Pricing on release

[Alejo1968]

To the developers team:
There is always lots of discussion about pricing, like the one I have seen with my latest acquicition, Command Modern Naval Air ops.
I dont know if you are aware of our willingnes and resolve to get that what we really like,but tell you this. I have resigned exchanging my Ipad for a newer One as a christmas gift, to be able to get Command Modern Naval Battles and WIF on november.
So, do you want to go for a primium price? Im not afraid.


Damn, I suck negotiating, she always wins. [:@]

[Maesphil74]

It will be expensive, no doubt about it.
I would suggest to publish the price a couple of days (weeks?) before release.

That way the debacle of the command release could be avoided as the release date would not be hampered by discussions like we've seen with the command release in which the price discussion thread was 5 times bigger than all other threads combined [:D]

But this won't happen. [:(]

Rest assured the price elasticity has allready been assesed (if not for WIF, it will be analysed for this producttype). And this will lead to a price where projected profit is maximised.

The pill is ready. Who will swallow.

I will wait for the AI and then make my decision.

[warspite1]

ORIGINAL: Fleming

It will be expensive, no doubt about it.
I would suggest to publish the price a couple of days (weeks?) before release.

That way the debacle of the command release could be avoided as the release date would not be hampered by discussions like we've seen with the command release in which the price discussion thread was 5 times bigger than all other threads combined [:D]

But this won't happen. [:(]

Rest assured the price elasticity has allready been assesed (if not for WIF, it will be analysed for this producttype). And this will lead to a price where projected profit is maximised.

The pill is ready. Who will swallow.

I will wait for the AI and then make my decision.

warspite1

I'll swallow - at the earliest moment I possibly can. I can't wait for this baby!

[petracelli]

Credit card ready....

[rowan8915]

I shall bite the bullet and pay the price, too much work has been done and darn it looks so good!

[Alejo1968]

Wait! Mine was a joke!, please the comment was not intended to iniciate a debate about pricing [&:]
On the other side, IT IS true I got to a deal with my wife [:D]
So instant purchase when it comes

[DQ2004]

Like others, I don't care about the price. I would like to know, just so I can budget for it, but I will be buying it regardless, ASAP.

Newbie to posting although I have been watching the MWIF forum for many years.
Well done to the developers and the testers and especially Steve and also the guys who have worked so hard on the maps & the unit write-ups etc.
Have the board game but not always the time or space to play it, so I am currently super-excited for November!

Regards,
Toby

[Orm]

Welcome to the forum, Toby.

[richholling]

Surely in 2013 it'll be a free download on Facebook and we just have to pay for extra units.....

[WIF_Killzone]

Squad Leader, yum, played that, great game but WIF is better, IMHO. Is there computer version, drool?

[Alejo1968]

ORIGINAL: WIF_Killzone

Squad Leader, yum, played that, great game but WIF is better, IMHO. Is there computer version, drool?

SL has a place in my heart because is the one that started everything more than 25 years ago. I mean my terminal illness (Boardgames).

[Mundy]

I would say that whatever the price, it would still dwarf that of the whole boardgame set.
 
Ed-

[Alejo1968]

ORIGINAL: Mundy

I would say that whatever the price, it would still dwarf that of the whole boardgame set.

Ed-

Agree

Alejo.

[HansHafen]

MWIF is a unique project and will require a unique price. Let's all guess and see who is closest on the date of release. The winner(s) will receive acclaim and forum prestige. I guess $199.00 US dollars.

[aspqrz02]

ORIGINAL: HansHafen
MWIF is a unique project and will require a unique price. Let's all guess and see who is closest on the date of release. The winner(s) will receive acclaim and forum prestige. I guess $199.00 US dollars.

The size of the printed manual alone would suggest a very high price. I hope that it's considerably lower than $199, though I expect it to be over $100 ... at the high end, I don't know whether I would get it right away or not. Eventually? Sure. But not on release.

Dunno about others, though (of course)[&:]

Phil

[Numdydar]

Well Command: Modern Naval ops just released as a flagship game for $94.99 for the boxed version with a full color printed manual. So I suspect that WiF might be a little higher at $99.99 so as to cover the extra manuals in the game and not exceed the magical $100 mark [:)].

