Capcom explains Bionic PC pricing

By Tom Bramwell Published 11 August, 2008

USD 15 "an appropriate price" for PC.

The PC version of Bionic Commando Rearmed costs an extra five dollars because of "different business terms/expectations in that sector and, more importantly, generally prevailing pricing of PC digital games versus their console counterparts".

That's according to Capcom's US VP of strategic planning, Christian Svensson, who told Shacknews, "It has nothing to do with piracy concerns" in an email on Friday night.

Bionic Commando Rearmed is due out on Xbox Live Arcade this Wednesday, 13th August, where it will cost 800 Microsoft Points (GBP 6.80 / EUR 9.60 / USD 10.00). The PSN version's European release date is TBC (our money's on next Thursday), but the price is confirmed as GBP 6.99 / EUR 9.99 / USD 9.99.

Svensson pointed to portal sites for PC games released primarily through digital distribution to back up his point about pricing. "USD 14.99 represents an appropriate price for the platform and you should probably expect our PC pricing to always be slightly higher than the console equivalent in this space," he wrote.

The PC version of Bionic Commando Rearmed is due for release through Steam, Direct2Drive and other digital distributions platforms on 14th August.

Look for our review of BCR this week. In the meantime, you can check out our Bionic Commando Rearmed hands-on preview for preliminary thoughts.

Picture of Tom.

About Tom Bramwell

Tom is Operations director of Eurogamer Network and Editor-at-Large of Eurogamer.net. He joined the company in February 2000.

Read more articles from Tom by visiting the Tom Bramwell archive page.

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Comments (18) Latest comment 4 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • r3n #1 4 years ago

    This article wouldn't load correctly so I couldn't read it

  • DB2k #2 4 years ago

    there has been a spate of these broken articles on EG of late.. with that and the fucking annoying new image viewer i am getting narked off. I don't pay no money to not have a fantastic user experience you know!

  • Darren #3 4 years ago

    Goodness me... don't EG check their articles before and after they've posted them? :?

  • Kelduum #4 4 years ago

    Nicely borked.

    And im not sure if they check the articles, but they definitely do keep re-titling them (probably so the title fits in the box nicely), which plays hell with my RSS reader.

    2-4 copies of each item, each with slight different titles... ugh!

  • skillian #5 4 years ago

    keep re-titling them (probably so the title fits in the box nicely), which plays hell with my RSS reader.

    Yes, this is very annoying. Surely they have a test page where they can see how the potential headline fits on the page before sending the article live?

  • DFawkes #6 4 years ago

    Still borked then. I wasn't fussy about reading this but now I have to.
    Edited by 1 at 11/08/08 @ 11:05

  • mazzl #7 4 years ago

    HE!! EG WAKE UP!
    this is happening more and more.. get the coffee machine fixed ASAP!

  • Darren #8 4 years ago

    Nice that a PC game is more expensive than a console one for a change! :)

  • muscleblade #9 4 years ago

    I thouth the Xbla version would cost atleast 1200 points so this is good news. I would have bought it at 1200 too btw.

  • JonFE #10 4 years ago

    muscleblade, please don't give them ideas - one Braid incident (as worthy as it definitely is) was enough...

  • Nithron #11 4 years ago

    And now, when this sells like arse on PC, Capcom will blame it on piracy and refuse to port any digital distribution games ever again.

  • muscleblade #12 4 years ago

    @JonFE

    As long as the quality can defend the price i dont mind if they make more use of the 1200-1600 prices on xbla.

    Lumines live shouldve never have costed 1200 even though i bought it at that price. If Bionic Commando is as good as i think then 800 is a bargain compared to most other 800 priced games.

    Better quality = Higher prices = Good

  • kangarootoo #13 4 years ago

    "different business terms/expectations in that sector and, more importantly, generally prevailing pricing of PC digital games versus their console counterparts"

    Can someone explain to me what that means? The first bit I sort of understand ("we expect to sell less copies, so we charge more";), bu the second bit about prevailing winds and so on has just left me behind.

    Given that licensing for release on a console costs money, whereas releasing on PC incurs no such costs, I am confused.

  • Ranger101 #14 4 years ago

    I double up on kangaratoo's comment.

    The sentence there sounded like Marketing BS in it's purest form.

    But I'm sure it refers to the costs of distributing the gae digitally on an unproven digital distribution network (unless they're suing STEAM - I'm not that clued up about that).
    Edited by 1 at 11/08/08 @ 14:07

  • WrongShui #15 4 years ago

    They are using Steam.

    Charging more than other formats is a sure fire way to get more people to buy it.

    Totally.

  • Ryuken #16 4 years ago

    The PC version might get extra content for free apparently, unlike the console versions which might get it or not for a price...

  • YourMessageHere #17 4 years ago

    "different business terms/expectations in that sector and, more importantly, generally prevailing pricing of PC digital games versus their console counterparts"

    This means*:

    We think it's not going to sell too well so we're bumping the price up, and more importantly, we have decided that PC games sold via digital distribution cost more for consumers than console games sold via digital distribution, based on an apples-vs-hippopotamuses comparison that fails in all ways to actually be correct or even slightly defensible but means we can charge more. By phrasing this in marketingese, no-one will be able to understand and thus object.

    * YMMV. E&OE.

  • Ryuken #18 4 years ago

    Extra free PC-exclusive content confirmed, the PC audience can rest easy again as another publisher "gets it".