So I've noticed on Steam, especially amongst Japanese games, a new marketting strategy seems to be emerging: Release games at ridiculously high prices, over 60 or 70 bucks, and then not too long after give them huge discounts. The customer immediately is tempted to buy because WOAH 70% OFF, but the game is still 30 bucks. I noticed this on a Japanese visual novel/adventure game I've been following, which is $70 AUD, but now has a 60% off, but it's still 27 bucks.... You can't trick me!

Retail stores do similar things. My local grocery store always has buy one get one meat deals, but the meat's cost per pound almost doubles when they do. It's all just manipulation.

Also Steam got people used to massive discounts for years, but publishers don't want to sell everything for $5, so instead they keep normal prices high so they can do massive discounts without bargain basement prices. Steam roped people in years ago by selling year old games for pennies, but now it takes a really long time to see discounts that high.

This is a common marketing practice. Apparently, customers are more willing to pay $50 for a product if they believe that its "real" price is $100, than $45 if that's the base price.

In the case of digital games, with the trend of massive sales, I don't think publishers even expect customers to pay full price, unless they manage to generate hype for a day one release. Many new releases even come with a small discount to contribute to impulse-buying and the illusion of saving.

True, also people have realized that Steam sales are infinetely repeating, if you don't buy a game on sale now don't worry you only need to wait until the next sale (Easter) when the same game will get the same or more discount, this enables people to just put games in their wishlists and forget about them (unless they really want them).

Welcome to retail prices since forever...

It was expected when digital distributors started doing sales constantly and most customers got used to buy only when games are at least 75% off.

At the AAA level maybe, but now companies have the balls to price even mid-budget or even low-budget games at AAA prices.

Inflating the base price to make discounts look relatively "cheap" is a well known tactic and virtually become normal for "digital" games due to how prices are dictated by publishers without competition from a 2nd hand market. Eg, you only have to look at Ebay to see Bioshock + Oblivion double-pack retail discs (both PC & XBox) going for £3.50 (£1.75 per game) to see that the "£25 discounted to £7 in big Winter Sale" for both in "digital" stores like GOG and Steam - is where the "sale" price is far closer to the normal everyday prices for 12 year old games where 2nd hand market competition exists than inflating the "base price" then part "discounting" it back down.

On the one hand, new releases are DRM-Free which may command a premium, but on the other hand, Steam's DRM'd versions are often priced exactly the same as GOG's (so in reality DRM-Free often doesn't have any real premium (as the publisher sets the price)), "digital" games don't have postage costs, and all digital versions lack the physical goodies, eg, Oblivion's nice A2 foldout paper map. Not everyone is savvy enough to source working NoCD's for some DRM'd discs / modern source-ports like GZDoom or ScummVM don't exist for all games, but the main point is the "75% off discounts" of old games on digital stores in big sales pretty much are the "normal" market price vs 2nd hand market discs for a lot of old titles and such "mega-sales" were invented to not make inflated base pricing look too obvious when you can "wait for a sale". For new ones with no pre-existing competition / other frame of reference, the publisher can set what they like. Eg, "$1,000 - 99% sale discount = $10! Bargain of the century!!!", but if there were 2nd hand discs of the same game selling for $5-$8 on Ebay acting as a "sanity anchor", those figures would look completely ridiculous and arbitrary.

It's not that those games are overpriced, it's that other games are actually underpriced as a whole and consumers are used to paying less than a fair price for games because they're pretty much disgusting locusts dispassionately chewing up everything in sight just because it's there until there's nothing left for anyone. (slight hyperbole lol). Back in the day GOG used to try to avoid deep discount sales (or at least over 50%) and tried to keep the price point what they would consider fair/sustainable price for everyone involved for a similar reason and called steam sales and such unhealthy, opting instead to have like a flat 50% discount on everything (except Arx Fatalis IIRC ha ha).

Larger publishers can get away with steep discounts all the time because they think they can make up for the loss per unit in volume, and they do so probably hoping that they can undermine/kill competitors by forcing them to sell at the same prices. Big box stores swooping into small towns and under cut local/specialty store prices to drive them under, then big box stores can jack up the prices as much as they like or cheap out even more on products because there isn't any more competition.

In terms of visual novels in particular, it's so far beyond being a super duper niche market that it's basically microscopic. Like, the average title Mangagamer licenses is lucky to break selling 1000 copies in its entire lifetime (Evenicle being a notable exception due to being one of the first big adult only titles on steam so it actually got some attention/marketing, I think I heard it sold more like 10,000-15,000 copies). Trying to sell it at the same price as some garbage oel meme game that's overrunning and killing the market for everyone else would be financial suicide, particularly since they have to pay for licensing and translation on top of everything else. Cutting the price to sell more units wouldn't increase sales enough to make up for what they would lose, since what they're selling has a very limited user base to begin with.

I personally don't really mind paying more for niche games, since after all there isn't really enough suitable replacements or subsitutions for them, compared to every other publishers releasing big empty sand box games annually and then having fire sale prices on the old ones when the new one comes out.

Been like that for a long time. GOG is doing it now as well. Hence why there is always sales ongoing all the time. It’s a base marketing trick, simply buy a game for what you think it is worth (unless it’s free of course).

Hidden object games are also a market with overly high prices......not because they don't sell, but because a few stores/apps control most of the titles on offer.

Sites like bigfish/etc can sell CE versions of their games for 20 bucks(10 or so on sales) because they know there are few places to get them legally.