Prices

[JudgeDredd]

That is true...however, you are making the assumption that the game(s) being spoken of are going to provide that amount of entertainment for the purchaser. as you allude to yourself in your post...it isn't always like that.
 
And it isn't always easy to research a game to see if you like it...especially when a demo is not available. So purchasers of Matrix Games are kind of in a catch 22....looking to layout that "large" sum of money for a game they may not like.
 
I've bought plenty of donkeys in my time (one or two from Matrix too)...sometimes AFTER trying a demo.
 
Though, as I've said, I dion't think Matrix Games are overpriced anyway.

[EUBanana]

ORIGINAL: Doggie

Filthy capitalists.

You spelled it wrong, Doggie. Its kapitali$t. [;)]

[EUBanana]

And incidentally I played WITP non stop for 2 years a while back, and I just started up another game I expect to last another two years.

Even if I hadn't restarted, 2 years of play is pretty incredible for a game.  There are only a couple of games I still go back to after that length of time. 

So, pretty good value.

[Erik Rutins]

Perturabo,

ORIGINAL: Perturabo
You're missing the point. Some indie or even freeware games get enough/a lot of/hideous amounts of improvements, while some (like CC) get only some minor tweaks. And for some reason the latter cost the same amount of money as new games that get big upgrades.

It may be easy to forget that CC was off the market entirely, with no further development planned. We negotiated and paid for the rights to the CC engine and had to recoup some of those costs, so we took CCIII and updated it. The list of improvements really was large, including the integration of some key mods and the easy availability and organization of others via the mod swappe. Also, the addition at release of a multiplayer campaign, a new full campaign, the Battle HQ for online player matching and so on was significant added value in addition to the compatibility improvements. On top of that, content additions continued after release. We looked at this as an updated "collector's edition" of sorts, the ultimate CCIII release in effect and supported once again and working on the latest operating systems. Before we did the COI release, good condition copies of the out of print CCIII were selling for more money than the COI price among gamers.

This does not require anyone who's happy with CCIII to purchase it, but pricing it lower was not really an option thanks to the cost and effort put into bringing it back to the market.

[Erik Rutins]

ORIGINAL: Perturabo
Also, while we are talking about CC - CCMT:
07.11.17
Users complain that weapons are too lethal.
08.04.02
Users complain on abnormal lethality of combat.
08.04.27
User finds out what's wrong with CCMT weapons. It's 08.07.11 and it still isn't fixed.
Also, CCMT not only has weapons stats out of space, but also is a WWII tech-level game that doesn't model missiles, different armour types, top-attack missiles, helicopters, etc.

CCMT is based on Close Combat: Marines. It's been improved and expanded and is continuing to be supported, but there are some issues that were in CC:M that are still in CCMT. It still remains a good simulation of modern warfare, if you play it. Andrew has responded on those threads from what I saw, soliciting feedback to add to the future work list. That's the primary difference between this and the CC market before COI and CCMT. These games are now being actively worked on again and supported and feedback is being listened to.

Regards,

- Erik

[sterckxe]

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins
Before we did the COI release, good condition copies of the out of print CCIII were selling for more money than the COI price among gamers.

Yup - and this is why for the life of me I cannot understand why *anyone* would have anything against this re-release. From whatever angle you look at it, this is a win situation for gamers.

I guess there's no pleasing some people.

Greetz,

Eddy Sterckx

[JudgeDredd]

Except for the fact that it basically was a tank fest again.
 
I don't deny there was alot of work done on it...not at all. But the bloody thing played pretty much like the original. Troops, as soon as they were spotted (and sometimes seemingly NOT spotted) were massacred.
 
I didn't get on with it at all. I don't really hold Matrix responsible though, as I wasn't a big fan of the original...but I had hoped it was "fixed". Haven't played mine since the first week of having it! Waste of money in my book.
 
But for every duffer, there are gems...Forge of Freedom...Conquest of the Agean...Guns of August

[donkuchi19]

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins

Perturabo,

ORIGINAL: Perturabo
You're missing the point. Some indie or even freeware games get enough/a lot of/hideous amounts of improvements, while some (like CC) get only some minor tweaks. And for some reason the latter cost the same amount of money as new games that get big upgrades.

It may be easy to forget that CC was off the market entirely, with no further development planned. We negotiated and paid for the rights to the CC engine and had to recoup some of those costs, so we took CCIII and updated it. The list of improvements really was large, including the integration of some key mods and the easy availability and organization of others via the mod swappe. Also, the addition at release of a multiplayer campaign, a new full campaign, the Battle HQ for online player matching and so on was significant added value in addition to the compatibility improvements. On top of that, content additions continued after release. We looked at this as an updated "collector's edition" of sorts, the ultimate CCIII release in effect and supported once again and working on the latest operating systems. Before we did the COI release, good condition copies of the out of print CCIII were selling for more money than the COI price among gamers.

