Matrix Games Forums

ORIGINAL: myros

An old debate regarding software sale points (and indeed any product really, but always been clear with software in particular).

Recognizing you have a niche market do you:
a. Sell a product for 800 estimating you will sell 10 copies
b. Sell the product for 80 estimating you will sell 100 copies

Games have almost always fallen into the 'b' category, with a few noted exceptions. Witp was to me one of those exceptions, when I purchased it it was the most expensive game I have ever purchased. Was it worth it to me? Sure, no complaints but IMO it was mistake to price it so high as the higher price point always shuts out the impulse buy. Especialy when it comes to expansion time eg in the example give you would now have 100 potential customers to sell an expansion too rather than 10. Or dropping the original to the low price so you can sell the expansion at full price? That would make more sense to me, but hey ... Im guessing you have your own marketing guys. Just that IMO they are wrong

I totally agree with Mynok. Option "b" seems to be the most attractive.
If Matrix had sold more copies of WITP (even at a great WITP discount ranging form 10 to 15 bucks), then there would be more new AE buyers now.
But it's a Matrix call. [8D] We can only make a suggestion.

ORIGINAL: rroberson

I have about, I don't know a half dozen or so regular wargaming buddies (a couple of them from back in the days of pushing cardboard around) who I know would love the game. I have been working on them for years to make the plunge. (And still am).

Well, it's possible soon, as Erik announced a discount sale on WitP for a limited time. If this game is their cup of tea, they can pick up AE afterwards and if not, they at least got it cheaper. Should be perfect for everybody who is still sitting on the fence.

I had to pay some 85 Euros for the boxed version of WITP at the time it was released. I think it will cost me some 60 Euros for the digital download of AE now.
I have no problem with that. If i want it i will pay the price if i think it is worth it.

And i don't agree that Matrix would have sold more copies of WITP in fact of reducing the price. As mentioned many times before it is a niche game.It had very bad reviews in Germany and Austria (graphics and so on)because the mass of players just wants to jump right into a game. All has to be fast paced. WITP for sure doesn't meet that efforts.

Think of mainstream games like The Sims or Anno 1404 (don't know the title for the US market). The price is also some 45 to 50 Euros and sells many tenthousand times.

And i don't believe that so many new players that haven't been playing WITP yet will now come and buy AE.

ORIGINAL: Harald1050
And i don't believe that so many new players that haven't been playing WITP yet will now come and buy AE.

But that's exactly the point. The more WITP players = more AE players.
If you start play WITP & you like it, you gonna looove AE and buy it whatever the price will be.

When it comes down to it, this thread has lost what little purpose it began with. We now know what Matrix will want for the game, and they're not going to change their price strategy whatever is said here. Time to move on, no?

ORIGINAL: Charles_22

I'm sorry my specifics were wrong, you made the general statement that you would pay $200 for a computer game as I saw it. Instead, you stated you would pay $200 for AE; not a whole lot of difference there, as it's like I said, little more than an empty boast

I didn't make a "general statement" that I "would pay $200 for a computer game" that's a fact.

ORIGINAL: Charles_22
. So what this means is that you were so satisfied with WITP, despite not forking out $200 (and I detailed how you could do that - which you didn't) that you would indeed fork out $200 for AE? Understood, and somewhat more plausible, but do understand, whether you did this or not yourself, the context was that we were having people who had not bought either game and you, and others, were trying to use the argument that if you were willing to spend so much on a game, that they should feel that much more certain that they are not taking a gamble to buy it. Sorry SuleSea, I'm not taking a shot at you, as much as I'm tired of the boasting that goes on when trying to convince others of why they should buy the product; as it's total baloney (as I alluded in those posts a few months back). You guys like the product, and Las Vegas is full of people who like to throw money around foolishly, but don't equate money you allegedly willing to spend as a lure for somebody else.

The opinions of the members that are happy with their purchase and post positive comments on their game of choice are just as valid as the members that like to piss and moan about Matrix policies, prices and products. Obviously you suffer from issues that cut much deeper than the price of a wargame. I don't think I'm the only member of this board that notes the hypocrisy in complaining about Matrix prices while using their bandwidth to do it.

ORIGINAL: Lützow

ORIGINAL: rroberson

I have about, I don't know a half dozen or so regular wargaming buddies (a couple of them from back in the days of pushing cardboard around) who I know would love the game. I have been working on them for years to make the plunge. (And still am).

