2D Puzzel Game Price

[NuclearNova]

Hi, My first game Escape - http://nuclearnova.com/escape.php , has been selling for almost 2 years at $10.00. That includes 35 levels and there is an expansion pack that has 50 levels (soon to be 65) for another $10.00. I have sold about 160 copies, which isn't bad for my first game, and probably 80 expansion packs.

I am trying to figure out a new pricing scheme. I think $10.00 is to low because some of the puzzles are incredibly difficult but most are just challenging and fun. What do you recommend, I would consider pricing both anywhere from 10 to 15 dollars. I am also open to changing the levels of the normal game from 35 to 40 because I have been adding more levels to the expansion pack.

Thanks

[Hiro_Antagonist]

For what it's worth, I think you'll have a hard time getting more than $10 for it. Unfortunately, the realities of the marketplace (usually) favor graphics/sound/usability/animation/polish over amount or even quality of content. When looking at the supply/demand curves, the only reason you'd want to raise your price is if you're selling so many copies at $10 that you think you could easily raise the price to $15 without losing 2/3 of your income. I find that pretty unlikely. At $10, your game does have something special -- an abnormally low price.

Maybe one thing you could do is to keep your products at the same price, but offer the core game and the expansion together for $15 as one purchase. Unless you have more than a 50% 'upgrade' rate of custumers of the base game that buy the expansion, that is likely to turn in your favor. in the long run.

-Hiro_Antagonist

[Devman]

Nuclear:

I visited your site, which looks nice, and tried to figure out what your game Escape was about, but all I found were screenshots. "What is the game? What is the story? What is the game play like?" I kept thinking.

Did I miss something obvious? If not, perhaps you should describe the game in more detail. As to the pricing, I sell my screensaver for $14.95, and have made sales with it, so I think your game can do that, too without suffering too much a hit.

[James C. Smith]

I haven’t even looked at it and I would still feel confident in recommending that you charge $20 for it. I am guessing from Hiro’s post that it doesn’t have much graphics/sound/usability/animation/polish. That means few people are likely to want to buy it. But it does not mean those people want to pay less for it. Most people who would be willing to pay $10 would also pay $20. Most people who have no interest in the game for $20 would still have no interest for $10 or even $4.

This is not true of all pricing differences. People who will pay $20 will not necessarily be willing to pay $35. But most people who are interested in buying a downloadable software product for any price under $20 would still buy it if the price was $20. Unless they know of another place where they could buy the same software for less. This is a whole different story.

[NuclearNova]

I haven’t even looked at it and I would still feel confident in recommending that you charge $20 for it. I am guessing from Hiro’s post that it doesn’t have much graphics/sound/usability/animation/polish. That means few people are likely to want to buy it. But it does not mean those people want to pay less for it. Most people who would be willing to pay $10 would also pay $20. Most people who have no interest in the game for $20 would still have no interest for $10 or even $4.

This is not true of all pricing differences. People who will pay $20 will not necessarily be willing to pay $35. But most people who are interested in buying a downloadable software product for any price under $20 would still buy it if the price was $20. Unless they know of another place where they could buy the same software for less. This is a whole different story.

Thats exactly what I think. The game has a somewhat lower conversion rate than my #1 game. This is because it was my first game ever and doesn't have great graphics (but I wouldn't call it totally unpolished)

I think that if someone wants to pay $10.00 for it they would pay $15 or $20, because the one shareware game I bought in my life could have been $30 instead of $20 and I would still have bought it.

Hiro - I agree that most people won't pay $10 for it, but when I do find that person who pays $10 for it I think that its not because of price but because they enjoyed the demo puzzles.

Devman - Good point, I have always been lazy and bad at stuff like that and have relied on the demo to get more sales but a better description may get more downloads for me.

[Nexic]

Go with $20, I'm sure it will still sell at that price.

As a side note I think you should make your GL Golf poll on the hompage much smaller and put 1 or more ads for your game there instead. If people come to your homepage and cant immediately find any games they most likely won't stay for long.

[NuclearNova]

Thanks, I've been wanting to remove that poll altogether and now you have given me a good thing to replace it with!