No, $49.99 is the standard MSRP for video games in the PC USA Market. Beth raised prices on the PC version 20% with no reasoning.

As far as pre-order bonuses, Valve offered a limited time deal where they gave you a hat in Team Fortress 2. It was Dovie's helmet for the Heavy. A very very chincey pre-order bonus if I do say so myself.

re: buying it at a store vs. digital copy.

In the US, ignoring the periodic sales on Steam (since physical shops can also have sales), the "Retail Price" of games is generally the same between Steam & the shop down the street. So the fact that Skyrim on Steam is $60 even though it's digital and you don't get the map..... not a surprise, that's how the prices of games has always been. Digital isn't inherently cheaper, it's the same price.

So don't lay that one on Bethesda - it's industry standard. (And it would have been the same if Skyrim was $50 - that would be the same price on Steam, in shops, etc)

http://www.ebgames.co.nz/pc-155044-The-Elder-Scrolls-V-Skyrim-Collectors-Edition-PC


$250!!!!!!!!!!!!

I paid $60 for DA2 in February and Civ5 last year. Lots of PC games are retailing for $60 and keeping the extra $10 that would normally go to MS or Sony. I have no problem with it. I can simply choose not to buy the game if I feel the price is too high.

I support some regulation of prices for certain essential needs like electricity, gas, etc., but I have no interest in participating in any sort of system that forces a business to restrict pricing for luxury goods like videogames. The price should be whatever the hell they want to set it at, thousands of dollars if they choose. If a business sets the price of their goods too high, the price will either come down, or they will eventually fail.

And every single PC game available on Steam eventually sells, sooner or later for a ridiculously low price during a sale. Just be patient and you will be able to pick up Skyrim on the cheap.

EDIT: In fact, I pre-ordered Skyrim and Rage to take advantage of the QuakeCon pack which contained a few hundred dollars worth of games (including Fallout New Vegas, Honest Hearts, Old World Blues, Dead Money, Brink, FO3 GOTY, Morrowind GOTY, Oblivion GOTY, about 20 or 30 id games) for a total price of $39.99 if you bought Skyrim and Rage.

Also, last week Newegg was offering a special pre-order sale price for Skyrim for $48 ($12 discount)

Personally I think that charging the same for digitally distributed content as a physical copy is total BS. The biggest benefit of digitally distributing a product for the companies is the fact that it is MUCH cheaper since they don't have to pay for packaging, the case, manuals, or actually shipping the game to retailers. You'd think that with all the money that is being saved that the companies would pass on at least a small amount of the savings to the customer but I guess that even though you're not actually getting anything physical for the transaction and the company is saving a large amount of money, they don't give a [censored] about anything but the numbers.

Most games I'd pass on at the 60$ price point and wait until they are cheaper but I'm definitely going to buy Skyrim before it's launch date as I want to play it when it first is released.

Totally agree.

Can't believe you are complaining about this.

The game costs $90 (US) in NZ. When Oblivion came out, it cost $62 (US) in NZ.

I think you have nothing to complain about.

Most PC games are about 50$ in Canada/US, but these past few years AAA titles are stepping it up to 60$. I would prefer it to be the regular 50$, but I'm not going to boycott it because of a 10$ difference. Plus I would like Bethesda to get a bit more money, to keep the TES/ Fallout series alive. I wouldn't mind a pre-order incentive though. On Steam they gave you a TF2 hat, but something a bit more useful/meaningful.

I really dislike these pre-order in-game extras, and I'm pleased it seems like Skyrim won't have it.

I still think that it is annoying when a company saves all that money by digital distribution but continues to charge the same as if they'd had to pay for manufacturing, packaging, shipping, and printing manuals.

If you can bear to wait a while before buying, eventually the Steam price will inevitably drop far below the console price.

Also, while I don't know precisely what portion of that $60 goes to wholesalers and retailers, the manufacturing and shipping cost for non-CE versions is relatively low, perhaps a few dollars at most. (For DVDs, for example, it's around $1 - $2 including packaging and shipping.) Steam's share of the digital revenues is around 30%, which could perhaps roughly correlate to the share that goes to wholesalers and retailers. The largest expense for this game apart from the production budget is clearly going to be the marketing cost, which is recouped from your purchase whether you are buying a digital download from Steam or a boxed copy from a retail store.

So do I.

Some half year ago Microsoft justified their higher Xbox 360 Games on Demand compared to retail stores, saying the customers had to pay extra for the digital comfort, being able to buy and play the game at any time of the day without leaving home instead of going out to a retail store when it's open.

And ~15 years from now it's quite possible that we will only be able to buy games online, so then we are stuck with whatever high prices they put up, cause there won't be any price wars between retail stores cause they don't exist any longer.

Hopefully by that time there will be some healthy competition from digital portals other than Steam, MS and Sony.

I am a "cloud computing" doomsayer myself (that fiasco with Sony could have been your term paper stuck in the cloud for 3 weeks instead of just your games)
but that this is one more reason to hate the cloud I had not thought of! :yucky:

This can only happen at a point when the entire world has internet that is cheap and reliable. That's a long time coming yet - don't think 15 years will cut it - if you question that, I'm not talking big cities, you have to take into account everyone EVERYWHERE. As long as gamers somewhere in the world don't have said internet access, there will always be copies available - you may have to order them through online retailers, but they're still going to be around.

Yup, gotta say that the same thoughts have crossed my mind as well. If that time comes, gaming will cease to be a hobby of mine.

Why do you guys look on the bad side of things. Seriously, the reason they don't give some pre-order incentive is because
they don't want to make players who didn't pre-order the game to feel locked out.
They want players who purchase it anytime can enjoy the game fully, seriously, stop it.

What? Dumb. They should be giving pre-order incentives to get copies sold before 11-11-11 even hits. Getting someone's money now beats perhaps getting it in November.

If you look to incentives to decide whether to pre-order or not, that's quite "What? Dumb."

Either way the console versions cost $60 mostly because microsoft/sony get a cut of the money so of course i see why the prices are higher there same with steam..with PC's who are they giving a cut of their money to? The PC box copy there is noone getting a cut and it still costs the same. Not complaining and probaly not saying anything everyone here did not already know,but if you look at it the console version they get less money from per copy.

Go out to best buy and pre-order a PC hard copy. You get the box and more then likely the map for pre-ordering. Good things come to those who aren't lazy.

Steam is owned by Valve, Not Bethesda. They still have to give a cut of the prices to steam just as they do Sony and Microsoft. Same thing for the box version from in store, It's still a steam game, It's still 60$.

Of course, digital distributors have to pay for 5-10-15-whatever gigabytes of bandwidth, have to maintain servers that are large enough to support mass downloads of that 5+GB file (on the day of release, for example). And, depending on the service (Steam, for one), they might also be providing potentially infinite downloads of that 5+GB file, for years.

So, yeah..... digital's all "free", unlike those boxed games. :whistling:

Extras just for pre-purchases are pretty stupid and clearly just an effort to get people to buy the game full price before seeing reviews, kudos to Bethesda for not excluding content from any versions of the game.