Well, it's possible soon, as Erik announced a discount sale on WitP for a limited time. If this game is their cup of tea, they can pick up AE afterwards and if not, they at least got it cheaper. Should be perfect for everybody who is still sitting on the fence.

But we still don't know what the discount on WITP will be. I am happy to be able to play AE soon. But -- there's something wrong with timing.
IMHO the WITP discount should have been granted long ago & not simultaneously with AE (which makes the question: "why would I a need an old game if the new one exist?"), to attract more people, who eventually will buy the next product - WITP-AE.
Let rroberson bring new lambs to the Matrix Shepherd!

Ok, I had a night to sleep on some of the feedback here. Let me try to approach this again, because we do most definitely care what you all think.

War in the Pacific is, in our opinion, a unique game. We looked at that game and made some unique decisions on how to proceed with developing, marketing and pricing AE. Unfortunately, these decisions don't fit neatly into one of the existing marketing "boxes" that you've seen before. I think the key misunderstanding in all this though is that from our point of view, everything we did was with existing owners of WITP in mind. New customers who did not own WITP were a secondary concern. This may seem strange, but again WITP is unique and for a number of reasons we feel this is the right way to go. The decisions we made were intended to make things as convenient and affordable as we could for existing owners of WITP.

First, having AE share files or not share files with WITP is a minor technical issue. We could easily have it share files or not. We decided early on to have it not share files so that customers could continue playing their modded or unmodded WITP games without any disruption. We didn't see how it would be a good thing to have AE share files and create possible issues for WITP game continuation. Having AE share files and having it not disrupt WITP in any way would be a bigger technical issue.

Every "expansion" you've ever bought could have been a stand-alone game, it's just a technical issue to do it one way or the other and not a particularly difficult one. For those of you who see it as a big difference ethically, I want you to understand that the reason we made the decision way back when to do it this way was specifically because we did not want to inconvenience existing WITP players.

Second, the pricing. We could have priced AE as a stand-alone game and not had it require WITP. This would have increased its price significantly and also required us to offer a discount to owners of WITP. The only way to offer a discount is to check serial numbers, create a discount coupon unique to each serial number (only one per serial number) and then have customers use that in the store. We've done this before, it's not a technical challenge.

However, in our experience it is definitely a hassle for some customers. This type of route creates many possible points of failure, from customers who can't find their old serial number, to customers who lose their coupon code (or don't receive it) to customers who use it and place the order incorrectly and then can't use it again, etc. We decided that rather than make existing WITP owners jump through these hoops, if we had AE require WITP then the purchase price could already be set at the discount level and all that existing WITP owners would have to do is buy the game as they would buy any other.

Third, new customers. I've been told that we are strong-arming them, thinking for them, etc. I suppose I can see how this can come across. The truth though is that AE was always for existing owners of WITP first. That's a pretty big crowd and we felt that it's also the group that would likely be responsible for 90% of the sales of AE. We did not see AE as having a lot of appeal to customers that had already decided, over the course of the five years it's been on the market, that WITP was not for them. Still, based on recent feedback we made the decision to discount WITP for a limited time to give folks who were having second thoughts about missing out on WITP now that AE was coming out a chance to test the waters.

I am also telling you our real thoughts and discussion when I say that we really feel that AE is not a game for someone to really jump into without any previous experience with WITP. We think that for WITP players, AE is a wonderful thing, but for people who have never played WITP, AE is not just "WITP 2.0". It has a much larger map, many more units and many more rules that are based on increasing realism but that a player who is not already steeped in the real history of the War in the Pacific may not understand. It also has fewer scenarios than WITP and fewer small scenarios. It has just enough of those to help WITP vets get their feet wet before jumping into the new grand campaign, basically.

Having AE released on its own and having people jump right into it without prior WITP experience would, in our opinion, have created a potential for a lot of misunderstanding and confusion and unhappy new customers. I think existing WITP players will be delighted with AE. Someone who has not played WITP might be lost at sea though.

Finally, it is to our benefit to have both WITP and AE on the market. First, while we love AE and believe it will do well, there is always risk. Taking WITP off the market, with its smaller scale and greater initial accessibility as well as increased scenario selection didn't make a lot of sense to us. Pricing AE at $100 or more stand-alone in this economy also seemed likely to provoke a knee jerk reaction (at this point, I think frankly we were going to take heat whatever we did). More importantly, WITP and AE both fund ongoing development - WITP primarily is a help to funding 2by3 and AE primarily will help fund ongoing development of the WITP series.