This does not require anyone who's happy with CCIII to purchase it, but pricing it lower was not really an option thanks to the cost and effort put into bringing it back to the market.

Being one of the people here that didn't purchase any of the original CC games, I am enjoying COI. It wasn't a title that appealed to me for some reason when it first came out and I watched the forums for a long time before purchasing it, but I am glad that I did. I am still waiting on CCMT since I haven't finished campaign in COI and not sure if I am going to go with that or the next one coming out.

I have many Matrix Games on my hard drive that I still play (WITP, Puresim BB, WAW, EIA, and CoG) and some that aren't (RFTS, CotD) and some that will eventually go back on (Spartan and Troy). My oldest game still on my hard drive though is Imperialism. I run it in Windows 95 mode and it works great. It is 11 years old and I actually played an entire campaign two days ago. Mainstream game companies don't make games like that anymore. They are all FPS or RTS of mass and attack. Matrix and Battlefront (along with Shrapnel Games where I bought one game) are the only ones doing games that I want to play anymore.

[GaryChildress]

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins


CCMT is based on Close Combat: Marines. It's been improved and expanded and is continuing to be supported, but there are some issues that were in CC:M that are still in CCMT. It still remains a good simulation of modern warfare, if you play it. Andrew has responded on those threads from what I saw, soliciting feedback to add to the future work list. That's the primary difference between this and the CC market before COI and CCMT. These games are now being actively worked on again and supported and feedback is being listened to.

Regards,

- Erik

@ Perturabo: That's another aspect of Matrix that I totally forgot about, long term support. WITP for instance has been supported 4 years after its release with patches and fixes. 2K has long written off Civ III and isn't introducing any patches to any of the bugs still persistent in Civ III. In fact the last patch for Civ III (that I see on the Civ III website) is dated 04-05-2004 (before the release of Civ III Complete). I don't think 2K has ever introduced a patch on its version other than the version itself. I'm a member of the Civfanatics forum and it has been my experience that most pleas to 2K regarding Civ III seem to fall on deaf ears. Not so with Matrix.

[Zakhal]

ORIGINAL: Matti Kuokkanen
Hey, stop complaining over there! New computer games in Europe (on shelf) cost 50 €, and that's $78,54 (US)!

In europe you can order new pc games for 34€ shipping included from play.com. The place is becoming quite popular these days.

[GaryChildress]

ORIGINAL: Zakhal

ORIGINAL: Matti Kuokkanen
Hey, stop complaining over there! New computer games in Europe (on shelf) cost 50 €, and that's $78,54 (US)!

In europe you can order new pc games for 34€ shipping included from play.com. The place is becoming quite popular these days.

I love shopping at Walmart. The prices are dirt cheap. Of course half the products are probably produced by virtual slave labor in order to keep those prices.

[Zakhal]

ORIGINAL: Gary Childress
I love shopping at Walmart. The prices are dirt cheap. Of course half the products are probably produced by virtual slave labor in order to keep those prices.

The cheap play.com prices are done via tax loophole of channel islands:

FEATURE: Internet business is booming in the sunny Channel Islands, all thanks to an unusual tax loophole that has the blessing of Gordon Brown.

Yet some of internet retail’s biggest names are setting up to do business there and e-commerce is fast becoming a mainstay of the Channel Islands’ economies. Tesco, Sainsbury and Play.com are all reported to have operations on one of the Islands and many smaller businesses conduct e-tailing from there.

Behind the seemingly incongruous boom in web trade is a quirk in European VAT law that means that the leanest competitors in the market for small goods make sure they ship from the Islands.

Anyone shipping goods to the EU would normally ensure that VAT is paid when those goods are sold on. There is, of course, a cost to charging VAT: someone has to track goods, fill in forms, collect the revenue and pass it on to the tax man.

To collect VAT of a few pence by a process that costs considerably more than that makes little sense, so the EU introduced the Low Value Consignment Relief (LVCR), an exemption from VAT for all goods valued under £18 imported from outside the EU.

Eventually, web retailers realised that they could make a virtue out of the Channel Islands’ complicated constitutional set up. The Islands are outside the EU but loosely connected to the UK. They are a protectorate of the monarchy and islanders are offered qualified UK citizenship, affording them the best of both worlds when it comes to trading advantages.