If anyone here has any marketing experience, it still amazes me that that extra $0.01 in prices really does make that much of a difference. Just like going into 3 digits ($100+) versus staying under that (at $99.99). So I seriously doubt it will cost over $100. But maybe Steve needs extra money for his renovation so the price will go higher lol.

[aspqrz02]

From what I understand of pricing for print products (tabletop pen and paper role playing games, see my Sig below) print RPG books are priced at 5-6 times the printing/layout/cost in order to make a profit. Based on it being a P&P RPG Book (which is a huge assumption, and almost certainly not completely accurate), I'd guess that the three books for WiF would cost out at around $4-6 depending on the size of the print run, paper quality, number of b&w vs colour pages, artwork other than screenshots (if any) and the like. Around 2/3rds that if they were softcover ... but I believe they're supposed to be hardcover

Again, assuming they were RPG books, that would mean that I'd guess you'd be looking at $20-36 per book, if they were being sold retail as stand alone books.

So, the books alone are nominally worth $90-110 or thereabouts (assuming 700+ pages between the three) ... add this to the price of the actual game itself ... assuming some similarity with WitP, with one game book, that would mean about $65 + $75 or around $140.

However, there is reason to believe that the game will be priced more like CMANO, so about $100 + 75 or around $175.

Now, that's piling conjecture on supposition - I have a fair handle on RPG pricing, at least the ballpark, but I am not the slightest bit au fait with Computer game pricing ... however, I'd suggest that the $140-175 figures I have suggested are probably in the ballpark, give or take.

YMMV.

Phil

[Greyshaft]

I'm guessing this will be set as a flagship product to firmly break through the $100 barrier and set a new pricing benchmark so $150 seems a fair guess ... plus shipping and handling of course

[Numdydar]

ORIGINAL: aspqrz

From what I understand of pricing for print products (tabletop pen and paper role playing games, see my Sig below) print RPG books are priced at 5-6 times the printing/layout/cost in order to make a profit. Based on it being a P&P RPG Book (which is a huge assumption, and almost certainly not completely accurate), I'd guess that the three books for WiF would cost out at around $4-6 depending on the size of the print run, paper quality, number of b&w vs colour pages, artwork other than screenshots (if any) and the like. Around 2/3rds that if they were softcover ... but I believe they're supposed to be hardcover

Again, assuming they were RPG books, that would mean that I'd guess you'd be looking at $20-36 per book, if they were being sold retail as stand alone books.

So, the books alone are nominally worth $90-110 or thereabouts (assuming 700+ pages between the three) ... add this to the price of the actual game itself ... assuming some similarity with WitP, with one game book, that would mean about $65 + $75 or around $140.

However, there is reason to believe that the game will be priced more like CMANO, so about $100 + 75 or around $175.

Now, that's piling conjecture on supposition - I have a fair handle on RPG pricing, at least the ballpark, but I am not the slightest bit au fait with Computer game pricing ... however, I'd suggest that the $140-175 figures I have suggested are probably in the ballpark, give or take.

YMMV.

Phil

I have to disagree with your analysis about printing. Printing costs in volume these days are extremely cheap. Especially for someone like Matrix. Additionally, the coding cost is far more costly than the printing cost. So they are not looking to make a profit on the manuals since without the code they would be pretty much useless [:)]. So the manuals are there to support the code base, not to be their own profit center.

There is also no way they could even come close to covering the development cost of the game either. So any 'normalized' P&L analysis on cost of goods sold and selling price has no real meaning in this case.

This entire effort was really a labor of love by Steve and Steve alone. To be honest, it was the only way this conversion was ever going to happen. If a typical game company developed this using a normal' development cycle, the game would have costed over $1M imho. But obviously that is just a wag [:)].

Steve stated that by his calulation, he has spent 99 months working on the game. Which is about 8 years. Assuming a normal work load over that period, that is about 16,000 man hours by Steve alone. But it is most likely higher than that [:)]

If we assume a 30% profit magrin (which is pretty high. After all Matrix is NOT Apple lol), Steve gets a 20% cut of the profits, and the game sells for $100 we have 0.3 * 0.2 * $100 = $6 that Steve would get from every sale. Let's be optimistic and say that 100,000 copies are sold [:)] That would mean that Steve would get $600K. Not too bad right?

