pre-order price

Sales has been alerted, the discrepancy should be resolved one way or another tomorrow.

This was corrected last night.

Bummer.  No discount for being a beta tester, huh?  Or is the regular game price going to be higher than $50?

Beta testers get the game early and get to help influence it.  You want more? 

How was this fixed?  Most digital downloads are cheaper than the boxed version...your costs are lower for the digital version so it generally gets passed on to the customer.  My issue last night was that the listed digital download price was $44.95.  The cart showed $49.95.  I expected that the cart was going to be fixed. Instead, the website was simply updated with a new digital download price of $49.95.  For what it's worth, I disagree with this.

EDIT: I noticed that Stardock charges the same price for downloads verses boxed versions so I am correcting myself...this practice seems to be consistant for Stardock.  However, the prcie point does appear to be higher for this game than other Stardock games.  Anyway...no big deal I suppose...pre-order, here I come.

I appreciate the opportunity to provide feedback and help shape a game I'd like to play, I'm just surprised Beta testers don't get any sort of discount.  My rationale for the discount is:

1.  Signing up now vs. signing up right before the first Beta is released has no financial incentive with it since it won't be delivered for quite some time.

2.  Beta games, while fun to provide input, will be less stable, more buggy, and incomplete.  While Beta testers for SD aren't under any obligation to help fix the game (which is nice), there is a lot of investment in time in addition to money from the testers themselves.

3.  Having people help test the game should result in a better game, which should result in more sales for SD.  Why not pass along some of the financial benefit to those whom are helping to indirectly produce the game, too?  They'll also likely be the same ones to help provide support in the forums and purchase any future expansion packs.

4.  I've seen SD have a reduced rate for Beta testers for other games (I know at least Gal Civ 2 and Demigod).  Why should Elemental be different?  Or will Elemental actually sell at a higher price than $50?

It's really not a big deal, I just was surprised to see this "fixed" by increasing the pre-order rate, but then again, it's only $5.

It is fairly common practice for pre-orders to be discounted, since you know you've got this quantity of sales already in the bag that you don't have to worry about.

Then again, there's still the discount coupon from the Stardock company report. Which comes to, sure enough, $5.

I'll use my discount to get that $5 off, I guess, but I'm just surprised at the change in attitude of SD here more than anything, especially since GalCiv and Demigod both discounted for their Betas.

Why is the digital only price same as with boxed?

Wouldn't digital only be cheaper?

I assume digital is about the same cost as retail (if you buy retail you still have to pay Shipping and Handling fees) because uploading gigs of data isn't free to do.  It still costs SD servers for processing, disk space to store it on, bandwidth (and lots of it) to make it available, routers, switches, firewalls, and cabling, plus A/C, redundant power, and finally, qualified network, system, and security administrators to keep everything functional.  Granted, they need to do all of that to keep Impulse running and deliver updates, too, but making something available as a download can be a pretty big committment financially.

Not so much that as that if we charged the same as retail (stores tend to sell $5-10 under our MSRP), the stores would get fussy about it. Alas, we don't have the business muscle of Valve/EA to get them to sell our stuff anyway, so we've got to keep them happy.

But GalCiv2 and Sins' digital only managed to stay at $44 with +boxed going at $49. Have the stores really made you put on that extra $4?