[jsjohnst]

When was the last time I bought software in a brick and mortar store? It's been so long I can't remember. I have bought software on Amazon in the past year though.

That still doesn't negate my point though, Gamestop shelves are covered in video games, electronic stores sell software of all types. Do you legitimately think they would be on the shelves if they didn't sell? My root point was to step outside of your bubble and understand that many folks have different experiences than you. In those less optimal environments for selling software, the markups for the store are far greater than the 30%. Do I think the 30% is warranted? I don't have the financial figures to say one way or another (and neither do you), but the fact many think 30% is exorbitant and it should be 3-8% is a bit absurd and really isn't reflective of reality for the costs involved.

[cm2187]

Well, keeping in mind the reason why video games are still sold in physical format is that they require enormous binaries which downloading is very problematic for people in remote locations (plus it gives a physical object to wrap for a gift). But even that is going away. There are rumors of a disc-less xbox [1]. This binaries size problem isn't really relevant to anything that is meant to run on a smartphone.

https://www.thurrott.com/xbox/192184/microsofts-building-a-d...

[jsjohnst]

There's games in the App Store which are > 2gb in size for initial download. It is very much still a problem for folks not in cities in the US.