When have Prima Guides not been a rip off? Any way, I'm glad they're there to be honest, one stop shop and all that.

Who is buying these useless guides anyway?

FUNNY THAT YOU CAN GET THEM HERE AT GOG FOR FREE.
...
once you bought the specific game of course...
Wouldn't it be funny if publisher starts talking pirating guides is killing the gaming industry?

Looks like Prima is another company that doesn't appreciate that cheaper = vastly improved sales.

...Not for all games, and none of the guides here are made by the Prima company. In fact, I'm pretty confident that all of the guides that GOG distributes are either fan-made or produced by the same company that made the game.
Anyway, the Internet has been threatening the guidebook industry for a long time now. Books still have the advantage in that:
1. They're usually more portable.
2. They're often more thorough.
3. They're more reliable in general.
This applies as much to official game guides as anything else. I don't expect that to change in the near future either.

Agreed. 5 bucks would be a good price IMO but it would only get usefull if you could open them while ingame (steam overlay with your guide would be nice)

Given how much ink goes into making those Prima guides pretty and how thorough they are covering EVERY aspect of the game, I have to wonder if they'd be able to cover printing costs with lower prices. Maybe selling fewer copies at higher prices is a part of their business plan.

15 dollars for a paper version is ok for me as the quality is great. But the same price for some bytes on your hard drive ? rip-off !
EDIT : Quoting is fucked up

Yeah, that's not quite so excusable.

Hah the last one i bought was for Metal gear solid 3 and at 0.99P new.
Now thats a bargin ;0

These are just e-books though. So there's no logic in not selling far more at a lower price point.
Now that's a damn good idea! Plus, it would make people all the more likely to consider buying both the guide and game from Steam.

Here in the UK, I see them as £12.99 and with a 50% discount, making them £6.49
Might be worth that price for a digital guide....pity I only have a handful of games on steam....

The only time I bought guides were for Kingdom Hearts only, because that game was huge. So much to explore...

From the Steam news page:
All the guides are readable in game via Steam's UI overlay functionality, as well as being available outside of game.