This was our thought process as far as why we made the decisions we made. We're well aware of what the economy is doing now. What I think some folks here don't realize is that we really do see existing WITP players as our market and the way we set things up was deliberately intended to make new players who don't have WITP think twice about whether they want to step all the way up to AE in one jump. I think this is surprising to a lot of folks, but we felt that our primary concern should be addressing the needs of the people we think will make up 90% of AE's sales and making sure that the pricing and procedures were set to make it as enjoyable as possible for them.

Regards,

- Erik

I think Eriks post gives as thorough an explanation as possible in regards to pricing.I suggest Terminus's post is right and the thread has lost its way so time to close down and move on with looking forward to its release..[:)]

Eric,

Your points make sense, and I can see how the development group and Matrix would have arrived at them, but I have to say that IMO you reached the wrong conclusion about WitP and AE.  Requiring new gamers to purchase BOTH games when they want to play AE is going to be a huge hurdle that many, if not most, new gamers will refuse to jump over.  That's a potential market that I'm surprised Matrix is deliberately excluding.  It's also a wee bit condescending; "for their own sake" Matrix has decided that AE is just too tough to step in without prior WitP experience, so the only way to buy it is to purchase a $60 training course in the guise of WitP.  That's insulting, quite frankly.  I jumped in to WitP from UV and PacWar and after some initial struggles, figured out the learning curve.  What's to say that a UV/PacWar gamer couldn't do the same for AE?  Everyone's different.

Besides, what does Matrix care if a copy of AE is bought and the purchaser decides it's too hard for them?  The money is in Matrix's bank, and I'm certain there's copies of WitP that were bought and then put away because the gamer decided it wasn't what they wanted.  I've got plenty of games that I no longer play; I've got some I played once in fact.  The company still has my money though.

For me the price is not a problem; if you'd decided to set AE's cost at $100 that would have been fine and I'd have bought it anyway.   Like a lot of people I assumed AE shared files with WitP so in essence it was a stand-alone add-on that required the older game to function.  Finding out that Matrix has decreed that WitP MUST be owned (or purchased with AE) prior to using AE simply because "AE is too hard to just jump into" is a very surprising revelation.  It smacks of a really bad marketing decision that will insure AE remains in a tiny niche of the genre, since the entry requirements are just too steep.

John,

ORIGINAL: John Lansford
too tough to step in without prior WitP experience, so the only way to buy it is to purchase a $60 training course in the guise of WitP.  That's insulting, quite frankly.  I jumped in to WitP from UV and PacWar and after some initial struggles, figured out the learning curve.  What's to say that a UV/PacWar gamer couldn't do the same for AE?  Everyone's different.

I agree that everyone's different. But you already own WITP. You're in our target market for this and I think most people who played UV or PacWar also already own WITP.

Besides, what does Matrix care if a copy of AE is bought and the purchaser decides it's too hard for them?  The money is in Matrix's bank, and I'm certain there's copies of WitP that were bought and then put away because the gamer decided it wasn't what they wanted.  I've got plenty of games that I no longer play; I've got some I played once in fact.  The company still has my money though.

We care because first, it potentially creates unhappy customers who will then decide that our games are too much for them. Second it could create a significant support load and third it could create a lot of return requests for folks that spend $100 or more for a stand-alone game they find is too complex. You might think that having the complexity and difficulty stated in the game specs would help, but in our experience unfortunately few people actually read those.

We also see WITP as a game that "sells itself" once someone gives it a try, if they like these kinds of games at all. Just as existing WITP players have gotten a lot of enjoyment from WITP, we think new players will as well and it makes their initial entry cost significantly lower than it would be for a stand-alone AE, which they would also have a harder time with.

As I said above though, I think now that either decision would have created complaints. I've been saying for months exactly what I said on Friday, the only difference was that on Friday I posted the exact price.

For me the price is not a problem; if you'd decided to set AE's cost at $100 that would have been fine and I'd have bought it anyway.   Like a lot of people I assumed AE shared files with WitP so in essence it was a stand-alone add-on that required the older game to function.  Finding out that Matrix has decreed that WitP MUST be owned (or purchased with AE) prior to using AE simply because "AE is too hard to just jump into" is a very surprising revelation.  It smacks of a really bad marketing decision that will insure AE remains in a tiny niche of the genre, since the entry requirements are just too steep.

