So How Do I Buy All?

[GenChaos33]

Currently, I have none of the DW series. But with Legends out now, I'm thinking of making the Jump!!! So what do I have pay? I assume I have to buy all 3 at the Holiday pricing. So DW at $27, ROTS at $17, and Legends at $20 with the total being $64. Is this right? Or I keep seeing the term Bundle, but I see no pricing for a Bundle. Or is the Bundle available after the Holiday sale? Thanks for your help.

[Erik Rutins]

That's correct. Distant Worlds and Return of the Shakturi are currently at about 33% off and Legends was released at the normal bundle price (after this promotion ends it will be $24.99 for the Legends download). So if you purchase all three now you get Legends at the normal bundle price and Distant Worlds and Return of the Shakturi below the normal bundle price (which is a $5 discount).

Regards,

- Erik

[Nedrear]

If you download without "hull" Legends should be 16 Dollar and the other two should be available as a bundle. Well even if not both are reduced like Shakturi to mathc 14 Dollar or so. All in all not more than 50 bugs I guess.

[khelvan]

Since I'm having trouble with the wording (and am not in front of my gaming PC to purchase/download), is the correct procedure to simply add all three games to the cart and the correct discounts will be given automatically?

[Erik Rutins]

We tried to make it as easy as possible. All three games are already discounted to below the normal bundle levels (for Distant Worlds and Return of the Shakturi) and to the normal bundle level (for Legends). So yes, as long as they all end up in your cart through whatever method you will be getting the discounted price.

After the holiday sale and release promotion is over, they'll return to the normal higher pricing and the bundle discount will only be available if you purchase them together (and that will still be at a higher price than they are now).

Regards,

- Erik

[toruserx]

Hi everybody.
Let me do simple math. Buying original+rots+legends=63$. Buying any top AAA class game from steam <50$.
I really hope you release stand alone version for 20-30$. Until then i am buying from alternative vendors.

you can delete my post/account,just remeber that involving new players is better than milking fans.

[Erik Rutins]

Hi toruserx,

Why would we delete or ban your account?

Also, why would you assume that the economics of a AAA title and a small publisher/independent strategy game are similar? "Milking" would suggest that we are making some kind of obscene profit at these prices. Not at all, this is basically the minimum we can charge to stay in business and make new games.

I realize $63 is not cheap, but for three titles that's as much of a discount as we can offer and still continue to make these games. If your budget is tight, consider getting just the original and starting with that, then add the expansions as time and your budget allow.

Regards,

- Erik

[Mysterius]

I'm afraid i have to agree with toruserx.

Here in France we have to pay about 62€ -$82!- for the game + the 2 addons (because of taxes). With the holiday prices [X(].

This may be perfectly justified in terms of development costs and also mostly not your fault (taxes again) but it is also very discouraging for new players. I have had trouble convincing real 4x fans to buy DW. Of course they can buy the base game and then the rest. Now let's not play the ignorant more than we really are : most players want everything or nothing.

It appears to me that the first addon, Return of the Shakturi, is heavily overpriced. For a "simple" (yes, i know [;)]) one year-old addon, even the bundle price of 15€ seems too much. I don't even dare talking about the full price when the holiday sales will be off. Even I, after all the hours played, couldn't afford to pay such a price for the game with its 2 addons.

A one-year old addon should have its price at least cut by half.


Again, this is from a customer point of view and even if you may find the prices justified, the problem is that it is the customer who decide what to pay for what, and they do not really care about these reasons ! ^^. For buyers, an addon is not a title. It is an addon, with all the expectations in terms of content and pricing attached to the concept.

Also, i don't really care since i already have the base game and Shakturi. I'm just saying Matrix may be discouraging potential buyers with that kind of pricing (and actually is, since i've seen that kind of reaction a lot on french-speaking forums). Toruserx has a point when he says that it's always economically better to attract new people than charging fans.

[WoodMan]

I was trying to persuade a friend to buy DW+RotS+Legends, he was waiting for the sale to start and was going to buy all three at the same time, but when he heard it was £46 for all three he said "I have to check my finances" which basically means "no its too expensive".

I'm perfectly happy with what I've paid for DW, RotS and Legends, but for new players anything over £35 is going above what a brand new bestselling game like Skyrim or MW3 costs. It is irrelevant that finances between AAA title and independent publisher work differently, its a lost sale, therefore no matter what your business model you have lost money.

Personally if I was in charge at Matrix I'd write to bestselling mags like PC Gamer UK who write at the start of their magazine that it is their aim to "review every single game released in the UK", if it gets a good review it would probably increase sales in this country somewhere in the region of 10 fold, meaning you can cut the price to a more reasonable £35 for the bundle.

