Buying games on your console verus retail

While we move into a time of digital downloads the big 2 console manufacturers Microsoft and Sony are expanding there online services by allowing us to download full retail versions of games and save them to our hard drives. Nintendo simply can’t offer this feature to it’s customers as there is no real storage on the Nintendo Wii. Microsoft is branding there service Games on Demand while Sony has just placed them into there online store. Microsoft certainly has the edge in terms of the amount of games for purchase, there are currently 27 titles available in the Canadian Marketplace to compared to Sony’s 5 titles. I have to give credit to Sony thoughwhen Warhawk, Grand Turismo 5 Prologue and Socom where available to download around the same time there retail counterparts were released. To me this is the key, I want them available the same time there released at retail. This would surely cut down the amount of copies traded in at EB Games/ Gamestop.  Should the digital only versions games cost less? I think so. You aren’t getting a box,manual,physical copy of the disk and add in factors like transportation costs, distribution etc. Those all dollars and cents do add up and should result in a lower cost to the consumer. But it’s not, what were seeing is prices equal to what their retail counterparts are selling for. For the same price I would rather have a physical copy of the game and store it on my shelf beside the other 70 plus games I own.

Sony’s current offerings

Microsoft’s current offerings

All prices were determined on the XBL Canadian Marketplace, Canadian Playstation Network store, Bestbuy.ca,futreshop.ca and amazon.ca