All games on Reflexive $9.99

[Jack Norton]

I just noticed that... is a sort of promotion, or permanent change ?
Seems crazy.. that's a normal price, not a gamepass thing like BFG ones.
This is seriously lowering the expected cost for downloadable games by people...

[Roman Budzowski]

Wow! Is there anyone that sells full price now?

Go change your prices if you are Reflexive affiliate.

But at least they opened Amazon Game Downloads Store:

http://anawiki.com/sellmoregames/200...ith-999-price/

cheers
Roman

[cliffski]

Originally Posted by Jack Norton

This is seriously lowering the expected cost for casual puzzle games by people...

I think that's what is more relevant. You can't compete on price with BFG and reflexive. So don't. Sell games they don't sell, or compete on customer service and community.
Surely everyone knew that portal publishing would lead to lower royalty rates and price wars, with the devs taking the hit. Just look at food suppliers and supermarkets in the UK as an example of how it all ends.

[Jack Norton]

Yes I got the message on Gamecenter too. For those that don't have it:

Hello Everyone,

We are happy to announce an exciting new pricing strategy for the games and products in the Reflexive game catalog. The prices of games in the GameCenterSolution catalog now reflect a more competitive position which we expect to represent an attractive offer in today's marketplace. This compelling pricing strategy is intended to empower you to sell more volume, have greater customer loyalty, and ultimately increase your monthly earnings. By offering games to customers for under $10, we are anticipating higher conversion and better customer satisfaction resulting in better overall sales volume for you.

A cool thing would be that developers that have already games there would post in this thread the % change of income after this new pricing. I personally think it won't work to earn more, but I would be happy to see real statistics saying the opposite.

[Game Producer]

Originally Posted by cliffski

I think that's what is more relevant. You can't compete on price with BFG and reflexive. So don't. Sell games they don't sell, or compete on customer service and community.
Surely everyone knew that portal publishing would lead to lower royalty rates and price wars, with the devs taking the hit. Just look at food suppliers and supermarkets in the UK as an example of how it all ends.

This is good piece of advice.

Price wars are not good... I like the BFG's game club since it's basically $6 x 12 = $70 purchase... which is basically "volume discount".

I see no much sense in Reflexive's price drop.

Hmm... let's all start make games for iPhone and sell them for $19.99?

[Spaiz]

This is total collapse I think, really. Just think about it, everyone who wasn't going to buy games won't buy them even for $9.99 and everyone who wanted to save money already did this by subscribing to BFG/Gamehouse to get opportunity to buy games for $6.99, so I don't think that sales will double to compensate such dramatic price decrease. This is very very sad... I see no marketing/business sense here...

[Jack Norton]

Originally Posted by cliffski

I think that's what is more relevant. You can't compete on price with BFG and reflexive. So don't. Sell games they don't sell, or compete on customer service and community.

Well ok, but almost all your games are there except democracy 2 ? what are you going to do? a gamepass is one thing, a permanent price reduction could hurt your direct sales I think ?

[cliffski]

True. I'm thinking about what to do about the older games.

I'm certainly not planning on doing any more games for portals in the future. Except ones like Impulse or GamersGate.

Now is the time to get out of casual gaming. In fact, that time was probably last year...

[Roman Budzowski]

You need to connect two things that I mentioned in my blog post: price drop and opening Amazon Game Downloads store. Downloadable games will not sell at Amazon for $19.99 where they have to compete with $9.99 retail titles and Reflexive cannot sell for higher price than Amazon (but actually why not?).

cheers
Roman

[jmc]

I've heard their next step is to reduce the affiliate commission to an Amazon level ( 3% )

Jmc.

[arcadetown]

$5.99 on Gamehouse with 12 months.

[Spaiz]

Originally Posted by jmc

I've heard their next step is to reduce the affiliate commission to an Amazon level ( 3% )

Jmc.

Is it a joke?

