Request For Printed Manual

[bink]

Hi,

I was just checking out the current titles and noticed they do not come with printed manuals. I am very interested in buying this game when released, but would strongly prefer if it came with a manual (ideally, in color). I think that at the expected $69.95 price, that is not unreasonable. If buyers don't want the printed manual, they could just do the download.

FWIW, I would pay an extra $5 for a color manual over B/W.

And given the strength of the Australian dollar, may this makes a printed color manual achievable? I would even prefer that over a price cut! (I recall that the price increase decision of Dec 2007 was justified by the strength of the Australian dollar, whereas your dollar returns are now 13.8% greater)

Reference:
tm.asp?m=1642259&mpage=1&key=&#1642259

AUD 12/12/07 .8829
AUD 5/21/09 .7757 (intra-day)

[Arsan]

If BftB have manuals like the COTA ones we are talking about (IIRC...) 300-400 pages between the tutorials pdfs and the manual. not to count the editor manual. [X(]
Panther games manuals are great (one of the best i've read) and specially the tutorials pdf are superb, but they are also so long and detailed that i suppose it's very difficult/costly to offer them printed. [:(]

[bink]

ORIGINAL: Arsan

If BftB have manuals like the COTA ones we are talking about (IIRC...) 300-400 pages between the tutorials pdfs and the manual. not to count the editor manual. [X(]

Phew - a 300 page manual!! That is something I think would be useful to have open while learning for someone new to the game.

Maybe Panther could do a poll? Who wants a printed manual, and how much would you pay for a B&W and for a color manual. Personally, I would pay $10 for B&W, $20 for Color (assuming it was printed & bound professionally), with a strong preference for the color version.

[Arjuna]

bink,

I appreciate the desire for a printed manual, but given the size of the manual and the likely volumes of any print run, it would be prohibitively expensive.

BTW the australian dollar has appreciated 30% since the beginning of the year against the US dollar. However, we are paid in US dollars so in effect our income has been slashed by 30%. So the case for having us provide a printed manual has got even worse not better.[:(]

[bink]

ORIGINAL: Arjuna

bink,

I appreciate the desire for a printed manual, but given the size of the manual and the likely volumes of any print run, it would be prohibitively expensive.

BTW the australian dollar has appreciated 30% since the beginning of the year against the US dollar. However, we are paid in US dollars so in effect our income has been slashed by 30%. So the case for having us provide a printed manual has got even worse not better.[:(]

Arjuna,

But in your post of 12/12/07 (referenced above), the new price for COTA effective Jan 08 was set at an exchange rate of .8829. Your A$ return now is ~14% greater than it was when that pricing was set.

Since you have said that you need to maintain an A$ based margin (since your costs are A$ based), you have enjoyed a windfall gain since the beginning of this year. Even though your gross income is now 30% less than at the beginning of the year, it is still 14% greater than when pricing was set.

Don't get me wrong, I am not begrudging your return, but I think you should be consistent in your arguments on pricing, which is clearly that you want A$ based returns. This is what you said on 12/12/07:

"As to why the price of our games are going up in January, that's pretty simple. Its due to the depreciation of the US dollar. Our royalties are paid in US dollars. Over the last year the US dollar has depreciated more than 25% against the Australian dollar. So we are getting a lot less than we were. We have worn that for over twelve months but cannot do so any longer. So the prices are going up. "

On this basis, your gross income in early 2009 was 50% higher than expected when USD pricing was set in Dec 2007, so maybe a price cut should have occured then??

My point is not that you should cut prices now, but I am making a case for a printed manual.

Best wishes,

bink

[MarkShot]

All this talk of money and FOREX, has made me acutely aware that Beta pay hasn't been increased at all this decade.

[JudgeDredd]

BINK
 
I'm with you on the printed manual...I would love a printed one, however, your figures are assuming COTA has continued to sell and neither you or I know whether it has or not. If they only sold one unit since the 14% increase, it doesn't lend much punch to the argument for a printed manual.