I tried to explain above that the decision to share or not share files is not a big deal. We could still reverse that now in theory. It really says nothing about the ethics of the situation and I'm surprised that this one decision makes such a difference to some. We decided to keep them separate to make sure that existing WITP installations and ongoing games would not be impacted. If you read through what I posted above, there was also more than one reason why we decided to have AE require WITP, it wasn't just our assessment of its complexity.

We also believe that the existing market of WITP players is more than large enough to make AE a success and we believe that for that market, AE will be a fantastic step forward.

Regards,

- Erik

And i don't agree that Matrix would have sold more copies of WITP in fact of reducing the price. As mentioned many times before it is a niche game.It had very bad reviews in Germany and Austria (graphics and so on)because the mass of players just wants to jump right into a game. All has to be fast paced. WITP for sure doesn't meet that efforts.

If the game is as good as it is told, I might rate it good for 60.000 militarist readers... [;)]

Eric, thanks for your response.  I understand Matrix's decision to go this route, I just don't necessarily think it was the best choice.  As you noted, I'm one of the people AE was created for so the fate of a new gamer isn't really pertinent to my situation, my concerns were solely based on how Matrix arrived at a decision that has the potential to exclude new purchasers of AE.

Hi all,

Several years ago, IIRC, there was a poll here about how much money we would like to pay for big WitP update... again, IIRC, the vast majority of participants wholeheartedly admitted that they would pay whatever it is necessary to have our great WitP going!

Thus, with WitP-AE knocking on our doors, we all who witnessed those great times of WitP (and UV before that) are EXTREMELY happy and excited! [:)]


Therefore, IMHO, we should be very grateful and help / support producers and game creators as much as possible - we are all Grognards with, let's admit it, niche hobby that 99.99% of other game customers simply don't understand (all they want is superficial fun that you forget the minute you end the game - same thing is with today's music and movies)... [:(]


Leo "Apollo11"

Thanks Erik, though you have semi-sided against me recently, I can see you're a man capable of thinking, and not just hopping in with the glee club to ban all complaints/complainers. The only thing that disappointed me personally, was seeing the expansion was well above what expansions command usually. I felt like I was taken on WITP, and then to have 'not expansion' thrown in my face. I guess if it said "WITP II" on it I would feel a lot more comfortable, for a while, but I do know it was based on something I consider a mess, and since their are people who think very highly of WITP, it's obvious their opinion can't be trusted in my own case to evaluate AE within any reasonable bounds.

You patched this up all very nicely, even if the expansion price and it's history are still a considerable hurdle to me.

well, the price seems a bit high though considerung the effort put into development it is probably justified. Yet the price, justified as it may be, is however reason enough to ask this question to the developpers: Would you recommend AE to those too who exclusively play against the AI?
 
Thanks

ORIGINAL: m10bob
Apparently, you do not understand that many of us on this forum have high posting numbers...

Sigh...

ORIGINAL: m10bob
Your single suggestion seems presumptive...Your legal advice is not needed.

Why the apparent hostility?

I'm not criticizing Matrix Games and will likely buy AE when it comes out. I'm merely saying it would be wise for them to double-check the legal implications of their proposed pricing scheme. I'm pretty sure they are in the clear, but if they're not it's a real problem for them.

ORIGINAL: kafka
Would you recommend AE to those too who exclusively play against the AI?

If you enjoy WITP and like to play against the AI, I would _definitely_ recommend AE. The AI in WITP gets fairly stagnant after a while, mainly acting on the defensive. The AI in AE is much better than the WITP AI. It is still not as good as a human opponent, but it will give you a major wake up call if you're used to the WITP AI. And it will not stagnate, it's active through the whole war.

ORIGINAL: Terminus

I'm looking forward to release more and more every day, because then AE can stand on its own two feet, and people can stop speculating and SEE if it's worth it. I think it is, but I'm biased (and get it for $0)...

If instead of slaving on AE I'd put the same amount of time into a minimum-wage job, I could'a bought everyone here on the forum a copy of the game and still have change left over. No kidding.

ORIGINAL: rroberson

ORIGINAL: Terminus

No offense, but why do you care what happens to prospective newbie customers? You're certainly not a newbie...

I have about, I don't know a half dozen or so regular wargaming buddies (a couple of them from back in the days of pushing cardboard around) who I know would love the game. I have been working on them for years to make the plunge. (And still am). So I have a bit of a vested interest in the price. I was very disappointed to see how much AE was going to cost the other day. Kinda hurts my sales pitch.

Rob's hoping that the newbies won't sink his carriers! [:'(]