, you’re going to get a knockback effect from those people having to pay extra. I feel I’ve been pretty clear explaining this.
Now with the additional content, that becomes a moot point. People are happy to pay more to get more. They aren’t happy to pay more to get the same and then have the explanation boil down to “well that’s what we can get away with here”.
All this is aside from my other concern, because it’s a scenario I can very easily see playing out.
You’re right, people will go for the cheaper option. You know what my concern is? That when people start opting for the cheaper option, the publishers (not the devs, the publishers) will see “hey, there’s no market here, people aren’t buying our product that’s over-priced compared to the alternative version. Piracy? Yeah, piracy’s GOT to be the only explanation here. Let’s write a complaint article and drive the nail that much further in…”
You know something, even I will admit that’s unlikely to happen, but it still makes no sense to me to charge the extra cost and then make those statements.
I do apologise if this has been addressed already, but blimey if this comments thread isn’t long:
To be fair, their non-downloadable games are priced higher on exactly that basis. Of course, in that case it makes sense because Sony/MS/Nintendo take a big slice of the pie, but with the consoles it does seem the norm that physical, disc-based games cost £40-£50, and downloadable games cost £5-£10, whereas on the PC the standard values are £30-£40 and £10-£20. While it may seem cynical of Capcom to adjust their prices with regard to this, it is just about understandable.
These are luxuries; you can buy them, but you don’t have to.
much of the current state of credit woes in the us can be traced to the lack of a line between the concepts of “want” and “need.” that line is essentially inexplicable to a large portion of the under 40 crowd, like yelling at a dog for not speaking french. they just cock their heads and bark “credit card?” at you, alternating between hopeful and confused.
the idea of doing without is simply impossible to understand for some people – give it a few years and you’ll have people clamoring for government price controls on games, if they haven’t already, because video game companies are exploiting children / the poor / something or other by making games people want but not giving them away for free.
generation veal is only going to make things worse in this regard. on the other hand, you never know – personal austerity might come back the same way a lot of the physical culture trappings of the early 20th century came back. (kettlebells!)
lutherans might become cool again. :)
@Noc
Agreed, entirely – and all this noise just sounds like the tantrums of spoilt brats who feel they are, somehow, deserving.
Of course, business will be business will be business, and if you can charge, you charge. If you don’t like the price, don’t buy it, go without, get something else. (Which is where making the price difference and reasoning so blatant here looks like Capcom shooting themselves in the foot.)
But this is where piracy gets interesting. No matter what your stance on it, the previous maxim doesn’t hold. If you don’ like the price of a game, you can pirate it. Facile but falacious comparisons to shop theft aside, that adds a whole new dynamic to the business model.
The spoilt brats can now get what they want. Quickly, easily, and, importantly, very, very cheaply.
I have no sympathy for businesses, as, traditonally, they have been the power holders in purchase transactions. They, doing as you say, set the prices, we buy or don’t buy. Piracy puts a massive amount of power in the hands of the consumer.
Pronouncements of the death of an industry aside (because, yeah, an industry totaling greater profits than Hollywood is gonna go under), that fundamental shift in power can only be a good thing for us consumers.
to0 me the decision will depend on whether the console version does real 1080p, if it doesn’t, and the PC version does, then i’ll get the PC version. otherwise, if they’re both the same in resolution, then i’m putting price first.
of course if the PC version is download ONLY, then i’m liable to tell them to shove it all together.
Are there actually any current console games that do 1080p? I thought they were all 720 or lower? I know they had to cut it down below 720p for games like Halo and CoD4 in order to actually be able to get everything running smoothly.
i think the pricing makes sense and sure it’ll end up being pirated but most of the people who want to play it and can pay for it will.
Personally, I am just a bit irked because PC gamers have to pay more than console gamers. But still, the price is quite reasonable.
Heh, saw this on other news outlets and was slightly amused/confused. Basically, them wanting more money for the same product means that i’m 90% certain that i won’t buy it at the price point that they think they can get away with….
Mass Effect extra content costs $5 or more on the 360, but is free on the PC. If you think this $5 discrepancy doesn’t make a lot of sense, the Mass Effect one is pure insanity.
They remade Bionic Commando? Cool.
If you don’t like the PC price, wait a couple of months for it to adjust to the market.
Pay a little extra and buy Aquaria or other great indie games which DON’T try to rip you off instead (but not Eternity Child:o)
@subedii – yes, there are a fair few PS3 and 360 games that will run at 1080p, even without having to use the 360’s inbuilt hardware scaler to ‘cheat’. GT5:Prologue, Virtua Tennis 3 and Tekken 5 spring to mind.
That “$5″ is because Steam games are one price across the world, and $15 is roughly what us Europeans have to pay for 800 MS Points anyway (buying your points in the US has been made rather more fiddly these days).
But no, I don’t understand why anyone in a position to buy the 360 or PS3 version would want the PC one anyway; this game looks tailor-made for the pad and sofa.
Yeah, prices for Xbox points (unless you are using US account) is way higher. And considering current conversion $ – € I would say $15 is dirt cheap price.
So I am sold :-)
“The typical downloadable price for digital-only games on PC is actually $19.99″ and?
The typical bargain bin game costs from 3 to 6 euros, and it’s more likely to find better games there than yet-another-bionic-commando, or many of those other 19.99.
Not to mention, it’s likely not going to be worth even that. And yet again, someone mentioned the P-word, so we get the college-know-it-alls unintentional trolls, like rez, who would easily link duplication to theft. Then proceed to type many lines of “LALALALALALALA CAN’T HEAR YOU LALALLALA” and run around in circles to not hear the retort.
Here’s the thing: If there were value-added features for the PC version, like maybe a Level Editor, I wouldn’t think twice. Barring any additional features, it’s robbery.
i just wanna to say one thing – [I like biscuits]
I’m gonna do what I always do: I’m gonna pirate it, I’m gonna play it, and if I like it, I’m gonna buy it. If it sucks, it goes in the recycle bin.
$15 isn’t a bad price — regardless of what console gamers will be paying — but if the game is just plain bad, it’s $15 that’d be better spent elsewhere.