[Erik Rutins]

Hi Mysterius,

We do hear you, but I think part of this is the friction between expectations set by mainstream economies of scale and pricing in comparison to the pricing and economies of more independent releases with more niche appeal. There is also really nothing we can do or say about taxes, that's between each gamer and their government.

It's also worth keeping in mind that Return of the Shakturi, up until yesterday, was the newest version of Distant Worlds and is currently available at it's lowest price since release. For the work put into it, that for us is a really low price.

The pricing decision is made individually for each release based on the factors that correspond to that release. We make these decisions based on years of data and analysis. If you look at our catalog, you'll see that our games cover a range of prices, both lower and much higher than Distant Worlds. It's our responsibility to ensure the success and survival of this series and a successful future for Elliot as well as making this affordable for our customers and to reach as many customers as possible. We combine those goals as much as possible.

With all that said, we very much appreciate the feedback and your efforts to spread the word to other gamers. Distant Worlds will over time become more affordable and have a lower entry price point, which will hopefully help you and other fans to convince your friends to give it a try. This is the best we can do now though and to lower the price further at this point would go against our best economic judgement.

Regards,

- Erik

[Erik Rutins]

ORIGINAL: WoodMan
Personally if I was in charge at Matrix I'd write to bestselling mags like PC Gamer UK who write at the start of their magazine that it is their aim to "review every single game released in the UK", if it gets a good review it would probably increase sales in this country somewhere in the region of 10 fold, meaning you can cut the price to a more reasonable £35 for the bundle.

We reach out to the media and press for each of our releases. While there are some notable exceptions who understand this genre, you might be surprised how many really don't and either are not interested in reviewing these kinds of games or trash them based on a completely irrelevant evaluation (for that genre) once they do review it. Finally, I wish a good review in PC Gamer multiplied sales by ten fold. Perhaps once it did and it certainly has more effect in retail, but retail for PC Games below the Top 10 AAA level is mostly dead.

Regards,

- Erik

[Sithuk]

Erik:
1) How many units of DW have sold?
2) How many units of DW:ROTS have sold?
3) How many units of DE:Legends have sold

We all wish Codeforce to have a sustainable model. There is only one programmer for Distant Worlds, from the units sold info we might have a chance at gauging how sustainable the title is.

[Erik Rutins]

Hi Sithuk,

We do not share sales data, sorry, but that's confidential. We do have more than ten years of internal data on various strategy and sci-fi games to compare to as well as other publicly available sales data and privately gathered data on various other releases and distribution stores. We're doing the best we can to steer this ship on the right course. The end goal for everyone is to have Distant Worlds outsell all previous Sci-Fi 4x games together, but the strategy to get there is of necessity somewhat incremental.

Regards,

- Erik

[Mysterius]

Elliot was interviewed by the french mag "CanardPC" more than a year ago. We have a topic about DW on the forum.

For the fun of it, here's the (translated) conclusion of the test that was published inside the magazine in may 2010 :

"Distant Worlds is ugly, rough, badly designed, irritating, only in English and single player. But it is also innovative, interesting and pleasantly complex. We forgot its defaults to plunge during hours into the conquest of a galaxy which never seemed so alive. For a normal price, its ugly face and numerous defaults would have been worth 5 or 6. But for 30 euros, i can only recommand to the veteran players to try it and salute the achievement of the two authors" 7/10

I don't really agree about the ugliness of the game, but i think the tester understood quite well the very spirit of that kind of games : graphics are only here to serve the imagination of the player. The core is the gameplay.

[Raap]

It's a tricky thing trying to balance price vs sales, especially in a niche genre like this one, so I can sympathize with MatrixGames on that point. I would have to throw in with the other side here however. It's expensive, but that's just one thing. The other thing is that the base game, Distant Worlds, really didn't bloom until it got the RotS expansion. I've seen several examples already of people being put off for the expansions because they had things they really disliked about the original, many of which have now largely been fixed. So with no demo to try stuff out, and with no way to check out the expansions without buying everything, many potential customers are unfortunately left in the dark on just how good the game has become.

There's also the problem that for every expansion you make, you're likely to see less customers than the last one simply because it requires the previous installment as well. So I really think a more permanent way of getting these items in a bundle would help stuff out. I personally don't mind paying 60$'ish for this, since I think it's a far better game than pretty much all the AAA-titles released lately, but most people are more skeptical( and with good reason) with such 'low-budget' projects.

Best of luck to you though. It's in my interest to keep you guys alive and well and continuing to make great expansions/sequels to this series, so I'll definitely be spreading the word.

[Erik Rutins]

Hi Raap,

Thanks for the feedback. We are definitely aware of these issues and there will eventually be a more permanent and integrated bundle, but we're not there yet.

