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...
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/2009/02/03/reflexive-strikes-back-with-999-price/ cheers Roman
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.
Yes I got the message on Gamecenter too. For those that don't have it: 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.
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?
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...
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 ?
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...
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
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.
It's either a joke or the end of their affiliate program. I remember Reflexive stating that affiliate traffic is bigger than inhouse traffic.
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?
Their affiliate network is the biggest on the casual market and they will easily lost their affiliates if they do this.
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.
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.
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.