Are we paying more for less?

[Theonlystd]

NTJedi said:

Very true... it will be the demo which will convince people whether or not it's worth the price. The dominions_2 demo only gave 40_turns hopefully the dominions_3 demo doesn't have the same limitation because many gamers downloading demos will ignore demos with turn limits and time limits.

True the demo will suck in some thats how it got me in dom2... But the demo covers very little of the game 5 EA nations and does it allow you to research up to lvl 9 in the magic? Or severly limited. The demo wont show some of the best parts of the game and is there a turn limit?. And heck alot of poeple just on principle dont pay this much for games no matter what they offer.



On an unrelated note i just ordered meh copy and expressed mailed..

[Warhammer]

Theonlystd said:
And heck alot of poeple just on principle dont pay this much for games no matter what they offer.

That's their loss then. Some people refuse to buy games, or refuse to buy undiscounted games, etc. That is their own decision and you can't reduce the price of your good to appease a small fragment of your customer base.

[Endoperez]

Warhammer said:That's their loss then. Some people refuse to buy games, or refuse to buy undiscounted games, etc. That is their own decision and you can't reduce the price of your good to appease a small fragment of your customer base.

He is arguing that it is more than just a small fragment of the customer base. There probably are many people who weren't sure about whether they should buy Dominions II or not. The fact that Dominions 3 has a hefty and pricy manual might actually make them even more wary, especially as DomII manual wasn't that great. I hope I never have to decide about marketing. It seems to be very complicated business.

[Warhammer]

Endoperez said:

He is arguing that it is more than just a small fragment of the customer base. There probably are many people who weren't sure about whether they should buy Dominions II or not. The fact that Dominions 3 has a hefty and pricy manual might actually make them even more wary, especially as DomII manual wasn't that great. I hope I never have to decide about marketing. It seems to be very complicated business.

Unfortunately, the actual customer base for Dom3 is much smaller than the typical game market. Most of the top selling games are sports sims, not strategy games. On top of that, this is a turn based strategy game, so you have lost the RTS players, etc. Not only that, but you only have sales through online sources, which reduces your customer base even more due to customers not knowing about the product, etc.

Now, once you figure out who your core customer base is, you have to figure out how much you can charge, and given what our likes and dislikes are, $55 is a fair price. Even if you lower the cost to $40, you are not going to sell enough copies to make up the loss in sales that the $15 drop in price will result in.

I'm in marketing so I understand all this stuff!

[Endoperez]

Endoperez said:
He is arguing that it is more than just a small fragment of the customer base. There probably are many people who weren't sure about whether they should buy Dominions II or not. The fact that Dominions 3 has a hefty and pricy manual might actually make them even more wary, especially as DomII manual wasn't that great. I hope I never have to decide about marketing. It seems to be very complicated business.

Warhammer said:That's their loss then. Some people refuse to buy games, or refuse to buy undiscounted games, etc. That is their own decision and you can't reduce the price of your good to appease a small fragment of your customer base.

Warhammer said:Unfortunately, the actual customer base for Dom3 is much smaller than the typical game market. Most of the top selling games are sports sims, not strategy games. On top of that, this is a turn based strategy game, so you have lost the RTS players, etc. Not only that, but you only have sales through online sources, which reduces your customer base even more due to customers not knowing about the product, etc.

Now, once you figure out who your core customer base is, you have to figure out how much you can charge, and given what our likes and dislikes are, $55 is a fair price. Even if you lower the cost to $40, you are not going to sell enough copies to make up the loss in sales that the $15 drop in price will result in.

I'm in marketing so I understand all this stuff!

Now THAT's a good, informative post, and just to the point! I hope you don't mind me reorganizing your posts like this.

[Agrajag]

With the ~65$ the game will cost me (atleast, once I finally order it) I could buy:
28 Decent meals. OR
6 Meals at a fancy restaurant. OR
An ~80GB HD. OR
Almost 6 copies Heroes 3 Complete. OR
Almost 6 copies of the whole Baldur's Gate series. OR
Almost 6 copies of the whole IceWind Dale series. OR
A Pair of Jeans and a shirt. OR
559 Bubblegums.

Anyway, the cost of manufacturing Dominions3 is probably more than twice what manufacturing any other computer game costs. Atleast considering that making a disc costs barely 50 cents...

[Theonlystd]

Warhammer said:

That's their loss then. Some people refuse to buy games, or refuse to buy undiscounted games, etc. That is their own decision and you can't reduce the price of your good to appease a small fragment of your customer base.

There not a majoirty.. But there not a tiny minority either...

Caduceus said:
Let's try his tactic. How many "discount" games do you buy a year? How many of those are you still playing three years after its release?

If you put $5 in a jar each month instead of buying a $20 disposable title-of-the-month and then dropped the $55 on Dominions 3 in a year, you'd have $185. You can tweak these numbers any way you want, of course. But, I think most of us are tired of getting burned with flash-in-the-pan games.

I have Eu2,Crusader Kings,Hoi,Hoi2,Victoria



I only payed more than 20 for one of them


Pic up the Civ games as discount also... The vast majority of the games i buy are at 20 dollars.. By time the game gets down to 20 i'll have a good idea at the quality of the game and it'll be decently patched up



The only reason i've got dominion is cause sadly i know they'll prolly never significantly lower the price.. And this is just the kind of game im always looking for and know that illwinter will come threw with the patchs.

But i doubt most poeple will have the same kind of hankering for this type of game as i do.. Or as know the kind of support illwinter will give

[Meglobob]

I personally liked the Dom2 demo, probably the most I have ever played a demo ever, when I got to turn 40 I just deceided have I won this game or not? It was more than enough to convince me to buy Dom3, after looking at the forums and finding out Dom3 was basically the same game but bigger, better. As I did not own Dom2, it was easy to buy Dom3.

However when it comes to indulging my favourite hobbey money is not the main issue with me. It's quality, how much play am I going to get, replayabilty value et... i would prefer to pay $60+ for a game I will play for 6 months+, then $40 for a game that lasts barely a week.

Also compare computer games with other entertainment, a book or dvd? A computer game wins every time for value, especially a 4xstrategy game with virtually endless replayability.

[DominionsFan]

Meglobob said:
i would prefer to pay $60+ for a game I will play for 6 months+, then $40 for a game that lasts barely a week.

This is the key sentence.
I bought tons of games really, and I dropped them all after 2-4 weeks. Dominions 2. is still on my comp and I am playing it when I can, and the same is true about like 25 people here who I know. [Local players here I mean.. ]

[Thilock_Dominus]

Well, I don't mind paying $55 for Dom3 for two reasons:
1. Games like Dom series is rare and I havn't seen something equally to them. (Master of Magic comes close).
2. Not many commercial games are made to work natively on linux, so I rarely get new games. If it don't work natively on linux I don't buy simple is that.