Why are Game of Thrones and Tales from the Borderlands more expensive on PS4 than on Xbox One?
UPDATE: Sony cuts price, will refund the difference.
UPDATE 08/12/2014: Sony has cut the price of both Game of Thrones and Tales from the Borderlands on PS4 following last week's outcry, and will refund the difference.
There's more in our follow-up story.
ORIGINAL STORY 04/12/2014: PlayStation 4 owners have criticised developer Telltale and Sony for the pricing of Game of Thrones and Tales from the Borderlands.
Both games, which went on sale this week, are more expensive on PS4 than on Xbox One.
The Game of Thrones: Season 1 Season Pass is £24.99 on PS4. It's £15.99 on Xbox One.
Confusingly for the customer, the season pass on Xbox One includes only episodes 2-6, but even if you add on the £3.99 price of the first episode on Xbox One, there's a £5 difference. It's worth noting that Episode 1 is £4.99 on PS4 - £1 more expensive than on Xbox One.
It's a similar deal for Tales from the Borderlands. The Season Pass is £18.99 on PS4 and £11.99 on Xbox One. Again, the Season Pass on Xbox One only includes episodes 2-5. But even if you add the £3.99 price of the first episode on Xbox One, there's still a £3 difference.
What appears to be the situation is that the season pass price differences are caused by the fact that individual episodes are £1 more expensive on PS4 than they are on Xbox One.
So, if you were to buy all six Game of Thrones episodes on PS4, it would cost you £30. Get the season pass and you save a fiver - the equivalent of getting one episode free.
But if you were to buy all six Game of Thrones episodes on Xbox One, it would cost you £24. You only get episodes 2-5 with the Xbox One season pass - buy those individually and it would cost you £20. Buy the season pass and you save four quid - again, the equivalent of getting one episode free.
Tales from the Borderlands is a five-part series, so it's cheaper by default. But the working out is the same as for Game of Thrones. The PS4 season pass amounts to a saving of £6 versus buying the episodes individually. The Xbox One season pass nets you a saving of £4 versus buying episodes 2-5 individually.
This, as you'd expect, hasn't gone down well. We've been contacted by a number of angry PS4 owners who have slammed the pricing, calling it a rip-off. And there are a number of comments on the PlayStation Blog with similar complaints.
"Digital games are often priced more highly than they should be (just look at The Crew for example) but there should at least be parity on price between platforms," wrote "Caress77".
Meanwhile, PS4 owners are also complaining that the PS4 versions of the games are more expensive than the PS3 versions.
The Game of Thrones season pass is £24.99 on PS4. It's £19.99 on PS3. Tales from the Borderlands season pass is £18.99 on PS4. It's £15.99 on PS3. The episodes are a pound cheaper on PS3, too.
Both games are the same price on Xbox One as they are on Xbox 360, however.
So what's going on? Current-gen versions of cross-generation games are often more expensive than their last generation counterparts, so perhaps Microsoft struck a deal to take a hit on Game of Thrones and Tales from the Borderlands, price-matching the Xbox One versions with the Xbox 360 versions in a bid to undercut the PS4 versions.
We've asked both Telltale and Sony for comment, and will update this article if they respond.