It turns out that that discovery came about fortuitously when discount CD and DVD retailer Play.com started trading. “Play.com is owned by Jersey residents and they realised almost by accident that they had a VAT advantage,” says Frank Gee. Gee is a director of Basel Trust, a company which helps other firms to navigate the complicated strictures placed on anyone trying to take advantage of the anomaly.

The business advantages of offshore fulfilment can be significant. In competitive, price-sensitive markets, such as CD retailing, being able to pass on a discount of 17.5% can make a serious difference to a company’s prospects. Other firms might choose not to pass on the discount but to boost their own profits by the 17.5%. That, again, will make an enormous difference to any company.

I still buy games and stuff from other places too like amazon, ebay and local dealers but its mostly old or used stuff.

[GaryChildress]

ORIGINAL: Zakhal


The cheap play.com prices are done via tax loophole of channel islands:

So in other words it sounds a lot like what Walmart does, send jobs to where it is cheapest to produce the product so they can charge less for their product.

[pasternakski]

ORIGINAL: Gary Childress
I love shopping at Walmart. The prices are dirt cheap. Of course half the products are probably produced by virtual slave labor in order to keep those prices.

Ten freighters depart Chinese ports each day full of merchandise headed for Wal-Mart.

My favorite find so far was in the hardware department. Package with a spiffy red-white-and-blue motif (American flag included) containing a product from American Tool Co.

What's on the back? "Made in Thailand."

Not that there's anything WRONG with that...

[JudgeDredd]

ORIGINAL: Gary Childress

ORIGINAL: Zakhal


The cheap play.com prices are done via tax loophole of channel islands:

So in other words it sounds a lot like what Walmart does, send jobs to where it is cheapest to produce the product so they can charge less for their product.

No. They exploit a tax loophole. The workers are governed by the laws of Britain. It's not slave/child/cheap labour...they simply exploit a tax loophole.

[Joram]

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins

ORIGINAL: SuluSea
I'm a big believer in free markets and people getting compensated for their hard work but asking someone to fork over $80 plus dollars for a 4 year old game is bordering on the absurd.

In the mainstream market, every game is only "new" for a few months until another game like it, but newer and better, comes along. This along with retail store stocking policies and the glut of releases means that products are rapidly discounted and the disappear. Because this is how the most popular games are sold, people come to expect it.

In a niche market like this one that's not the case. Development takes longer (fewer people, fewer resources) and it could be a decade before a game is truly "replaced" by a newer and better version. In the meantime, a game needs to generate a decent revenue stream to support development of the next title, which will probably take 2+ years. Also, most of our games are not focused on technological advances as their main features, like better graphics (though we do that too) but rather on improved gameplay and better strategy, which doesn't really "age".

Obviously, there are exceptions but for the most part I think that we may actually be underpricing our games and there are quite a few games we sell that are 4 years old that are still just as good as they day they were released and have not really been supplanted by newer releases. With all that said, we do usually reduce prices gradually as time goes on, but at nowhere near the mainstream market pace. Frankly, following that type of model would put us out of business.

Regards,

- Erik

I know this is straying considerably from the original topic of the thread but since you bring it up:

I would disagree that you are underpricing but you can always try to raise costs and see what happens!

The thing you can't forget though is that if I have $50 to spend on a game, it's not just this one genre I look at. So you are still competing for my funds with sports games, FPS, RTS and all those other acronyms! I really do enjoy wargames but if prices go up, I certainly would be buying less of them. In fact, there are several games here I haven't bought that I may enjoy simply because it is overpriced to me.

I respect and understand your argument of the resources and development time and it's a bit of a catch-22 but I think you have to be very careful, which I'm sure you are, about where you set your price levels.

[Perturabo]

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins

Perturabo,

It may be easy to forget that CC was off the market entirely, with no further development planned. We negotiated and paid for the rights to the CC engine and had to recoup some of those costs, so we took CCIII and updated it. The list of improvements really was large, including the integration of some key mods and the easy availability and organization of others via the mod swappe. Also, the addition at release of a multiplayer campaign, a new full campaign, the Battle HQ for online player matching and so on was significant added value in addition to the compatibility improvements. On top of that, content additions continued after release. We looked at this as an updated "collector's edition" of sorts, the ultimate CCIII release in effect and supported once again and working on the latest operating systems. Before we did the COI release, good condition copies of the out of print CCIII were selling for more money than the COI price among gamers.

Out of print product can have much higher value because it's well, out of print. Meanwhile, CC5 was being sold in stores for ~10$ because it was old.

