Sony is running a large-scale A/B price test in the PlayStation Store: over 190 games in 70+ regions, including the US. First-party hits — Spider-Man 2, Helldivers 2, God of War — with discounts of up to 27.8%.
It’s nothing new. It’s been done for the past 20 years. Products are priced differently in different countries based on their economy.
You have been able to do this in Steam for decades now. You can/could use VPN along with changing your location in steam, to trick it into thinking you are in that region. You would then get that regions prices.
E.g, lots of Steam games used to be noticeably cheaper if Steam thought you were in Russia as opposed to Germany.
I don’t think this story is about that. It’s about making games more expensive based on how much they think you’ll pay.
This specific study in the article is about making games cheaper to see if that makes people more likely to spend, but you just know they’re going to also make them more expensive if this works out
So they aren’t gonna say “loads of people are downloading the same game in the same region, let’s increase the price”? Cause that’s what dynamic pricing means.
It’s nothing new. It’s been done for the past 20 years. Products are priced differently in different countries based on their economy.
You have been able to do this in Steam for decades now. You can/could use VPN along with changing your location in steam, to trick it into thinking you are in that region. You would then get that regions prices.
E.g, lots of Steam games used to be noticeably cheaper if Steam thought you were in Russia as opposed to Germany.
I don’t think this story is about that. It’s about making games more expensive based on how much they think you’ll pay.
This specific study in the article is about making games cheaper to see if that makes people more likely to spend, but you just know they’re going to also make them more expensive if this works out
The former part has been a thing for hundreds of years.
But yeah I suppose they would use it to change the price dynamically on a constant basis based on demand.
Though I’m not sure that’s even legal to this extent in EU. It’s a product for purchase. Not a stock. But you’re right. It does sound bad.
So they aren’t gonna say “loads of people are downloading the same game in the same region, let’s increase the price”? Cause that’s what dynamic pricing means.