Hi All!
Okay everyone lets take a deep breath.
I hope you are enjoying Dominions 3, regardless of how you feel about the price point we have set.
I have followed this forum topic on and off over the last few days, as well as a similar discussion on another board. I am going to break my own rule and talk a little about why we have priced Dominions 3 the way we did. I usually don't get into these discussions as there is no win here. Some will feel the game is overpriced, and nothing I say will change that. Now having said that...
Dominions II was priced at $49.95, and we had a similar discussion going on at the time we released it with regard to pricing. Some people think that niche products, developed on shoestring budgets should be priced as shareware, even though we have all the costs that a major publisher has - maybe just not on the same scale - and the developer on a per man basis probably puts in more hours than a developer of any major title on a per man basis. Well, Shrapnel and Illwinter survived those discussions, and Dominions II was a success, becoming one of our top three selling games ever.
Now onto Dominions 3. We had a huge decision to make. We could either follow the path of Dominions II and print a manual on par with the Dominions II manual, or take the manual up a notch. Doing a Dominions II style manual would have probably left the price point the same; taking things up a notch would mean a price increase. Due to the overwhelming feedback from the true fans of Dominions and those who didn't buy or didn't enjoy the game (as first timers), we felt a much improved manual would benefit everyone who we considered our target customer. We also hoped that it would lead to additional sales, but that is really something that only time will tell - and it is way too early to make that call.
As some of you are aware, Illwinter hired Bruce Geryk to write the manual, and we supported the decision to make the manual a 200 page 'book'. Due to the quality work Bruce gave us and knowing that we didn't want to cut out anything, we ended up with a manual of almost 300 pages. Then, we decided, due to the large amount of reference materials, to upgrade the manual binding to coil binding, so that it could lay flat. BTW, the price of the last 100 pages and the coil binding doubled the cost of the manual over the 200 page manual we had originally envisioned. Now add to that the cost of the printer shipping to us manuals that are twice the weight of the Dominions II manual and storage costs of manuals that take up twice the space...
Can you see where I am heading? I think that is enough said. Just know, that Shrapnel Games and Illwinter will make less per copy on Dominions 3 than we did on Dominions 2, even with the $5.00 increase. So, to make the same money we have to sell
many more copies and as I said earlier, we are way too early into the release to know if this decision will pay divdends.
We didn't set the price of Dominions 3 based on what we thought the market would bear or to make huge profits or to insult potential customers. We set the price based on economics of costs. And if I had known the manual would end up at 300 pages with coil binding I would have set the price at $59.95.
We appreciate those of you who have bought Dominions 3 and those that have taken the time to try the demo. To those of you who think the price is too high, maybe this isn't the game for you. We don't want anyone leaving our store feeling that we have taken advantage of you.
Thanks for listening.