Yeah, it's basically this... mobile "gamers" aren't used to paying as much for games as PC players. So basically it's our fault that we accepted the inflated PC prices in the past.

Companies try to maximize their profit. Therefore, I guess the answer is marketing. The company is choosing a selling price according to the competition and the general willingness of customers to pay that price.

For example there is the rumour that customers of Apple just do pay a little extra on everything and still are happy with it.

This means for this case: Either competition in the desktop market is much lower than competition in the mobile market or desktop users are much more generous than mobile users or both or the company selling Samorost made a mistake.



The better question is actually how to correct that and get to cheaper prices for PC customers too? Well, just don't buy it for that price. As simple as that. Only buy when it is as cheap as the mobile version.

Prices for things are more based on "what will people pay for this in target market X?" than on any kind of thought towards standardizing price points across all platforms etc. I imagine it's largely based on demographics gathered over time on the given platforms, what types of users use those platforms, what their purchase habits are, and how much data they've mined and collected on such users to formulate a price to charge them.

It's just anecdotal but I get the impression that mobile device users are much more likely to make whimsical one-click or whatever purchases of things on their mobile device without thinking much about it than someone sitting on a PC, and they're much more likely to do it if they're cheap enough and below people's threshold of not caring. It's an entirely different dynamic in the marketplace on a PC however and a number of other factors enter into it about history, people's habits etc.

Other factors include whether the title is actually identical on mobile to what you get on a PC, how well it looks/functions, the size of the screen, input devices and a variety of other things.

I think it's also a matter of convenience. Mobile devices are built up as a little computer that is a walled garden where you obtain apps from a specific place and most people get used to that paradigm and tap tap tap done for the price of a cup of overpriced coffee.

At the end of the day, people pay the prices being asked on both mobile and PC for things with no indication that they find things overpriced via their buying habits so they more or less get confirmation on their existing pricing models by virtue that they're producing profit on both enough to keep doing it. At the end of the day it is supply and demand and people vote with their wallets. Even if someone complains about the price of something, when they pay it anyway they're saying "Yeah, I agree the price you're charging is fair for what I'm getting in return" or they wouldn't part with the money. That's true for unnecessary entertainment products and those not needed for survival of the lifeform anyway. :)

Woohoo! When I saw the message title, I made a bet with myself that the OP would be from Canada, and so he was! I won a bet against myself!

This is as expected as Germans complaining about regional locking due to swastikas and Hitler's moustache.

Interesting though he was not complaining about the price difference between GOG.com and Steam, but between PC and mobile versions of games.

On a similar note, why are iPhone and iPad games so expensive compared to Android games?

You can get all these Android games bundled together for mere $1:

Cloud Chasers
Last Horizon
Tomb Raider
Tomb Raider 2

If you pay $5, in addition you get also these:

Space Grunts
Cosmonautics
Always Sometimes Monsters
Shooting Stars!
and more, still unannounced, games.

https://www.humblebundle.com/mobile/mobile-bundle-20

How much will it cost if you buy all those games from the Apple Store? If it costs more, why?

because iphone is better if you want to play on mobile. there are less compatibility problems, games work better and with no lag. there are many games that you can buy only on the iOS app store for that reason (the longest journey for example and Final fantasy 7 was only on the iOS app store for one year)... The compatibily list on android is really inaccurate, it is difficult for a developer to understand if a device can run something or not, and the compatibility can be easily broken by update, it is a nightmare.
On iOS app store the compatibility is just easy, one app work on every supported device or it will not work on anything, and the only version you need to support is the previous one (right now you just need to support ios 8+, you can support ios 7, but there is no reason to support ios 6), that's why the compatibility is so great... sure if you have a game you want to limit the official compatibility list to a device where your game don't lag, but even if you take a really old devide your game will work (90%). For example FF7 iOS is supported on iphone 5s+, but I installed it on ipod touch 5g (that got an iphone 4s hardware) and it still run, with some lag but no crash or real problems at all.
Still the difference in price if you look just the official stores is not that great.
but the reason why humble bundle can sell android mobile games for a really cheap price is because you need to pay 30% to apple to install anything on a not-jailbroken device because you need to install it with the app store (on iOS 8+ you can actually install any app if you have the source code, with xcode... but you will be able to use this compiled version only for 7 days)... you don't need to pay anything to install an apk outside the google play store.

But if I have to choice between play something like gta vice city on my nexus 7 (android) and on my ipod touch 5g (ios), there is no reason to use the android device. but since I got gta vice city for free on Android I played it there, and it was a lag-crash experience.

Right now I'm playing ff7 ios on my iphone 5s and it is a great experience.
I know that there is drm, but while on the pc version you need to connect to square enix server, on the ios version you don't need to do that... Also I got it with an itunes card that I got for free.

A Google Play dev account costs $25 one-time fee. Apple Store costs $100/year (once per company). Still for an indie $100/year can mean a lot. So probably that's why.

Uh, dude, it's a humble bundle deal, of course it's cheap. It's also massively cheaper than buying games separately on Android. (There are no bundle deals for iPhone games because there's no sideloading and no infrastructure; IIRC developers can't gift their games and must buy them from the regional stores at list prices.)

That's an...interesting...and incredibly ignorant view.

Mobile game prices started out low because mobile games were cheap crap timewasters that relied on decades of knowledge that came before.

PC game prices started out higher because they were new experiments, and continued higher because they push the boundaries of what is possible with modern technology.

That we're seeing some games on both platforms (often in gimped form on the one they weren't designed for) says a lot of neat things about technology, and absolutely nothing about what the 'right' price for games is (hint: there is no objective 'right' price for entertainment).

I appreciate all the great answers to my question ... even though the truth is rather depressing.

I think I'm going to wait until the game goes on sale before I buy it ...

Ah... an iSheep...

I don't know what are you talking about. if you are talking about me, I'm a game developer (I'm still a student at the university but I made some project)... that's why I need both platform (iOS and Android) or I cannot test my creations. And since I'm using both platform I know what is good and what is bad (there are some bad things in iOS too, for example the fact that you cannot explore the file system)... but if you look at the game department iOS is just better....
And my first games was an android game, that's why I know it is a nightmare to understand if something work on a device.

https://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=androidx86

Android-x86 is an unofficial initiative to port Google's Android mobile operating system to run on devices powered by Intel and AMD x86 processors.
Note: unofficial.

right now is not what you want to use everyday, or what a developer need to support, it is just a "nerd game" (yes, I'm a nerd too, that's why I love it XD).

PC vs mobile --- two different platforms. Games on mobile are *meant* to be very casual in nature (imho there are very few proper games worth buying on mobile - and ive tried a lot) -- a lot of PC games require more timesinking (indie games aside -- a lot of them are pretty short and meant to be casual as well). Having said that --- there are also mobile ports to PC --- plenty of which arent worth buying on PC (and imho seem more like a quick cash grab by the dev without justifying the extra cost for the customer).....