the surprising thing is...

[arron]

I think that it's been sold far too cheaply. Ten or fifteen quid would be a much more reasonable price given the current game market. Allowing for inflation, it's more in line with what you might pay for Llamatron on the ST nowadays..

If someone tried to flog me a game for three quid, I'd think that it wouldn't be worth bothering with at that price..

We bought Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction for the Xbox a couple' days ago for £2.99. *nod*

It's just that given that one has to make a living from writing such software, and it seems madness to me to sell something for less than your previous product..especially if you are planning to continue writing software.

I know there's a certain abhorence in charging "whatever the market will bear", but even keeping things in line with inflation, I think that one might be inclined to charge something that allows you to maintain a certain standard of living and put some money away for retirement into a nice paddock somewhere..I thought that ten quid was entirely reasonable. It's not like Llamasoft has to sack their programmers on a frequent basis to avoid having retirement parties like some dev houses..

I've always been suspicious (and I know that others are) to charging a ridiculously low price for goods. £50 down to £3 to me tells me that it is either stolen, pirated..or if genuine..it wasn't any good anyway or certainly not worth £50 vs the cost of development. There is no way that anyone is making back their costs on sellling things that low. It rings alarm bells..

[Flabio]

You're assuming that the developers percentage on a live game is the same as it is on a retail game.

And even though 400 points isn't much, if you read any of the live forums you'll know that people have it in their minds that 400 is the price point and that games that are more than that are considered to be 'rip-offs'.

If you shift enough copies, you can quite easily make more money on a 400 point live game than you might on a 50 quid retail title.

[arron]

You're assuming that the developers percentage on a live game is the same as it is on a retail game.

And even though 400 points isn't much, if you read any of the live forums you'll know that people have it in their minds that 400 is the price point and that games that are more than that are considered to be 'rip-offs'.

If you shift enough copies, you can quite easily make more money on a 400 point live game than you might on a 50 quid retail title.

I can't get the 400 point rip off thing. This is less money than for a Spectrum game back in 1982! Even Yak's back catalogue when Llamasoft started charged more than this, even with mail order costs! Are people so greedy these days that everything has to be this close to free?

Perhaps invent some special branding "Freedom games" or "Sustainable Development" mark to demonstrate that they are worth paying more for. People pay more cash for Fairtrade coffee and other goods when they know that the money is going to a good cause. How about one that shows where the money is going? Straight into sheep. £5 of the cost of your game goes into keeping lovable sheep alive

I know that selling at a low cost can make you come cash, but selling at a slightly higher price (especially when the money is seen to be better used) surely isn't going to be that bad. How about two versions? A cheap 400 point version, and a £10 version for those who wish to pass on some merit? You can have a different entry screen "Feed the Sheep" version or something..

[Yak]

Well, the "perceived value" thing (if it's cheap it must be shoddy) is specious in this case because it's on XBLA. You download the demo before you pay so you get to see if it's any good or not before you cough up the points. I give you five levels of shooty, zoom you down a trippy tunnel of promise, then *pop*, you're left staring at a "please buy now" screen. Being 400 points means that at that point you're very likely to just go "Hell yeah, gimme more!" and press the button.

Also people are quite likely to have 400 points lying round after other XBLA purchases. Make it more and they will likely have to buy more points before they can get the game - making them do more before they can have it all is a bit of a disincentive and you might lose sales that way.

The economics of the thing are very different too. We are self funding the development of the game, so we get a *very* good royalty rate per game sold. We get massive distribution, and to me the combination of massive distribution, a really fun product, and a no-brainer price makes for plenty of sales.

It also will bring Llamasoft up to a higher profile with many Xbox 360 users who might not have heard of us. Sure, some people will remember us from the T2K days, and even some from before that, but many newer users won't have heard of me. By selling them something really nice for cheap, they'll remember Llamasoft, so when my *next* XBLA game comes out they'll be hopefully eager to buy that too .