[MerscomMan]

I think they are just being realistic. They can't sell games for $19.99 when they are available for $5.99 or $6.99 on much larger competitors. Consumers aren't stupid, they will buy the game where they can get it cheapest, who doesn't shop around on the Internet.

It's interesting they did not decide to use a Gamepass type option, but rather than just follow BFG and GameHouse they probably needed to make a bold move.

[Roman Budzowski]

Originally Posted by Spaiz

Is it a joke?

It's either a joke or the end of their affiliate program. I remember Reflexive stating that affiliate traffic is bigger than inhouse traffic.

[papillon]

True, but tossing out most of their affiliate base to be replaced with Amazon's base might sound like a fair gamble to them. Perhaps their old sales, affiliates and all, just really weren't up to scratch, and they think a whole new paradigm is wiser?

[Spaiz]

Originally Posted by Roman Budzowski

It's either a joke or the end of their affiliate program. I remember Reflexive stating that affiliate traffic is bigger than inhouse traffic.

Their affiliate network is the biggest on the casual market and they will easily lost their affiliates if they do this.

[Escapee]

Is it a joke?

Yeah, it's no April fool today.

I think it's inevitable that Reflexive reduces the price in order to stay competitive in the market but 9.99 per game does not seem (IMHO) to give the impulse(or incentive) for the gamers to buy more games. I wonder why not make it 19.99 per game, 9.99 for 3 games or 6.99 for 12 games just like the others ?

9.99/game a brave new move...

my 2.5 cents.

[James C. Smith]

Originally Posted by jmc

I've heard their next step is to reduce the affiliate commission to an Amazon level ( 3% )

Jmc.

This remark is totally uncalled for. There is absolutely no reason to believe it is true. Period.

[Spaiz]

Originally Posted by papillon

True, but tossing out most of their affiliate base to be replaced with Amazon's base might sound like a fair gamble to them. Perhaps their old sales, affiliates and all, just really weren't up to scratch, and they think a whole new paradigm is wiser?

Yeah, just imagine how much do they receive via affiliate network? 100% - dev's 40% - aff's 40% = 20% only. But with own Amazon they will get more, 40% to devs, 60% to themselves.

[RinkuHero]

Originally Posted by Jack Norton

Well ok, but almost all your games are there except democracy 2 ? what are you going to do? a gamepass is one thing, a permanent price reduction could hurt your direct sales I think ?

It's in the contract that you can withdraw games from them at any time, so if you feel that they're undercutting sales on your own site that'd be a possibility. As for myself I'll just wait and see, my game doesn't sell very well on Reflexive in comparison to my own site, so I don't think it'll matter. If it leads to more sales for them and keeps them from going bankrupt, that's great. I imagine they could always reverse the prices if it doesn't work out for them. I encourage experimentation.

[Maupin]

Not all games are $9.99. Some are still $19.95.

I'll be interested to see if this increases my revenue or not.

This is indeed a bold move. If I was Reflexive I would focus on making their purchase page more streamlined - remember the customer's details between purchases, make it more friendly, etc.

[cliffski]

Sooo.... amazon bought reflexive. So how does this work?

Say dev gets 40% of the reflexive sale price.
Say amazon pay a 1% share of the sale price as commission to reflexive, and keep 99%.
Does that mean the dev now gets 0.4% of the sale price?

I'm not saying these are the rates, just asking a question as to how subsidiaries work in legal and business terms. I presume people have contracts with reflexive, not with amazon, and now they are owned by the same people, the incentive is to maximise Amazons profits, which remain 100% with amazon.
Does that make sense?

[KNau]

Considering almost all of us have tried the reduced pricing experiment only to find that it made no difference (or outright hurt business) it will be interesting to see how this goes. Publishers have the least exposure to risk so they have more wiggle room to play with pricing than a developer does.

Unfortunately, I think developer's cuts are already as low as they can go and still be feasible to make a profit. Even a hit portal game is looking less impressive when you consider the amount a developer actually earns.

Assuming (not confirmed) that royalty rates are now based on the $9.95 price tag and that you're still able to get 30% of each sale...that's $2.98 net!

