Well... a few things to consider with digital distribution. It is obviously cheaper for a company to sell digitally than through a store. No retail packaging, no shelf space, no media to create, etc. Additionally, unless its the companies digital distribution platform, there is no cost to them outside of what they pay the digital distributer. For instance, if bf2 retails for $40, the question becomes what does ea charge stardock per copy of bf2. if the cost is low, like $10 per unit, then they would have the option to sell at any price above that and make a profit (well, you have to factor in the cost of always having the game available for download (bandwidth), the time required to host patches through the distributor, and so on). Its really a question of the contracts involved. If what I've described is accurate, then the distributor has alot of freedom in how they can rule sales, etc. They could have a lower price on this and that to drive the attach rate of their platform. Or it could be that every time a sale occurs, the distributor has to get a buy in from whoever is publishing the game. And it could be that steam is much more aggressive at pursuing these deals than stardock, etc. At any rate, it seems like there must be a limitation in place that restricts distributors from dropping the price of a newly launched game immediately. Obviously, if a game was just released and I know I can get it for $60 now on one site and $30 on another, of course I'll buy it on the other site.
Anyway, this is all good for the consumer in my mind, as I know if I'm patient, one of these sites will have a sale and I'll get a great deal. But generally speaking, steam ends up with sales on games I want a bit earlier than sd. I'd prefer to support SD (eg if they have a better deal or the same deal, I will always buy from them), but my business goes to whoever offers me the most savings. I've been able to predict the sales patterns to some degree on steam, but I haven't quite figured out when SD will offer a sale on this or that yet. I'm really happy to see that SD is offering sales promotions throughout the holiday season and I'm sure they will keep building on this.
edit - one other observation: I find that I keep steam installed AND check it a few times a week for deals. Always on Wed and the weekend. That's when they typically have sales. I don't check impulse like that. I have that impulse now enabled and they give me a popup each day, so I never really bother to browse their site UNLESS i see something in a popup. That's good and bad. Good that I see their sale items at a glance daily, but bad that I don't even bother to check out their site unless i see a pop up that interests me. If they wanted to get my attention through marketing, a one day code that offered 20% the catalog or even a particular company's games would get me looking at what they have to offer. That way, you'd have more people feeling like they only have a day to make a purchase at a discount AND they'd force the user to examine the catalog, perhaps finding other things they want.
