Yes...seems like that next move will be building teams of in-house devs for casual games with a normal salary, and independents doing only niche games or webgames.
I tested it and caspian too. I didn't post here, but results were about the same as caspian one: slightly more sales but not the x2 required to make the SAME money (not more, just the same). Surely this is a larger scale test, but ...
Yeah, having spent some time with iPhone lately, I was about to say it's starting to look a lot more familiar.
uh ? if you write an xbla game, you know where your customers are, same with wiiware and iphone you know where the people are going to be looking for games. with PC you don't, how can you compare them ?.
I think the difference with XBLA, WiiWare, and PS3 those are closed platforms. There's no pricing wars within the platforms and prices there don't directly affect the PC space. Whereas with the recent portal price drops, there are in pretty much direct result of price wars with other portals. These decisions seemed based on building up market-share not necessarily maximizing sales on a per game basis. If so, there's no telling where the price drops will end up. Many devs are already shocked to find that their games are selling for $6.95. Also, who says XBLA, WiiWare, and iPhone are such great archetypes for developers? XBLA was great for the first wave of developers, but now it's getting crowded and royalty percentages are going down. I've heard a lot of grumblings from developers who've tried to launch XBLA games in the past year. iPhone is still in its honeymoon stage, but it's likely to go down the path of becoming over-saturated with cheap games. I'm not sure any of them are good long term models for developers. They're basically, try to make good money early on, then get out. EDIT: Beaten by Nikster who said it in far less words.
I can't imagine BigFish, Iwin and others to go on direct price wars against Amazon. Amazon can drop the prices to 1 dollar if they want, they still get revenue from everything else they sell there. Other portals can't drop prices like this, it would kill them. If i were the other portals, i would simply reject any game that would be on sale at Reflexive or Amazon. But, let's see what will happen.
Closed platform or not, customers see the sames game on many or all of those systems and compair the prices. You can buy Jewel Quest II... ...for $12.99 as a boxed copy from Amazon.com (or about the same from Target or Walmart). This is a typical price for a casual game in retail ...for $2.99 as an iPhone app. This is a typical price for most iPhone games ...for $10 as an XBLA game for 360. Typical for playform ...for $5.99 as a subscription download from Big Fish ...for $9.99 as a digital download from Reflexive.com ...for $9.99 as a digital download from Steam (they don't actually have Jewel Quest II but most casual games on Steam are $9.99) When people are used to paying $10 or less for download games on Wii, XBLA, iPhone, and retail they are going to hesitate to spend more for a PC download. I really don't see this as a portal price war. It is portals catching up with mass market expectations.
Reflexive has run very small scale pricing sensitivity tests as well, which I think I shared results of some of on this forum previously. When we tested swarm at $10 for a month, it indicated a significant increase in sales, but not quite 2x, similar to your results, Jack. But that test and all other casual game pricing sensitivity tests I have seen were still: 1) to an existing audience 2) fairly short term 3) not broadly advertised or applied in a way that builds customer expectation The long and broad term effects and audience growth upsides are not something that are well established and not well tested, but I believe the short term test results serve as a nice estimate of the "worst case".
I also feel compelled to add, Reflexive and Amazon are data driven companies, we are collecting and analyzing metrics to help us understand what is going on to drive decisions in an ongoing fashion.
So portals are lowering their prices because XBLA, WiiWare, and iPhone are cutting into their sales? Btw, a lot of new released casual games still go for $19.95 in retail: http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage...0##9t~~ncabcat0712003##0##1q&pagetype=listing http://www.walmart.com/browse/Games...524.4294296122&search_sort=3&selected_items=+
Yes, I tested it too, prompted by Raptisoft trying it with Hamsterball. I tested a drop from $19.95 to $5.95. I ran it for quite a while, at least six months, but only on one game. Sales tripled over the previous period, so by the time you account for some extra value in a bigger mailing list, and the fact that you lose more commission on three sales of $5.95 than you do on one sale of $17.85 - and you probably have to factor in that the game was not new so sales might have been dropping off a little anyway - I was probably slightly down, but only slightly. Of course, Anime Bowling Babes was hardly a casual game, and I probably wasn't shifting as many as Jack, let alone Reflexive.
