Is the price for Downloadable Content the right price?

Ever since the downloading of games online either by XBOX Live or the Playstation network and to some degree the Wii channel started. We have noticed that the prices are still too high for gamers to play games that they download using these services. If you log in to XBOX Live for instance and lets say you want to download a game like Saints Row well the price tag for that game is $29.99, but what you don’t realize is that Saints Row is a game that came out in 2006 and it even has a sequel that came out already that being Saints Row 2.

Why is this game so expensive when it’s not new? Well we can’t answer that, but there are ways to getting these games cheaper and that is by going to a Gamestop, or Amazon where you can get it cheaper. The point really is that video game services where you download the games should not be as pricey as they are if there to survive the business.
I love the convenience part of downloading instead of going to the store to buy a CD/DVD/Blueray, UMD, but there is a Gamestop down the street. Now let’s talk about the biggest offenders in these high price downloads.

NINTENDO WII
The wii is the console that offends the least and the reason for that is that many of the games that you download for their Virtual Console are good classics, but most importantly are under $10 bucks and there are lots classics for $5 dollars.

PLAYSTATION 3 (PS3)
The PS3 is another console that charges too much for their games that are available in the Playstation Network, but at least the prices are a bit more reasonable. Most of the games on the PS3 are small time and that is why we can’t say much about them, although there are huge blockbuster titles there too.

PLAYSTATION Portable (PSP)
The PSP is one of the biggest offenders because it really charges an arm and a leg for their download which really is unnecessary because the games are too short for the price tag. They are doing away with the UMD with the PSPGo, but how is a console like that going to survive when the prices are high like that?

XBOX 360 (XBOX LIVE)
The biggest offender is the XBOX 360 and the reason we say this because Microsoft puts old games on there that are priced too high and this is why the XBOX 360 is the biggest offender. Games that came out 10 years ago should not cost $15 bucks they should cost $5 and games that came out in 2006 should cost $15.

In the end it’s really about keeping the customers happy and this is what Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo should do and the way to do that is by lowering their prices on downloadable content. Media content that is on a disk, cartridge, or in any storage media should keep its value because it deserves it since it has to be produced by someone or a company once the final product is finished. In the other hand downloadable content that is made and put on a download service is work the company does only once to put on their server and distribute to members of their network.