Regards,

- Erik

[Despayre]

Had to register to say that I came here specifically to look at picking up DW after hearing about the new expansion and sale on rock paper shotgun, but 60+ dollars for the complete game is way too much for me.&nbsp; I'm a huge 4x fan, and I've had my eye on DW for a while but there is just no way I can justify paying over 60 bucks for this game plus all the expansions.&nbsp; I've looked at it before and always hoped that it would drop to the 20 dollar range so I wouldn't feel too bad if I ended up not liking the game, which is a concern for me due to how the game plays with the level of automation available and how much it's needed/required (depending on which review or forum threads I read).&nbsp; The base game and first expansion have been out long enough that I was hoping that the sale would put the game plus expansions into a more reasonable price range (like somewhere around 30 bucks for everything), but was sad to see that even with the sale, the game is now even harder to justify a purchase of. The addition of characters is exactly what made me come back to take a second (or third, maybe even fourth) look at buying the game, so to experience the feature that made me think about buying the game again I have to buy everything.

Saying a game is niche and requires a more expensive price point is obviously fallacious, even Jeff Vogel of Spiderweb gave up that fight. If anything, niche games should cost less to encourage more people to experiment and try them out.&nbsp; Look at the success other 'niche' indie projects have had on steam and desura with price points from 5-20 dollars that get cut to 50-75% off regularly.&nbsp; Almost every single indie project I've followed that has gone this route says that the sales of the games are far and away higher when the price drops, like orders of magnitude higher.&nbsp; I have to believe it's because at that point it's just an impulse buy and not an investment, so people just buy it.&nbsp; Personally, I'm much more likely to buy random indie games I know little about when they are under 20 bucks and I almost never buy anything over 30 bucks anymore, I dont care how interested I am in the game.&nbsp; That's especially true with smaller lesser known projects that you never know what to expect, lower price points convert potential sales and people that are just curious about the game or interested in supporting indie titles into actual sales.&nbsp; When the game costs more than any brand new big budget AAA title, that's more of an investment than I'm comfortable making with any game. If it was half of the current price for the complete DW experience, you'd already have my money.&nbsp; At the current price, you'll never have it. I may be alone on this, but I dont think so.&nbsp;

[the1sean]

One thing that I have always said is that Distant Worlds should be sold on Impulse. Tons of Indie titles thrive on there because it gives the game visibility. Impulse was started by Stardock Entertinment, makers of successful 4X games. The core gaming community that frequents that site is DW's target audience. Distant Worlds would absolutely ROCK the strategy gaming crowd that flocks to the Impulse digital store shelves every day, I am sure of it.

It's like bundling publicity and ease of checkout together. Steam would similarly be a good choice. Many "niche" and "independent" games do very well selling in those marketplaces. Another Matrix title, Armada 2526, has sold extremely well on Impulse; both the base game and it's expansion stayed on the best seller list for quite a long time. What's the hold-up? Why is Distant Worlds different than Armada? They are two different approaches to the EXACT SAME genre... but they aren't competing in the same marketplace.

PS: about the $$$, the $59.99 price point is pretty much the upper limit you can ask for a game before a lot of potential buyers get offended. Newcomers will see the bundle as the only way to go.

[the1sean]

ORIGINAL: toruserx

Hi everybody.
Let me do simple math. Buying original+rots+legends=63$. Buying any top AAA class game from steam <50$.
I really hope you release stand alone version for 20-30$. Until then i am buying from alternative vendors.

you can delete my post/account,just remeber that involving new players is better than milking fans.

You fail at simple math: Modern Warfare 3, Skyrim, and other AAA titles are $60 on Steam/Impulse right now. There are also $60 game bundles for sale.

While I agree that $63 is a lot of cash, you get the base game AND two expansions, one of them hot off the press. Maybe the price is 5% too high in my book, but for genre fans it should be an EASY decision to purchase the game. This is hands down my favorite 4X of all time, and tons of other gamers agree. Just go read the forums.

Matrix isn't milking fans, they work hard to please the fans and have already released a patch for the very minor issues that have been reported since release just days ago. In addition, they are quite polite on their boards. By your 1 post count I can tell you might not have figured either of these things out yet, nor can you fact-check, so I wanted to make sure that everybody else that read your poorly conceived comment was on the same page.

[Gelatinous Cube]

Yeah... it's hard to get my loyalty, especially after the fiasco with another certain 4x game I was looking forward to. But Codeforce, and Matrix in general, have shown a level of commitment to excellence that exceeds even Paradox (which is hard to do, from a developer's point of view--nevermind their publishing practices, that's a different story).

The price is steep.. but it's worth it, if you're a fan of this kind of thing. The Legends expansion takes this to a whole different level--from a "Well.. that's neat!" to more like "Holy crap!" It's been a long time since i've been this blown away by a bunch of words and shapes on a computer screen. Even if the price turns a lot of people off, this is one of those games that will steadily gain a following for a long time to come.