[casual_games] Price as Signal

[Joe Pantuso]

I have to disagree with the premise here.  Games are not a commodity any
more than books or movies or music are.  They aren't generically
interchangeable the way a true commodity (memory chips, potato chips, poker
chips) are, they have some uniqueness about them.  They have content.

For this reason the article linked about pricing in movies and music
holds some truths for games as well.

A metric I don't 100% subscribe to, but that I know many users do use
mentally because I've heard it espoused, is the "Cost per hour".  Sometimes
this is measured in movies.  If it costs $10 to see a 2 hour film, and I'm
going to get 5 hours of game play out of this game, than $25 is a reasonable
price.

The reason I don't totally buy into that premise is it doesn't apply to
casual games the way it does to more hardcore games.  A casual game may only
have 10-30 minutes of 'gameplay' in it, but will be played for dozens of
hours by many users.

In the casual space many of us try to price at an 'impulse buy' level.  What
that level is varies from place to place though.


On 12/14/05, Lionel barret De Nazaris <lionel.bdn at free.fr> wrote:
>
>
> Because you have competitors (people who make games with the same
> perceived value as yours) who would underprice you if they can.  If you
> cannot set the price in the same price range as your competitors then
> you're dead.
> And how do you decide ? you look at your production cost and the
> estimated lifetime of the product, the estimated number of game you will
> sell. Those variables decide if you can lower your price and turn a
> profit in a *reasonnable timeframe*.
>
> It's true that we have almost no inventory cost, and no manufacturing (i
> mean copy) cost, so in the long term  any game will make  a profit. But
> who can wait 2 year to have a return on investment ? Even waiting cost
> money.
>
> --
> Lionel Barret De Nazaris
> =================================================
> Gamr7.com > http://www.gamr7.com
> Gamr7's Blog > http://creatinggames.blogspot.com/
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Casual_Games mailing list
> Casual_Games at igda.org
> http://seven.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/casual_games
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://seven.pairlist.net/pipermail/casual_games/attachments/20051214/90e5b6a4/attachment.html