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Will Retail Stores Ever Match Physical Game $ Incentives?

M

musicpenguy

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Oct 29, 2006
1,851
761
I wanted to pose this question: currently with BestBuy's GamerClub I get 20% off any physical retail game; on certain preorders like Destiny I get an additional $10 gift card at the time of purchase. So in my state without sales tax Destiny will set me back $38.99.

It is hard for me to pay the difference to get the version that I actually want the digital copy. Do you guys think that during this generation retail stores will start to offer the same incentives to buy digital codes for games at their stores? What are the economics behind this; are the margins that different? If anything why isn't Sony and Microsoft doing more to help retailers sell more digital games in retail stores?

Would love some insight here
 
I think they are starting to. GameStop has Destiny for pre-order and you can choose a physical disk or a digital download and both give you the beta access code. http://www.gamestop.com/xbox-one/games/destiny/110091


Hopefully this is a sign of things to come. Rumor has it that one of the upcoming Xbox One system dates is going to include the ability to pre-order digital downloads so they will automatically be purchased/downloaded when they are ready (like getting the day of release from a store). If this happens I would think retailers would need to compete with that a bit and might start pushing this further.

I myself am torn on digital downloads. While I love them and prefer to not have disks, I also appreciate being able to trade-in a disk when I get burned with a game I really don't like and will never play again. I really feel like there should be a discount (even a small 5% one) for buying digital since costs are lower for the companies with no packaging. I'd probably go all digital at that point.
 
Jovian9 said:
Hopefully this is a sign of things to come. Rumor has it that one of the upcoming Xbox One system dates is going to include the ability to pre-order digital downloads so they will automatically be purchased/downloaded when they are ready (like getting the day of release from a store). If this happens I would think retailers would need to compete with that a bit and might start pushing this further.
Click to expand...

PS3/PS4/Vita have been doing that for a while and whilst it's good to see, due to the prices involved I'm not interested.

What I've started doing is buying discounted voucher codes to use directly on digital stores, they're usually only marginally cheaper but I would like all my games digitally for Vita and PS4 (and once Nintendo's download ownership system changes I'll get them for that too). I picked up £75 worth of PSN vouchers for £50 a few weeks ago.
 
Dagless said:
PS3/PS4/Vita have been doing that for a while and whilst it's good to see, due to the prices involved I'm not interested.

What I've started doing is buying discounted voucher codes to use directly on digital stores, they're usually only marginally cheaper but I would like all my games digitally for Vita and PS4 (and once Nintendo's download ownership system changes I'll get them for that too). I picked up £75 worth of PSN vouchers for £50 a few weeks ago.
Click to expand...

That's pretty great - haven't seen any PSN discounted cards recently - I do hope that PSN starts discounting retail titles for PS4 like Microsoft is doing for Xbox One - seems Sony is only doing that on PS3 for now.
 
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