But then divide the $600K by the number of hours so we have $600,000/16,000 and we get about $35/hour. Pretty cheap for a programer of Steve's talents.

Of course if they only sell 50K units then Steve's cut is halved to only $17.50. If 10K then Steve is down to $3.50/hour.

My guess at this point is that while Steve certainly deserves as much as he can get from the sales of WiF, the pricing of the game will have little to do with the cost of manuals or providing Steve with a decent hourly rate. The price will be set to move units. So I would be very surprised if the price was over the $100 mark since it wold be a huge departure for Matrix to price a game that high.

This of course does not mean they can't or will not, but crossing that $100 mark is a HUGE deal in a LOT of customer's eyes. Especially for a very nich game like this. Regardless of how well done it is.

As far as the customer population goes, I am positive Matrix and ADG know exactly how many people subscribe to both sites for this game. If they assume that this represents the 'buy' population then they have a pretty good idea for the amout of expected sales between release and the end of 2013.

They can futher assume that this represents the top 20% (or maybe 10%) of the entire WiF customer base. So they can also expect a lot smaller sell rate from this larger population as time goes on. So if there is 1,000 people in the 'buy' population, this means that the entire population that could be interested in buying the game is about 100K.

Assume this would mean about an 80% buy rate in the 'buy' population and maybe a 20-30% (if that) in the rest of the population. That would mean a projected units sold of 20-25K.

They can take the sell rate of Command (which is selling pretty well but has a much higher 'buy' population than WiF) and do various projections on price points and impact on sales and determine what the best price compared to units sold would be.

So this is a rough idea of how the process will work. In WiF's case, the price point will be determined to sell the maximum number of units and at the same time maximize profits. Not so much as to recoop Steve's LoE (sorry Steve).

So the pricing of manuals, CDs, etc. would all be contained in the cost of goods sold. From that point it is just a question of the difference in the sell price and the cost of goods (i.e. the cost to actually print, box the game, etc.) that determines how much pie (profit) there is to be passed around to all the interested parties, Matrix, Steve, ADG, etc.

Based on the above, I can easily see a $99.99 price point. But anything over that, will definately need to be well justified to the community.

There was a huge discussion over at the Distant Worlds forum about how much the base game and all the expansions would cost in order to have a 'good' gaming experience. Befiore Shadows was released, Ledgends was the third expansion. For a new person, the total cost to get to Ledgends was $125, base game $50, each expansion $25. A lot of people refused to buy the game because of this. While not quite an apple to apple comparision, it is still telling how people feel about price points above $100 for a computer game.

Of course if Matrix wanted to maximize the profits from just the 'buy' population then they can set the price at wherever they want [:)]

The other thing to remember in all of this is that, we, the potential customers, will be paying AGIAN for the game when the AI is released, hopefully next year. Command HAS an AI, WiF will not at release. So this needs to have a major impact on the price point as well.

The only game of similar nature is Decision Games War in Europe which does not have an AI either (and never plans on having one). It sells for $60. http://shop.decisiongames.com/ProductDe ... tCode=2100 So with the extras and the planed AI release for WiF, I again can easily see a $99 (or less) price point for the game. Especially since we will be shelling out an unknown amount at a future point for an AI [:(]

[Joseignacio]

I wonder what the price will be. I have friends who are waiting for the game, and even one of them was thinking of offering himself as a betatester now (I think he will finally not do it), long time WIF gamers. When I was guessing maybe the game could cost 60 €, they thought I was mad. They said without an AI the game was mainly a version of a Wargameroom WIF, saving some differences, and those are for free.

I mentioned it's not the same in many aspects, including the much higher complexity of MWIF, but they said that was excesive for a no-AI game.

I guess how many surprises we are going to see if the game crosses the 100$ or 150$ barrier. maybe there will be 200 or 300 sold in all. I hope I am wrong.

Another very important thing would be (in case it's decided to do it this way) to sell the product with a special small upgrade cost when there is an AI, this could change completely the perception, since it would not be seen as a wargameroom game or a no-Ai game any more.