New campaign and new data doesn't really have much added value, as it was said before, modders do that for community for free.
What is really needed from commercial CC games are genuine new features and improvements to the engine. And asking for these results only in response that they have only one programmer or lack of any response. (Not that Atomic Games was better in that aspect. They had more programmers, but were probably too busy adding fragging minigames to make troops load on vehicles, working vehicle pathing, AI that actually works and similar things.).

Don't get me wrong, I'm glad that new CC games are being worked on and I like the better modding support (namely, the transition from .adb to .txt.), but I think they definitely could use (a lot) more new features and actual engine improvements.

ORIGINAL: Gary Childress

@ Perturabo: That's another aspect of Matrix that I totally forgot about, long term support. WITP for instance has been supported 4 years after its release with patches and fixes. 2K has long written off Civ III and isn't introducing any patches to any of the bugs still persistent in Civ III. In fact the last patch for Civ III (that I see on the Civ III website) is dated 04-05-2004 (before the release of Civ III Complete). I don't think 2K has ever introduced a patch on its version other than the version itself. I'm a member of the Civfanatics forum and it has been my experience that most pleas to 2K regarding Civ III seem to fall on deaf ears. Not so with Matrix.

Now, when was the last patch for CC3:CoI?

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins

CCMT is based on Close Combat: Marines. It's been improved and expanded and is continuing to be supported, but there are some issues that were in CC:M that are still in CCMT.

Expanded? How? There are no new game features since CCM except for 5x5 multiplayer.

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins

CCMT is based on Close Combat: Marines. It's been improved and expanded and is continuing to be supported, but there are some issues that were in CC:M that are still in CCMT. It still remains a good simulation of modern warfare, if you play it.

Only of those aspects of modern warfare that were already there in WWII.
As for the gameplay itself...
As someone said, it's more like simulation of WH40k, but without power armour.
Right now people carry hand-cannons with great range and accuracy, while really advanced weapons like Javelin suffer from inaccuracy and lack of firepower (Javelin has trouble with destroying T-55s in game.).
If the weapons will get patched, it's still going to be more like a WWII simulation.
Except that there's no possibility to make the troops start entrenched, there's no attacking side and no defenders.

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins

That's the primary difference between this and the CC market before COI and CCMT. These games are now being actively worked on again

Yes, by one programmer. So...
Why the CC is great enough to cost a price for a full new game, but not great enough to get more programmers?

ORIGINAL: Joram

I know this is straying considerably from the original topic of the thread but since you bring it up:

I would disagree that you are underpricing but you can always try to raise costs and see what happens!

The thing you can't forget though is that if I have $50 to spend on a game, it's not just this one genre I look at. So you are still competing for my funds with sports games, FPS, RTS and all those other acronyms! I really do enjoy wargames but if prices go up, I certainly would be buying less of them. In fact, there are several games here I haven't bought that I may enjoy simply because it is overpriced to me.

Yeah, same here. Things competing for my money are: cRPGs (not much competition as most of the modern cRPGs won't work on my computer and don't fulfil my requirements for a good cRPG), music CDs, comics, old tabletop games, like Rogue Trader and Laserburn, books, movies, anime, various indie games and most, recently visual novels.

[GaryChildress]

ORIGINAL: JudgeDredd

ORIGINAL: Gary Childress

ORIGINAL: Zakhal


The cheap play.com prices are done via tax loophole of channel islands:

So in other words it sounds a lot like what Walmart does, send jobs to where it is cheapest to produce the product so they can charge less for their product.

No. They exploit a tax loophole. The workers are governed by the laws of Britain. It's not slave/child/cheap labour...they simply exploit a tax loophole.

Sorry, I should have said "send jobs to where it is cheaper to produce the product". I didn't mean to imply that the Channel Islands are slave labor. Maybe Matrix should farm out its production services to the Channel Islands if it can dodge taxes that way. Who the heck needs bridges and schools anyway?

EDIT: My apologies also, I probably crossed the "no politics" line what this. I'll cease.

[JudgeDredd]

Well I was being "tongue in cheak" pedantic....I knew what you meant. Maybe the apology should come from me? [:)]

[GaryChildress]

Perhaps I'm over zealous. I'm just thankful there is a Matrix games which hosts so many of my favorite titles. I tend to become stubborn in my defense of them. Matrix has won my support. But I concede that not everyone has reason to be as willing to shell out precious monetary resources for these games as as I am. I may be a glutton for punishment but my philosophy is to reward those whom I think do a good job. Heck it isn't unusual for me to tip my barber 30-40%. It's frustrating for me to walk into a typical major retailer and see nothing but Quake, Doom, Age of Empires and everything else I'm not interested in. That's where I come from.