[zip accident]

arron wrote:

Even Yak's back catalogue when Llamasoft started charged more than this

Are you sure? How are you counting that? I paid £5 for Llamatron, but I'd guess for every one of us who did pay, there were at least 2 people playing for free, so the effective user cost per copy was £1.66 or less. There will be nobody playing this for free, so Llamasoft will get their share of the full price, small though that may be, for every copy. It sounds from what I'm hearing here as if the developer share of the live games is such that they can get nearly as much per sale as from a full priced box sale.

Are people so greedy these days that everything has to be this close to free?

Basic stuff can be good, when you don't need the frills on the expensive gear, but you have to know how it got to be so cheap, and which corners were cut to get it that way.

[disciple]

I give you five levels of shooty, zoom you down a trippy tunnel of promise, then *pop*, you're left staring at a "please buy now" screen. Being 400 points means that at that point you're very likely to just go "Hell yeah, gimme more!" and press the button.

Also people are quite likely to have 400 points lying round after other XBLA purchases. Make it more and they will likely have to buy more points before they can get the game - making them do more before they can have it all is a bit of a disincentive and you might lose sales that way.

I was on the charge a bit more side of the fence but that does make sense if you think of a typical XBLA users path into purchase and you want to minimize barriers.

[tufty]

I can't get the 400 point rip off thing. This is less money than for a Spectrum game back in 1982! Even Yak's back catalogue when Llamasoft started charged more than this, even with mail order costs! Are people so greedy these days that everything has to be this close to free?

The way I read it is this: the 400 points "price point", it becomes an impulse purchase, it's something that you won't even think about spending. It's an "economies of scale" thing: drop the price to make something available at a price that's accessible to all without any real thought, and you have the potential of _massive_ uptake.

Additionally, as this is a "live" title, distribution costs are effectively nil, so the "cut", both for MS and Llamasoft, is pretty good, certainly better percentage-wise than a boxed, shelved game at 50 bucks; for MS it's effectively pure cash (as I believe the development has been funded by Jeff, might be wrong there though) and for Llamasoft it's both funding to cover development costs, and a "foot in the door" giving them a good chance to push out further tempest clones^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hgames on the strength of their name as well as the games themselves. It might even be better in terms of total return relative to a big "boxed" game - there's no need for the distribution, advertising, bribing of game journos etc, and most of all you don't have to rely on people going to a game store, seeing it on a shelf, picking it up and actually buying it.

That said, the "real money" equivalent of 400 points _is_ low, but it's possibly the way that points equate to real money that affects that: if 400 points was a fiver, or seven quid, the optimum price point might well still be 400 points...

Simon

[Peet]

hnnnnggggg...

360 purchase looking inevitable...

[HGFB]

Have you decided on a name for it yet?

[Yak]

Maybe we'll name it after our lamb.

Oh, hang on...

[PurpleChair]

How about "Laserspunk"?

[Sir_LANs-a-lot]

Baaattlestar Jizzlactica?

[grue]

How about Warped Ungulation?

[limb_clock]

@Peet: you finance the points, i'll deal with the console issues!

[Bubba]

That said, the "real money" equivalent of 400 points _is_ low, but it's possibly the way that points equate to real money that affects that: if 400 points was a fiver, or seven quid, the optimum price point might well still be 400 points...

Absolutely! Just in case people without 360's haven't been following how the points thing works, the best selling Live Arcade title is Gemoetry Wars Retro Evolved. Which is one of the few (possibly only?!) title selling for 400 points. As Jeff says, I have no problems getting through a demo and hitting the "buy me now" button for 400 points. Anything more than that (especially 800+ point titles) requires a little thinking about, and at least a couple of runs through the demo.

Of course, some titles take the piss with their pricing. Can't remember how much Bankshot Billiards cost, but it was definitly in the "this is taking the piss" zone. Wasn't it 1600odd points or something rediculous?!

Cheers

Bubba