Hmmmm, tell that to The Pet Rock, Ford, Pokemon or any other remotely innovative product. Good companies create markets where there was none before.

They do that by making what the customer want, in other word giving good product.
That's how all companies start. They go toward the client.
Only when they have customer loyalty, they start to add DRM and other nonsense little by little, pushing the customer to accept more and more.
There is a saying.
Put a frog in boiling water and it will jump out immediately.
Put it in cold water and increase the temperature slowly and it will stand there and boil to death.

I was told the choice would be steak or fish.

I'll have the lasagna.

From what i vaguely know they explained these prices on transport.Yes.
Digital price wise something about retail stores putting pressure on publishers to keep the prices high - most likely why Steam pricing for us is the way it is. Otherwise retail stores go out of business. Or so it goes...
And then they blame it on exchange rate - which seems odd because prices never changed to reflect when aussie dollar was higher than US dollar for a good time

As it stands, I say retail can go rot if they insist on that practice. In fact, I haven't bought physical since shortly after getting my 3DS.

Region lock means DRM. So in the near future we can kiss the DRM-Free part also goodbye.

and it is a logical continuation to protect the region pricing, meaning there is no way around it.

Typical demand: Set a high price, and less people will buy your product. Set a low price, and more people will buy your product. Your income is the number of buyers multiplied by the price paid. For any market, there is typically a sweet spot somewhere in the middle, that is, a price you can set that maximizes your income.

Now, this sweet spot may vary from market to market. If you are forced to set a single same price for ALL markets, it is likely to be less-than-optimal for most of them. So you're losing potential income in most markets. So it is to your advantage to offer different prices to different markets.

Taken to extremes, each individual person in the world is a market. You make the most money when each buyer pays the maximum price they'd be willing to pay! Why? Because you can maximize your number of customers without reducing the high price that a select few of your customers is willing to pay. Ted will pay $50, Fred will pay $30. A global price of $50 earns you $50 (Only Ted). A global price of $30 earns you $60 (Ted and Fred each pay $30). If you can instead divide the market and price for Ted and Fred independently, you'll make $80. Of course, to be this selective about pricing has costs. Someone needs to evaluate each customer and what they'd be willing to pay. For something like bread, it's not worth it. But for more expensive items... a used car salesman-- it's his job to evaluate your maximum price as best he can.

Anyway, it's generally to your advantage if you can offer different markets different prices.

edit:
Muddled some numbers.

This is why they try to create artificial scarcity. With Digital Deluxe, Steam Special Edition and such crap. And soon we'll have all that here too.

well, I'm one who was willing to buy "Skyrim collector's edition" 150 USD until steamworks made the set worthless to me.

Amusing that people think businesses can have principles. Selling points, yes (as DRM-free and single pricing (for now) are), but not principles.

Interestingly, I found that (the Linux versions at least) the versions of the Eschalon trilogy games sold on Steam are DRM-free - and don't need the Steam client running. Dunno if that's true for the Windows version, but seeing as it means I can play said games without having to reboot, all good by me.

What makes them so [REDACTED] special or deluxe? Are they actually optimized and code compressed? Feature complete?

There's a reason why I really haven't been into newer games, and its crap like that. I came here to relive titles I couldn't find anywhere, and hopefully have them separated from the contrived publishers who sold their souls to Ol' Scratch.

As in stop using gog? I don't think it's possible to delete your account :p

Anyway, I can not sign this... if regional pricing is stopping some publishers from getting on board, then by all means introduce it. Hell, I'd even pay double the price just to get it drm free: so all in all, the price is irrelevant for me... If it's too expensive at release I'll just buy it on sale.

Maybe they can see beyond that. If I'm not mistaken, it was a court decision... right? Or am I thinking of something else now?

You're Swedish. You've got the PewDiePie trust fund to keep your pockets filled.

Other people and countries aren't so lucky. This doesn't even affect me and I'm against it. I despise publisher greed and dare the CEOs to take up to 50% paycuts just to prove they don't even need all that much money to live. The savings alone would be massive!