ORIGINAL: Aurelian
ORIGINAL: Tomn
ORIGINAL: Aurelian
Then perhaps you should bring something new to the table instead of rehashing the same old arguments.
Now, see, this doesn't help at all.
If you have nothing new to bring to the table, then it isn't *going* to move forward.
You have market research to prove them wrong?
You have evidence that they are losing money with the price as is?
Can you name a competitor that puts out a game that covers the same thing in the same detail with the same features at a much lower price?
Well, I HAVE bought forth points in relation to everything you've said (seriously, I've written a lot of stuff here, and I do think at least part of it is worth reading), but as it happens I DO have some hard numbers and I DO have a competitor running pretty much the same deal and getting much better results.
Before I begin, a reminder - my stance is that Matrix will do considerably better if they lowered their prices AND partnered with major distributors such as Steam or Gamersgate or whatnot as a combination of a lowered price and major distribution will allow them to reach a large, previously untapped group of hidden grognards (potential grognards as yet unaware of their true loves). I do accept that there are certainly some games in the Matrix stable which would benefit less from such a course, being by their nature entirely incapable of being made more accessible to anyone but the groggiest of grognards, yet even these would likely benefit to some extent from wider distribution and lowered prices. As for anything that CAN be made more accessible, Matrix is quite likely to be shocked at the improvement - and from what I've heard, Command is, though complex, a relatively much more accessible game. Remember: It isn't just the reduction of price, but large-scale distribution that matters. The one would not matter without the other.
Now, my proof? The prosecution would like to call Matrix Games to the stand.
In the "Good Health of the Wargaming Niche" thread, Matrix Games released some interesting figures, quoted here:
Some other interesting stats I didn't have time to put together yesterday. These stats are related to iOS
* Volume sales of our strategy/wargames on iOS increased 502% in 2012 compared to 2011.
* The growth in volume sales in the first quarter of 2013 compared to 1st quarter of 2012 is 352%. This growth is continuing and we expect it to be higher when major releases like Panzer Corp and Space Program Manager hit the app store.
* In value terms the increase is higher. In 2012 the value of all sales increased 3033% compared 2011. Yes I did say 3033%, or an increase of 30 times.
An increase of 44% on PC/Mac is very healthy but these growth figures are amazing to us. So while we do have some new blood on PC and Mac the main source of newcomers to the hobby looks very much like it will be on tablets.
502% growth! Not too shabby, and apparently entirely unexpected. This at least does provide some proof that Matrix Game's prediction models are on shaky ground in areas they haven't yet worked in, throwing doubts upon the accuracy of their years of data and experience in a modern marketplace. But let's examine this in a little more depth - why should tablets provide such meteoric growth?
There is, of course, the fact that tablets are a relatively new market. Of COURSE growth is higher. Yet this wouldn't explain things in and of themselves, since presumably Matrix would have accounted for that, and yet remain amazed by the new figures rolling in. So what other explanations are in play?
There is then the refrain "They dumbed down the games! They're appealing to the mainstream! Of COURSE they're selling better!" Perhaps so...but Battle Academy, their biggest ticket iOS game doesn't really seem to have been dumbed down much at all in its conversion to iOS. In point of fact, the screenshots for Battle Academy PC look almost completely identical to the screenshots in Battle Academy iPad. Nor does their feature list differ in any particular save that the PC version has modding support - something which is hardly likely to scare away new gamers. Perhaps someone with both versions of the game could go into more detail, but it doesn't really seem as if there's been a great deal of dumbing down involved - yet sales of the iOS version are still much higher. Why?
We could theorize perhaps that slick, Apple-using yuppies are a previously unknown source of meglomaniacal warmongerers, but there does seem to be a much simpler explanation that hasn't been discussed: Price and availability.
After adjusting for conversion rates, the price of Battle Academy for the PC is about $31.98 USD - somewhat on the high end for the kind of game it seems to be. On the iPad, the price comes down to about $20.38 - still pretty high, especially on the App store, but in absolute terms much more within impulse-buy limits. Other titles available on the App Store tell a similar story - they were either very low in price already in absolute terms, or reduced significantly from their PC offerings. Telling, but not decisive, even to me - I wouldn't have thought that a ten dollar drop would provide such an enormous improvement. So what other explanations are there?
The other explanation is that the iOS games are, of necessity, sold on the iTunes App Store - a store that has access to pretty much everybody who owns an Apple product and which has much, much greater distribution than Matrix Game's own website, just as Steam, Gamersgate et. al have much, much greater distribution and almost equally good access to PC gamers. This is the second key to the puzzle that I am arguing for - reduced prices, AND access to much wider distribution. This is what has conclusively and decisively buoyed the success of countless other niche games, and is the reason why Steam is so often hailed as the savior and great hope of niche games. It is that access - that unparalleled access which doesn't even require enormous investments in advertising as access did in the past - that we are arguing would help boost Matrix Games and the wargaming niche to unheard of heights.
There are other possibilities and other potential reasons, of course - but the two I propose above have been the precise source already enumerated by countless others in other fields, and it seems to me implausible that wargaming should be so entirely different from other genres that even their success comes from entirely different reasons, when they share so many of the same characteristics with other success stories. If you have any other explanations, however, I would be happy to hear them out and discuss them to gauge whether those explanations are more or less plausible than what I have just described.
One final note: I think I can hear your complaint right now: "Battle Academy and all the other iOS games aren't TRUE wargames, they aren't TRUE grognard and they're not REALLY that complex! They don't count!" But why not? Not all Matrix Games are made the same, as Matrix itself acknowledges, and there seems to be no reason whatsoever why Matrix should not give their more accessible games the same treatment on the PC as they have on the iPad. Even if the groggiest of grognard games remain as they always were, why shouldn't Matrix look at the success they've had on the tablet and try using the same strategy for those games on the PC? Why shouldn't they allow the income from these more accessible wargames to help fund their support of the more "serious" wargames? Why shouldn't they spread the name of their more accessible games far and wide to draw in new wargaming fans who would then become more interested, even more tempted to try the more serious offerings? Where precisely in the downside in this strategy? And if indeed it turns out that accessibility is key to gaining highly impressive sales in a wider marketplace, would it really be so bad to see Matrix begin to make their grognard games easier to work with, that you can spend more time playing with the game than wrestling with the interface?
Such is my argument. Do you think it easily dismissed, or do you think it is worth further discussion?
