Bionic Commando Rearmed Repriced For PC

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.