Is the price of Dominions II a deterrent?

[apoger]

The current price is too steep.

My best suggestion (still) is for IW to offer the game as a download and sell for $30. They can email a product key to the buyer. Many companies have done this and it works just fine. This would cut the production costs dramatically, while probably offering the same or better profit per unit. The low price and ability to "impulse buy" would increase sales greatly.

That's it, I've said my piece. I won't mention it again. And apologies to Shrapnel for suggesting that IW dodge the middleman.

[Saber Cherry]

*bump*

[Wendigo]

It's basically a matter of return on investment: I got 2 years of great gameplay out of Dom I (and I still have a game going on with 2 opponents that refuse to die) so I am basically a satisfied customer.

I paid way more for Legion than I did for Dom I (I thought Wow! Centurion, defender or Rome remade), yet I only played that one for a week...which was the better purchase?

I am thus a satisfied customer and a loyal customer because of previous experience: if Dom II delivers only a tenth of the fun I got from Dom I the purchase will be more than worth the cost.

Besides, with the current Euro-$ exchange rates the $ is just toilet paper.

[PhilD]

Originally posted by licker:


If you are willing to spend more the game is too cheap. That is as absolute a statement as you can get, if you don't like the absoluteness of it, don't blame me, blame the question, which I have twice... oooops now its three times

That is your interpretation of the question. Obviously, it's not the same for everyone here.

If Shrapnel's only intent was to make as much money as they could (not saying it is, but that's sometimes one of the goal of commercial companies), they should set the price at the level that will maximize that. Assuming the manufacturing costs are fixed (and yes, they could make it cheaper by offering a "download only" option, though I can understand if they are wary of the possible piracy consequences), the "best" price level is the one that maximizes "profit per unit" times "number of units sold"; increasing the price tag will mean less copies sold, and increasing it too high will undoubtedly mean less profit.

If the answer to "what should the price be" and "how much would you pay for the game" were supposed to be the same, then the question about "is the price right" would be meaningless - the question about how much you'd pay would be enough.

[PDF]

Originally posted by apoger:
The current price is too steep.

My best suggestion (still) is for IW to offer the game as a download and sell for $30. They can email a product key to the buyer. Many companies have done this and it works just fine. This would cut the production costs dramatically, while probably offering the same or better profit per unit. The low price and ability to "impulse buy" would increase sales greatly.

That's it, I've said my piece. I won't mention it again. And apologies to Shrapnel for suggesting that IW dodge the middleman.

I support that, with a downloadable manual though
I got GalCiv this way just 10 minutes after release , it was very cool and avoids waiting for delivery as well as shipping/taxes/customs.
Piracy could be a concern, but frankly I don't think they will be much pirate activity around Dom2, so a simple reg key system would be sufficient protection IMHO.

[Alneyan]

And why a downloadable game would be more likely to be pirated than a "regular" game? If someone does want to pirate a game, transforming the files on a CD into a zip file or some sort of CD image is easy enough. But I don't believe there will be that many people attempting to pirate Dominions 2.

I second the arguments given by PDF about downloable games, no more shipping, no more delays.

[Sammual]

Originally posted by apoger:
The current price is too steep.

My best suggestion (still) is for IW to offer the game as a download and sell for $30. They can email a product key to the buyer. Many companies have done this and it works just fine. This would cut the production costs dramatically, while probably offering the same or better profit per unit. The low price and ability to "impulse buy" would increase sales greatly.

That's it, I've said my piece. I won't mention it again. And apologies to Shrapnel for suggesting that IW dodge the middleman.

I am SO in favor of this. I buy half my games based on the impulse factor and almost all of them are downloaded Online. I already pre-ordered (The Dom I demo is a game in itself and I wanted to support the further development of this series) so it doesn't matter to me FOR this game.

Sammual