what about the future?

[Tim Brooks]

Is this for all games? Or just for Dom3?

Pretty much across the board.

[Tim Brooks]

Discounting games does not only increase unit sales--it increases actual revenues.

I know that article. It is from Valve. Be careful wth broad statements like that. The game they talk about had increased sales, but it came with an announcement of upcoming additional content. That alone would have increased sales. We announce a patch and our sales jump by those kind of percentages.

Also, these games were featured on their front page. What they don't say is that any game on their front page does great. That when it drops from the front page, its sales are much, much weaker.

So was it the sale, the announcement of upgrade, or the front page?

[Soyweiser]

Originally Posted by Tim Brooks

Pretty much across the board.

Interesting. Thanks for the information.

[Squirrelloid]

FWIW: http://www.next-gen.biz/features/val...-too-expensive

"Discounting games does not only increase unit sales--it increases actual revenues. During the 16-day sale window over the holidays, third-parties were given a choice as to how severely they would discount their games. Those that discounted their games by 10 percent saw a 35% uptick in sales--that's dollars, not units. A 25 percent discount meant a 245 percent increase in sales. Dropping the price by 50 percent meant a sales increase of 320 percent. And a 75 percent decrease in the price point generated a 1,470 percent increase in sales."

Of course, it helps if people actually know you exist, (ie, Steam has a much higher profile than Shrapnel) - that's where advertising comes in.

[Soyweiser]

Originally Posted by Squirrelloid

FWIW: http://www.next-gen.biz/features/val...-too-expensive

"Discounting games does not only increase unit sales--it increases actual revenues. During the 16-day sale window over the holidays, third-parties were given a choice as to how severely they would discount their games. Those that discounted their games by 10 percent saw a 35% uptick in sales--that's dollars, not units. A 25 percent discount meant a 245 percent increase in sales. Dropping the price by 50 percent meant a sales increase of 320 percent. And a 75 percent decrease in the price point generated a 1,470 percent increase in sales."

Of course, it helps if people actually know you exist, (ie, Steam has a much higher profile than Shrapnel) - that's where advertising comes in.

One of the biggest developers does this and gets LOADS of press, for games that already are hugely popular before. Valve and L4D are huge, both in PR and amount of gamers who like it. (And zombies always sell of course ).

Question is, does the lower price help? Or the fact that it was expensive before and is now on sale?

What works for Valve doesn't have to work for a small developer. You can only do this if your potential consumer base is already large enough. Advertisement is pretty hard you know.

Ps, incoming Jeff Vogel fanboyism
http://jeff-vogel.blogspot.com/2009/...-big-sale.html
"So the only real moral of the story is that people like sales. Not a shock."

http://jeff-vogel.blogspot.com/2009/...more-pt-2.html
""If You Charged Less, You Would Sell More Copies"

This is true. The problem is that I won't sell enough more to justify the lower prices.

Microeconomics tells us that as we charge less, we sell more, but we make less per sale. At some point, there is a best price, a point where (number of sales) * (profit per sale) is at its maximum. The question is, where is it? Based on my experiences shifting prices up and down, I think I'm actually at the sweet spot."

http://jeff-vogel.blogspot.com/2009/...more-pt-1.html
"Now don't get me wrong. Some games (casual quickies, simple puzzle games) should be inexpensive. But everyone (retailers, reviewers, customers) is enabling a mindset where all games, even the niche products and larger, deeper, less casual titles, are expected to be desperately cheap. This is not going to help developers stay in business. This is not how a healthy industry is maintained."

[Gandalf Parker]

Publicity is free (except of course for having a publicist to do it). Dom3 and new Shrapnel games appear in nearly every online gaming magazine or review site almost instantly.

Advertising costs money. Someones money. Usually the publisher. Thats one of the complaints of indies who leave big publishers for smaller ones. The advertising and other fancy features put them in a hole. It can take 1 or 2 years to payback the startup costs and start seeing profit as actual paychecks. Not to mention the so often mentioned "sales bins" that many of the pushers for the Shrapnel going the other way tend to add as something they would wait for. Those are efforts of the distributor and sometimes the publisher to recoup their costs and break even. Often happening before the profit point which means the devs see nothing.

ONE of the apparent advantages of Shrapnel to indy developers is almost instantly splitting sales. Ive seen some of the developers do ads for their own games but generally Im not sure where you would do it for Dom3. If you can think of one, let me know. Id be willing to look into it.
(But Im still holding out for a tshirt concession)

[Soyweiser]

Gandalf, that is why Indies have created other ways of creating buzz and publicity. Such as blogs etc.

See: http://www.pixelprospector.com/indev...business-tips/

[Gandalf Parker]

Originally Posted by Soyweiser

Gandalf, that is why Indies have created other ways of creating buzz and publicity. Such as blogs etc.

See: http://www.pixelprospector.com/indev...business-tips/

Heehee. Yes that, and other methods, were covered a while ago at this site....
http://cafethotz.blogspot.com/
abit less general than the site you posted but more personal

[Soyweiser]

Originally Posted by Gandalf Parker

Heehee. Yes that, and other methods, were covered a while ago at this site....
http://cafethotz.blogspot.com/

"In forums for PoDs"

There is a forum for the prince of death?

--
Edit
Stealth advertisment methods also sometimes fail if you are discovered. (Recently a certain dutch sales website was discovered to use dummy accounts to increase the ratings on their own products. (The idiots used the same account to buy multiple television sets and washing machines, of which you only need one ).

[Squirrelloid]

I don't particularly know how well D+D 4e is doing since i disconnected from the game about when 4e was released. The internet seems to think its doing quite well as an RPG, but not necessarily very well compared to the 3E release (which was off-the-charts good). No idea how 4E's initial release compares to 4Es 2nd wave of core books.

------------
Re: boardgames vs. Computer games.

Boardgames have a large material cost. Especially as games with a higher toy value appeal more to a larger audience, and that toy value costs money in production.

The difference is that computer games have very little material cost, so there is profit to be made all the way down, as it were. My guess is that boardgames don't have too far to go down before they lose profitability, especially as unit sales for boardgames are typically lower than for computer games of equal popularity, since only one person needs to own a boardgame for many to play.