So let's say you have a moderately successful game that sells 20,000 copies in the first year. That's only $59,000 to cover the 12 - 18 months development time you likely spent (and indeed would have to spend to produce a portal worthy game that sells that many copies).

(cue "old man" voice) Back in the day you used to hope for a hit but could scrape by on a "near-miss" or "moderately popular". Unless my math is wrong, you need to crack the top 5 or else you're in Taco Bell Night-Manager income territory.

[tfowers]

Here is some marketing analysis from "E-Myth Mastery"

All products are divided into 3 categories: True Products, Commodity Products, and Brand Products.

True Products:
"When a new product is introduced to the market, or when there is a one-of-a-kind product, it is considered a "True Product" The marketing issue is product acceptance. Teaching the functionality and benefits of the new product. (think Wii) True Products often appeal to experimental buyers. Once competition moves in, the picture changes.

Commodity: As more competing products enter the market, and customers begin to accept the product, customers begin to see it as a commodity. People see all the products as the same. Marketing issue is differentiation, getting customers to prefer your product. (360 vs PS3) If you are unable to differentiate your product, the strategy is to compete on price or convenience. This is where you attract "Performance" customers.

Brand: As the market matures, it's harder and harder for new competitors to enter the field. Growth potential for the product begins to level off. If you are unable to differentiate your product with features, you have to get them to prefer your brand. This is where you attract "Value" customers."

Commentary:
The casual games industry is mostly in the Brand phase.
Both Portals and series of games are trying to establish "Brand".(Mystery Case Files)
I can see the strategy of Amazon's move into the casual space. They have a strong existing brand and they are leveraging into a new market, and the price point shows that we are mostly talking about "Value" buyers. The other problem is how innovation is effected by this. Innovating in game can create a new product, if the behavior is different enough, but you have to teach it to people. Most innovation is iterative, adding a new twist. This is how commodities differentiate themselves. But the outlets (portals) are mostly only care about brand and price. This is why the market looks like it does for game devs.

[James C. Smith]

Originally Posted by cliffski

Sooo.... amazon bought reflexive. So how does this work?

Say dev gets 40% of the reflexive sale price.
Say amazon pay a 1% share of the sale price as commission to reflexive, and keep 99%.
Does that mean the dev now gets 0.4% of the sale price?

I'm not saying these are the rates, just asking a question as to how subsidiaries work in legal and business terms. I presume people have contracts with reflexive, not with amazon, and now they are owned by the same people, the incentive is to maximise Amazons profits, which remain 100% with amazon.
Does that make sense?

Come on. That would be ridiculous. Developers get a cut of the purchase price not a percent of some tiny amount that Reflexive gets from Amazon.

I understand that the price change is a big deal that everyone wants to talk about and speculate on. That I expected. But these other issues are just paranoia based on zero facts.

[berserker]

Yes, this is the end. I don't think it will be wise to bring a game to the protal nowadays unless it is 6 months old. I feel so bad we released Totem Tribe at the wrong time.

[RinkuHero]

Some of the games are also now on Amazon.com:

like this one

I don't know if that's related to Reflexive though, because not all Reflexive games appear to be on Amazon -- mine isn't.

[Escapee]

NVM... Post edited ..

[cliffski]

Originally Posted by James C. Smith

Come on. That would be ridiculous. Developers get a cut of the purchase price not a percent of some tiny amount that Reflexive gets from Amazon.

Really?

is this how portal contracts work? I didn't think was the case. Say for example that someone else is selling reflexive games on affiliate schemes and taking 40% (no idea the rates)
Surely that 40% is deducted BEFORE the dev gets their share?

Or are you saying that if (hypothetically) I had a 40% deal with reflexive, that I get $4 when someone buys kudos through amazon's download service at $9.99?

I'm not being paranoid, I just want to clarify how these relationships work.

[cliffski]

and it seems they sell it for $6.99 now.

This is silly...