[MarkShot]

It seems that one of the fundamental issues of offering a huge printed manual is that it increases production costs greatly (and it is immutable unlike PDF). The increase in production costs tranlates into business risk (losses). This risk can only be assumbed by the publisher and/or developer. However, you are not dealing with MSFT, GOOG, ATVI sitting on cash reserves ..., but rather small businesses which are operating rather close to the bone who are selling small runs to a niche customer base. That to me seems to be the fundamental issue here.

[Tzar007]

Eternal question that comes back every time, and I sympathize with Panther Games because it's the kind of thing that you're damned if you do, damned if you don't. Case in point: the HTTR manual. I recall that HTTR came with a printed manual. I still have it...At the time, there were people complaining that this manual was too small. To keep costs to a reasonable price the manual was a small size (not the standard 8.5x11 inches letter page) with a very small font used. Now, if PG/Matrix would offer a large printed manual, the costs of production would vastly increase especially with the 200+ pages of the reference manual (imagine now if all that would be in color ! Gosh !) And then people are going to complain that the game is prohibitely expensive. And if Matrix would offer the printed manual as an add-on that you can buy as a standalone, I am quite sure that the costs including shipping would be so high that few people would buy it and would end printing it themselves.

Make no mistake: you need a manual to play this game and reading the PDF on screen won't do it. So I simply print it on my laser printer and get it binded for 5 Canadian dollars (that's cheap!) at my local printshop. And no, I'm not a privileged person to have a laser printer since these days they can be had for the price of what was ink jet printer just 2 or 3 years ago. Don't want to offend anybody here, but seriously if you can buy wargames at 50-60$ dollars once in a while, you should invest a few dollars in a basic B/W laser printer. The printing costs per sheet of a laser are much smaller than crappy ink jet and the added benefit is that you can print all the Matrix Games manuals you wish without worry anymore [:'(]

So personally, I prefer a more REASONABLE price for the game by NOT offering the printed manual. My 2 cents [:)]

[Arsan]

Maybe it's because i started playing with RDoA (i still have that big fat manual around here!) but for HTTR and COTA all i needed was to refresh my knowledge to play the excellent tutorials (that besides being interesting scenarios and teaching you how the game functions are also a great introduction to tactics and WW2 operational manoeuvre [&o]) to get going.
I have only used the big main manual to check some details or game concepts from time to time. And for this, a searchable pdf is not that bad.[:)]
For being such deep and detailed games i find Panther games kind of intuitive and easy to start playing once you get teh basics.
Now, to print the tutorials pdfs is indeed a good idea as alt+tabing so frequently can be a chore.

Regards!

[Llyranor]

What? I thought Matrix started to include printed manuals for all their games recently?

[bink]

ORIGINAL: JudgeDredd

BINK

I'm with you on the printed manual...I would love a printed one, however, your figures are assuming COTA has continued to sell and neither you or I know whether it has or not. If they only sold one unit since the 14% increase, it doesn't lend much punch to the argument for a printed manual.

JudgeDredd,

I wasn't suggesting that a printed manual for COTA be prepared, but rather that a printed manual for BFTB be supplied.

As an aside, regarding assumptions on sales (which I am not making), I *thought* that I read somewhere on this forum that COTA experienced constant sales (but I could be confusing it with another Matrix title).

I assume (but stand to be corrected) that BFTB will hold greater appeal to US consumers than COTA, and on this basis my inclination would be to release the game in a retail form which could garner new customers (not only to Panther Games, but to wargaming in general). Based on what I have seen of BFTB (from this forum), and my exposure to the demo of HTTR, I think that the professionalism of this game and the Bulge setting makes it one of the games most likely to attract a non-traditional wargamer audience that we have seen in a long time.

Further to my comments about the COTA pricing and currency movements:

I have attached a graph of the Australian dollar since January 2006. It shows that the A$ was relatively steady until about June 06 when COTA was released. In Dec 2007, the appreciation of the A$ by about 20% justified the price increase of COTA in the US (don't know about other markets).

