I love Stadia the technology is amazing, and the gameplay experience is pretty good.. however the UK game pricing isn't comparable to what we pay for games, meaning I just can't actually bring myself to buy games for it, which surely will hurt the service in the long run.
Here's the current pricing as of tonight vs what i could buy right now either online at a major UK retailer, or in a store less than 10 miles from my home for the same version of the game on XBOX One (new):
The couple without prices were either out of stock near me or not available next day free postage so i didn't include them as I guess speed of delivery is a major factor on stadia, so while i could pay less id have to wait.. everything else id expect to get next day in the UK.
Id pay a bit more for the convenience, but in most cases its not even close. I didn't try and find the cheapest games on Xbox one either, I just did a quick google and found a price from a large to huge UK retailer of games.. if you go to some of the smaller guys or eBay you can pay less of course but that wouldn't be a fair comparison.
Im assuming this will get removed, however i'm not actually trying to be negative, its a constructive feedback on the state of pricing in the UK, which I assume doesn't equate the same in the US.
@sambartle Of course you could get them even cheaper if you went for the used versions of the game too.
It's no surprise that pricing is not great on Stadia there have been plenty of posts on the subject before, but we've also been told that the pricing is driven by the publishers and not Google...
So until the publishers have gotten their money for the extra development effort to make a Stadia release (as it is not just a case of installing the PC version on a bunch of Stadia servers and it all gets up and running as some would believe), then we can probably expect some degree of price disparity.
At least that's my guess on the subject.
Pricing will vary from country to country due to all manner of variants, campaigns, currency fluctuations etc
You can get new cheaper than I listed in almost all cases too, especially if you count places like g2a and cd-keys, however the grey nature of those is an unfair comparison.
I compared major retailers that have fast availability (either collectable in store same day, or by next day delivery) specifically to try and make it fairer.
I would be interested to see exactly what level of changes are required in porting to stadia.. I'd say it's fairly common to outsource ports to smaller developers often in countries where the labour cost is cheaper, and that most post release porting is not actually done by the original development teams, which should make it less costly.
There is also an argument (for most of the games that had been released long ago on other platforms before stadia) that all the costs of initial development of a game have already been covered in the pricing of the initial release on the launch platforms, and therefore for a relatively minor (in comparison to new development) outlay of porting they are pricing as if they need to recoup the full cost of development when in actual fact the lower cost (using the now paid for base game) should lead to cheaper pricing for the ports as it's nearly all profit this time round.
The problem for Google with the developers set the pricing argument is that to your average man on the street... It really doesn't matter. If a game is half price or better in most cases, people (including me so far) will choose the cheaper version. If Google don't plan to spend a significant amount on developing full first party exclusives, then they have to actually compete on pricing where it counts which isn't the full retail pricing on Xbox game store. (Where they are much much closer but still usually slightly more expensive)
@sambartle : I agree, but at the end of the day it comes down to publishers setting the price on essentially a new platform/environment and taking into account their own financial necessities and so forth. Sure the avg gamer couldn't give a hoot about all this stuff, they just want more bang for for their bucks. Stadia isn't in that position yet or even anywhere close, it’s the new kid on the block and has plenty of work to do still.
You would be better comparing the prices against digital market places such as PSN it Xbox Live.
Sure you can buy certain games cheaper in physically but with Stadia games being digital, digital game pricing has always been higher than physical. I think compared to the digital prices on Xbox and PlayStation, Stadia actually stacks up quite well.
The developers will be trying to maximise their income. If they look at Stadia now they see only a few games available, so they can max the price and know that some people will still buy. At some point in the future, when there are more games available, or sales of their games start to stall, I am sure they will lower their prices. Sucks for sure, this is supply and demand sadly.
What can we do about it? Not much, apart from not buy the excessively priced games and hopefully get them to reduce prices sooner. However if no one buys the games they might stop developing for the platform at all! It is like a giant game of chicken...
As for them having to cover the costs of porting, well I imagine that the costs of porting are a fraction of the costs of developing the game in the first place!
Agreed, love stadia but when I can subscribe to ps now for £50 annually (about £4.50 a month) compared to stadia (£8.99 a month) I'm afraid there is nothing to justify the additional cost, give me an annual subscription in the same £50 ballpark and I'll ditch ps now and go Stadia pro..