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Posted by: A Good Troll
Bandwith costs and money to the distributor (i.e., Valve).
Though I suspect these costs are lower than physical distribution, they keep the prices the same for simplicity's sake.
Gamers are always looking for a bargain. Thus the rise of the used game industry.
Gamestop shares a parasitic relationship with developers and publishers because Gamestop makes a significant part of it's revenue from used game sales. Thus developers and publishers have been coming up with more and more ways to entice new games sales: Preorder bonuses, online passes, etc.
One way that they haven't done anything is to drop publishing costs and the portion of the game sale that goes to the retailer from games downloaded through XBL/SEN/Steam/Origin/etc.
Hell, games on XBL/SEN/Steam/Origin/etc don't even follow the retailer prices well either. I remember a couple of games costing $40 online when they were $25 in a brick and mortar store.
Posted by: x Foman123 x
Manufacturing costs for a physical copy of a game work out to under $0.10 for major titles. The argument that digital games should be significantly cheaper than physical games holds no merit.
It's not just the manufacturing costs. Retailers take a chunk of the games sales.
[Edited on 12.20.2012 11:52 AM PST]