Cheapy and Wombat,
The topic of VC/XBLA prices seems to continuously come up, and with good reason. It is offensive to just about anyone listening to a CAGCast to know that Nintendo/Sega expect gamers to pay $8 for an old Genesis title that's available on compilation discs that are easily and--even at their standard MSRP--cheaply attainable. I'm not saying that every downloadable game is a ripoff, but many do seem to be overpriced.
That said, my question concerns the points themselves. If the idea is to get the gamer to not think about points as money (hence Microsoft's 100 points-to-$1.25 conversion rate), why not give consumers motivation to buy points in greater quantities, i.e. why not have points 'bulk prices'?
I realize that Microsoft and Nintendo don't want to throw potential money away, and I'm not saying that spending $100 at once on points should get you twice the points-per-dollar that spending $50 will, but to me, a small break at higher quantities would benefit the console manufacturers and game publishers in the long run. One, they would have your non-refundable money that much longer to collect interest on, and two, most gamers would get the itch to spend those extra points 'lying around' on 'borderline' content, as opposed to just buying enough to get what they absolutely need (which, of course, means you'd buy that many more points over the course of the console's lifespan).
I know iTunes doesn't give consumers breaks on buying the higher-priced prepaid cards, but then again, that's just dollar-for-dollar credit on Apple's store. Is it really a bad idea for Microsoft to get me to buy 3500 points for $40 (that's like $3.75 worth for 'free'), as opposed to having me just get 1600 for $20, only when I need them? Would I buy 7500 for $80 right now? You bet. Even limited-time, promotionally-priced 'bulk rates' would be an 'everyone wins' scenario, I think.