>On the PC with Steam the publishers are willing to drop the price to compete with piracy, but assuming the Xbox One is not cracked to the point of a Dreamcast,

>On the PC with Steam the publishers are willing to drop the price to compete with piracy, but assuming the Xbox One is not cracked to the point of a Dreamcast, I can't imagine them ever allowing Steam-like prices. Yup. Prices are lower on Steam mostly competition provides downward price pressure. If Microsoft opens up their system to self-publishing and lets devs set their own low prices, including offering steam like sales, then that would maybe produce lower costs. Used games is a red herring. Large publishers probably don't want downward price pressure on the platform. Look at IOS where even 3 dollars is considered expensive. To them, restricting pricing and availability to keep prices high is a feature that may encourage them to go with one platform or another. I'm not totally averse to that argument either -- I hate what the f2p model has done to game design on IOS. Right now Steam is a great middle ground and I hope they can maintain that.