Well, I have to say that this move has prompted me to reconsider releasing my other games through Reflexive (or any other portal). Keeping my game sales exclusive to my own web site is how I've managed to grow my business to this point. The old adage, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it", seems to apply in my opinion. I understand part of what is happening here. The casual game space is so oversaturated with match-3s, hidden object games, time management, and other clones of clones of clones that this cutting of prices was inevitable. I mean, really, how many times can you get a customer to purchase the same game over and over again (just with different theme/graphics/whatever)? Speaking for myself, I think the key to success going forward is going to be to develop fresh, original games that people can't find anywhere else. If something is new and fun, customers will pay the full price for it. Fashion Cents proves that point to me - my Fashion Cents sales are still strong and steady, even after 5 years.
James, THAT is the MAGICAL point. Lower pricing is usually used in marketing to gain bigger market share. I was only thinking PC (/MAC) & downloadable games, but you raised this very good point that there are other competitors as well. Wii, Playstation, Non-downloadable PC games, XBLA, PSP and other platforms are OUR competitors (here "our" means "we who make downloadable games"). Now the portals are switching the "industry average" price to $10 (or lower), which means we might see that CASUAL downloadable games might be going towards a bigger market share. Even though per sale revenues for developers go down, it can also mean that there will be more customers in the whole casual game market. New PC games cost like $50 (or something). When people see casual games going around $5-10 price (and if they see that there's wide range of possibilities), they can start considering moving towards the casual game market. Of course customers benefit... but I'd think there's possibility that this can help developers too. Of course those who sell directly need to be pretty inventive about it. If people get used to buy games for $5-10, it'll be more difficult to offer them $20 game.
I thought most developers here were thinking of breaking the old 20$ limit (20+ I mean). Looks like purchasing titles directly from the developer is definitely not an option anymore if I can buy the same thing for 6-10$ at Reflexive. Yay, more customers for the Indie market (who want everything at 10$ from now on). You'd think with Amazon's traffic they would stick with 20$ or something similar limit to profit from those who are there to shop for movies (or whatever).
Yeh, so it seems. The one thing worries me that have casual games become junk food now...? I mean, a fast food meal costs like $5-10. Hopefully casual games won't get an imago problem here Btw... a small "error" in that James' post. BFG is selling for $6.99 (not $5.99)
I didn't know a lot of 30 something soccer moms were buying their games off Steam (or the Xbox 360 for that matter). "catching up with mass market expectations" sounds good on the surface but doesn't seem to really hold-up when you dig down a bit: - XBLA's audience is primarily hardcore gamers. There is very little overlap between XBLA gamers and Casual Portal gamers. So even with XBLA games priced at ~$9, it has little bearing on the PC casual market. Casual games don't do very well on XBLA either. To give you an example, here is the top XBLA games of 2008: 1 Castle Crashers 2 Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved 2 3 Braid 4 A Kingdom for Keflings 5 UNO 6 Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix 7 Fable II Pub Games 8 Duke Nukem 3D 9 Bionic Commando: Rearmed 10 Worms 11 SOULCALIBUR 12 Portal: Still Alive 13 DOOM 14 1942: Joint Strike 15 Bomberman Live 16 MEGA MAN 9 17 N+ 18 Wolf of the Battlefield: Commando 3 19 Marble Blast Ultra 20 Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Not a single Hidden Object/Time Management casual game that populates the casual portals is in the XBLA top seller list. So XBLA is hardly a threat or even competition for casual portals. If casual portals carried more "indie" or hardcore games, then maybe they would be competing for the same market-share as XBLA, but they don't. - Wiiware games aren't as hardcore as XBLA but it's also not a hotbed for casual portal games either. This list is from October, but you still get the idea. 1 (4) - Tetris Party 2 (1) - World of Goo 3 (2) - Mega Man 9 4 (3) - My Aquarium 5 (5) - Bomberman Blast 6 (6) - Midnight Bowling 7 (N) - The Incredible Maze 8 (7) - Dr Mario Online Rx 9 (8) - Defend your Castle 10 (10) - Art Style: Cubello 11 (9) - My Pokémon Ranch 12 (N) - Strong Bad Episode 3 - Baddest of the Bands 13 (12) - Wild West Guns 14 (13) - TV Show King 15 (11) - Art Style: Orbient 16 (14) - Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a King 17 (16) - Frat Party Games - Pong Toss 18 (15) - Strong Bad Episode 1 - Homestar Ruiner 19 (18) - LostWinds 20 (17) - Strong Bad Episode 2 - Strong Badia the Free Not a single casual portal game. Again I don't see how the cost of Wiiware games is affecting portals when the audiences don't seem to overlap. - iPhone has a lot of buzz, but it's not mass-market yet. Remember it's still a niche audience of people who bought a $300-400 phone/iPod. It has a lot growth but currently still makes up only a very small percentage of the overall cellphone user base. Also iPhone games are typically smaller in scope compared to PC downloadable games, so I'm not sure if a 1:1 price parity is really necessary. For example you don't see handheld DS games the same price as console games. Consumers accept that games for smaller devices are generally cheaper than its counterparts. So I don't see how casual portals have to be price competitive with the iPhone. - Steam also has a hardcore audience. Here are the current top games for Steam: Left 4 Dead .... $49.99 Grand Theft Auto IV ... $49.99 Counter-Strike: Source ... $19.99 Fallout 3 ... $49.99 Call of Duty: World at War ... $49.99 The Orange Box ... $29.99 Warhammer® II ... $49.99 Counter-Strike .... $9.99 Team Fortress 2 ... $19.99 F.E.A.R.2: Project Origin ... $49.99 Again, not a single casual portal game in the top list. Not only that, but the Steam audience is perfectly fine with paying over $9.99 for a lot of games. Granted, many of them are hardcore games but thats what's popular on Steam. Though Steam does carry quite a few casual and indie games and the price ranges from $9 - 25. They're not set under $9, it just depends on the game. Also clearly Steam isn't pushing a lot of casual game units compared to the casual portals, so I really don't see how portals are lowering their prices because of Steam. As I said, if casual portals had more diverse catalogs then this would be a valid argument, but they don't. I see very little overlap between the audiences of XBLA, Wiiware, and Steam and with the casual portal's audience.The portals are targeting a large but a very specific audience and portals rarely want to rock the boat with outside titles. So it makes little sense why portals are supposedly trying to be price competitive with those platforms. I think retail has a bigger intersection with the online casual audience, but as I already showed earlier, there are still a lot of newly released casual games in retail that sell for $19.95. Retail is about as mass market as you can get and those consumers still accept the $19.95 price point for casual games. It seems like the portals aren't attempting to fall in line with the mass market's expectations for causal games. Instead it appears the portals are changing the expectations of the market with the steady price drops.
We might as well call all downloadable or online casual games as "Fast Games" (Marketing words). It's cheap ( 6.99 ), it's developed fast, it's easy to play and it has always ended fast. It suits the hectic lifestyle of modern men and women who can only afford an hour or so of fast gaming entertainment per day. Fast Food & Fast Games, That's the way to go.. Note : # of aff sales & conversion have increased after the price change, I'm looking forward to see the result on weekend and Sunday.
Very good points Chris. Wii games are closer to "casual games". Just recently a 40+ year old dude I chatted with said he "hates games" but after he saw Wii... he was hooked. It didn't take much time for him to buy Wii Fit... and other games too... and he described these games as "casual". He is also a potential player for portal casual games - and don't believe he is the only one. I must add that in Steam you can see €9.99 games when you click "casual" and click "new releases" or "top sellers". There's popular games like Luxor there selling for that price (there's also many games selling for €19.99, such as World of Goo)... so in that sense there's some point to take Steam into comparison. I do understand your good points though - and no counter arguments here: just wanted to point out couple of these things.
Well a very simple system will be, in 2-3 months, to come back to this thread (or a new one) and developers could share their experience, if they made more or less money with this pricing. In any case, anyone developing a casual game at this point has the need of portals. If you are developing niche games instead it's still better to sell directly (by niche I don't mean only RPG, but also sport games since there are none on the major portals). And I think that for niche games this price war won't affect sales. Niche games usually sells very bad on portals, so at this point with this new price cut I hope developers like Basilisk Games, Positech, etc won't ever put their games on portals anymore, this way preserving the niche value and customer price expectation at $20+. The comparison with the other closed system makes no sense, since they're different market (as Chris Evans said I know no soccer mom with a Xbox or Iphone while most of the market of BFG is older people playing HO games for example).