smackfoo.com | I find your lack of faith disturbing.

Jeff Atwood fires a shot across-the-bow of the online content distribution model, via his take on The Sad State of Digital Software Distribution:

“Instead, I find that download options for commercial software are quite rare. Even when the download option is available, you end up paying the same price as retail or even more.”

This is a point-of view that crops up every so often, typically backed up by a small number of examples where a retail price (on sale) is less than the online option. On the face of it, that’s a pretty damning indictment of the online e-tail model, right? Surely it should be cheaper to procure a product via electronic download, rather than shrink wrapped? Of course. To a point.

Given pressing a DVD in a big run is typically counted in cents, with packaging and documentation costs substantively reduced on big runs the costs to actually manufacture a product typically pale in comparison to delivery and display costs. We pay for the convenience of being able to walk into a store and uplift a product. Why would the convenience of immediate delivery be any different? Doesn’t that have value, too?

And what is also frequently missed is that a great many products sold via the electronic model are not only available before they hit the store shelves but often launched, or pre-launched, at a reduced price. Which is totally unlike the typical retail model, where pricing starts off as high as the market will stand and then starts to drop as the distributor switches gears to try and offload as many units as possible.

Jeff picks out Steam as a good example of where price parity has taken a nose dive — because one or two titles are more than a retail sale price — title yet The Orange Box, one of the higher selling titles for Steam, can actually retail for more than the electronic download.

Don’t take my word for it, here it is in black and white. Other than Amazon — who continue their survival strategy by undercutting everyone else on principle — the pricing is at the very least on par (freight costs can cancel out online sale savings). If you take the walk-in-store approach, you will frequently pay more.

If you’re one of the many millions of potential customers not currently residing in the US of A, then digital delivery orders can result in massive savings. The very same Orange Box sold in the US for $49.95, retails for a good deal more here.

Jeff is highlighting that there are exceptions to any rule. Which is true. Just as one can pay three different prices for the same product at three different locations, online ordering may not always work out cheaper for every single instance of n at any single moment of time.

It’s not a perfect model and there can be both very good and very bad times to drop some coin. However.. the convenience, potential speed of delivery, reduction in packaging waste and early release offers, combined with frequent discounts both at-launch and on-going e-tailer sales, do still make them just as much a valid avenue as visiting the local electronic game store.

Jeff ends his article thusly:

“It seems to me that, in the area of digital distribution efficiencies, commercial software still has a lot to learn from the open source world– where everything is downloadable by design. I hope they can adapt before they’re forced into extinction.”

This is a great ethic to relate to. If we didn’t live in a world where capitalism is the order of the day. But we do. And this last comment seemingly ignores the trend where an every increasing amount of software is available and maintainable online.

It should also be noted that retailers want the electronic model to fail — and they’ll try real hard to crack pricing on a few select titles to make it look like it has. Scratch the surface though and typical higher-than-download shelf pricing belies that the old bait-and-hook retail model is still just as prevalent.

Like any purchase choice, shop around and find the deal that best suits you. Many options are infinitely preferable to none and ignoring the purchase-and-download model on the principle that there is still a price tag involved only serves to further limit options.