In the year 2016, buying a video game is as cheap as it has ever been. This may be hard to fathom, considering most retail games sport a not-so-attractive $60 price tag. However, we must look at this from the proper context. Due to inflation and the dollar losing purchase power as time goes on, an NES game from 1990 that cost $50 would be about $89 in 2016 money. A PS2 game worth $50 in 2005 would be worth about $60 in 2016. While these older games are more expensive in this day, we obviously aren't buying new NES games in 2016 and we do have to pay $60 for modern games, as opposed to $50. This iswhere the importance of digital games come in. Most people who play video games know that their consoles have marketplaces (Xbox Marketplace, PlayStation Store, and Nintendo E-Shop), where you can choose to purchase games digitally. While these digital game sales are on the rise, Gamers still opt to buy games at retail, and understandabley so.
A physical game costs the same as a digital one (at the moment) and physical games can be traded in when/if you decide it is simply collecting dust on a shelf. While I respect a person's purchasing decisions, embracing the digital future is only good for the industry and the gamer as a whole. Let's look at how much a $60 game is broken up and divided. First $27 is cut to the developer and publisher, which is split between them. $15 goes to the retailer (Gamestop, Best-But, etc.). $7 goes to platform royalties, the cut that goes to PlayStation and Xbox when games are sold on their platform and returns on games not sold, respectively. Lastly, $4 goes to distribution of goods ( making cases and discs). Now let's break it down. By selling games on a digital platform, we can immediately cut out the distribution cost, since posting a game to a digital marketplace probably costs less than making games cases and distributing them. We can cut out the $7 for returns since there were no games to distribute to begin with. Platform royalties can probably be a fluctuating factor since first party developers probably are absolved of this cost. This would leave us with the retailer cut. Since game marketplaces are technically retailers, we can't cut it out entirely but it can be cut down considerably since the platform isn't contingent on digital sales. So with all these parameters in mind, a game could virtually (pun intended) be as expensive as $49 and as cheap as $34.
Imagine a world where you can buy the newest Halo or Uncharted, Battlefield, or even Call of Duty with a willing price tag of $34 dollars. A brand spanking new retail game in its release window, all for $34 dollars. How fast we get there is up to you. Digital Sales are in the rise and are slowly outpacing retail sales. By buying games digitally now, we can work faster toward the inevitable all digital era. A future of no discs, of cheaper games, of no pointless midnight release, of no more stolen, broken, or lost games. Embrace the digital future.
