[David E. Gervais]

Originally posted by Atrocities:
MOO3 was just horrible.
GalCiv is a great game but not as fun as SEIV and IT has far more market share than SEIV.

It's simple AT, Market share is all about 'Visibility' as in seen and heard and not about finding something through obscure net searches or the occasional word-of-mouth.

Walk into any computer store, chances are you'll see a copy of Moo3 and GalCiv. Pick up a magazine and there is a good chace you'll see an ad for one of these. do a net search for '4X Games' and you will find about a dozen references to moo3/GalCiv for every 1 se4. and if you include other 4x results of the search, it's about a 20-25 to 1 ratio. (Something strange, of the links I found to se4, none were to MM's site and most were to 3rd party fan sites and a few to Shrapnel.)

I keep hearing,.. "Advertizing is expensive", "Retail doesn't pay enough" But these statements are skewered when compared to Net-only sales and marketing.

What is better,. Selling 15,000 copies and making $10-$15 profit per game or selling 25, 50, or 100 thousand copies at $5 profit per game? (what if the 'Less-profit' theory of retail is hogwash, a developer can easilly make the same $10-$15 per game profit as Online sales.)

My problem with the whole Net vs Retail sales thing is that I cannot for the life of me see why the two need to be mutually exclusive. Most Publishers who have Games in the retail outlets also have the ability to order their products Online.

Even if Shrapnel took just one of their games an made it available through retial, they would see a greater influx of traffic at their site. Heck they could even insert ads in their 'retail-game' and promote their 'Other' games through the sales of one. From what I heard in Tim's post, it would cost about the same to launch a game through retail as it would to place an ad in a gamming magazine. Anyone want to bet which $15,000 investment would gain the widest exposure?

One more thing, I really HATE people that think Making-less is the same as loosing. It is so not true. Sure $5 proffit is less than say $15 profit, but that's not 'Loosing money' It's just making less, but wait, if just one game is a 'Hit' in the retail market (100,000+ copies sold) then would 'they' still say they are loosing money?


anyway, nuf said. Grrrrr

[ March 24, 2004, 11:03: Message edited by: David E. Gervais ]