Since Jul 2007, there was a dramatic fall in the A$, such it spent from September to March 2009 at a level about 30% lower than the level which justified the price increase. It has recovered somewhat since then, but is still around the level of the original game price.

I am also assuming that since there was no price cut in COTA to reflect the new A$ levels, there will not be one at this point, and that as a new game, BFTB will cost at least the same (if not more). I think that the game quality at this point justifies this.

However, as I ponder this topic further, it makes me feel even more strongly about providing some sort of printed manual option, even if it increases the price difference against the download version.

Without knowing anything about sales volumes, projections, download vs physical breakdown, or economics of publishing, I would have thought that a professional quality run of 500 would be possible through specialized printers such as FedEx Kinko's?

If you want to lay off the risk, why not allow game purchasers to pre-order a manual (as I have seen with board wargames), with the printing commencing when a minimum quantity has been pre-sold. This mitigates the developers financial risk. Say the game is priced at $60 download, $70 physical, and $80 with color manual to be shipped after xx orders?

Or just print the manuals in China [;)]

I look forward to the game!

bink

[Arsan]

ORIGINAL: Llyranor

What? I thought Matrix started to include printed manuals for all their games recently?

If your commnet is about my "big fat RDoA manual" comment, the game was originally released by Battlefront, not Matrix. Panther games started publishing with Matrix in the their second game, HTTR.
Regards!

[James Sterrett]

I asked a friend who owns a Print-On-Demand press. He told me:


A 200 page black and white manual would cost in the region of $7 to $10 to print, and a 200 page color manual would cost around $30 to print. In both cases that assumes standard white 8.5"x11" paper (which is cheapest), a color cardstock cover, and "perfect" (glue) binding. Color is expensive on POD presses; it is much cheaper per-unit on offset printers but the setup costs for offset print runs are in the thousands, so it's generally only cost-effective for very large print runs.

The cost to the consumer would be higher, to cover shipping and the need to make a profit on the operation. Typically, the minimum worthwhile price is three times the printing cost.

[MarkShot]

We used to have a B/W laser and an MFD inkjet. So, I used to just print the b/w pages of manuals with the laser and manually select the color pages for the inkjet.

As of last year, we replaced the B/W laser with a full duplex 30ppm color laser on the network. Oh, what a pleasure.

The main reason I print manuals is not so much for when I play the games, but to read them when I am not at home.

You know if you can spend thousands of dollars on computer hardware, then maybe a low cost color laser is worth it. I find printers to be one of the most durable computing investments. We are still using an HP SOHO Inkjet MFD which is 10 years old. It is still an excellent choice for a FAX, quick print job, or quick photo copy. Few PCs will prove useful as long as that printer has been.

[GoodGuy]

ORIGINAL: James Sterrett

I asked a friend who owns a Print-On-Demand press.
[]...
Typically, the minimum worthwhile price is three times the printing cost.

Right. Then have it printed in Vietnam (example), it will cost a fraction of the amounts you have to invest in Oz or in the US. The low labor/material costs in Vietnam allow for compensating the costs for shipping (to the US) and import taxes, so the final costs/prize will still be way lower than the prices your friend was suggesting.

[simovitch]

ORIGINAL: Llyranor

What? I thought Matrix started to include printed manuals for all their games recently?

We are producing a printed, hard-copy manual for BFTB. It will be a scaled down, 200 page version of the larger and more elaborate e-document which will be included on the CD.

[TinyPirate]

I don't care much about a printed manual, or not. I guess because I don't mind reading PDFs. But for the love of good, promote BFTB by reducing the price on COTA when BFTB is close to release. Consider a cheap COTA a demo for a game that is sadly free of any demo. I've got friends who would like to try, but the price puts them off. Something they feel they could afford to toss asside if they don't like would really go a long way towards making them want to try it and if they like it, you'll have them for BFTB too.

I know, I know. No one wants to hear this...

[Arjuna]

We will be releasing a demo for BFTB. [:)]

[TinyPirate]

Arjuna! You're a star! Bloody good idea. I will go blawg about this soonish.