US$69.99. Golly. Thanks to regional pricing, it is US$20 more than you’d pay for the same files via Steam in the USA. If you’re in the USA, the same little clicky purchase button will only cost you US$49.99.
In fact — it is cheaper for me to go to the store (including the cost of gas), buy it off the shelf, and I can still afford to have a meal while I’m at the mall, with the difference.
Oh, and the unlock date. I get to play it a day earlier if I purchase from the store down the road. (Actually, if you’re in the USA the Steam edition unlocks several days earlier than it does here)
Someone actually sat down, and made the decision to price the same software and data-files 40% higher. That’s forty percent. Did I mention that it was forty percent more?
Now you could talk exchange rates because our local dollar is a bit soft versus the US dollar right now — but the thing is, we’re being charged in US dollars anyway, so this is 40% after the exchange rate is applied.
I don’t see how this is supposed to encourage me to buy the Steam version. Fix the pricing. Then we’ll talk.
Maybe publishers could even help make a chunk of the Steam catalogue available outside of North America. That would be nifty too.
But.. baby steps. Let us get that pricing silliness sorted out first.
I had a similar issue when making my decision to purchase Spore- though without the regional markup (I think)- something like £34.99 minus the £4.99 cost of the Creature Editor for a downloadable only version that I’d have to pay extra for if I wanted to re-download it again over the next 2 years (I use Windows, so that’s likely), vs £25 for a boxed copy from Amazon for pre-ordering it…
Hrm…
As one of Second Life’s foremost statisticians, could you share a few comparative stats of the price of games amongst the various terretories and the estimated level of piracy of those games within each territory ?
I wouldn’t be surprised if Oz turned out to have higher levels of piracy, what with the historical release delays you get down there.
p.s. my captcha word was “pronocar”. srsly.
Be glad you don’t buy anything from Adobe. They’ve thought for years that $1 = £1, or near enough.
The fallout 3 price on steam is actually about 6 to 7 euros cheaper then in the stores here in holland. It is 54.99 on steam for me.
Though one store has it for close to steam price, still steam is a euro cheaper.
picture of price
Wouldn’t you rather pay the extra € so you can have a physical copy ?
Yea I think I would.
I can’t say as I’m particularly wedded to having a physical copy.
I’m taking that extra 20 dollars in cost as fees for ensuring that I will always have a copy of Fallout 3 to play provided I have a sufficient amount of bandwidth to bring the copy over (assuming I don’t decide to backup the installer locally as well, something I’ve done with the larger Steam titles of late).
But the fact that we cannot choose to preload the game at all irks me totally. You know, if you don’t have the executable files for a game, all that gamedata is just a fancy unusable collection of bits. That’s the point of preloading on Steam. Bethesda’s not fully grasping Steam’s capabilities, and it is a annoying pity.
Go and see COD5.
STEAM – 77USD with taxes
Local distributor – around 51 with next day delivery (Bulgaria)