[casual_games] Re: Pricing

[Tom Park]

Re: PricingI thought Softkey came in when the market was already dying. The edutainment market was suffering from oversupply of very poor quality titles, and a lot of companies were failing to make any sort of profit. Around that time, I heard execs saying stuff like, "We can't seem to sell more than 100K units of any particular SKU, so to increase revenue we need to pump out more SKUs." Which, of course, only led to worse quality titles. My impression was that Softkey recognized they could offer more to the consumers by buying the devalued companies and offering discounted, bundled packs of software.

Of course I could be completely wrong about this, but blaming Softkey's tactics for the failure of the industry seems like a case of "post hoc, ergo propter hoc."

The game industry seems to recognise the hit-driven nature of the market and tends to focus on quality. But the game industry is not so different -- the last time I heard someone say the quote above was someone at 3DO, regarding a plan to significantly increase their production staff a few years before they declared bankruptcy, but the sales number was 300K.
--t

  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Michelle Bushneff 
  To: casual_games at igda.org 
  Sent: Thursday, December 15, 2005 9:25 AM
  Subject: [casual_games] Re: Pricing


  Interesting discussion. Does anyone remember what happened to the "edutainment" software biz when Softkey bought up a bunch of companies then started slashing prices and offering huge rebates? The market virtually disappeared. Ironically, the Softkey guys were former commodities traders.

  All it takes is one big gorilla that owns their delivery pipe and their content to tip pricing in the casual games market. Let's hope it doesn't happen anytime soon...

  Cheers, Michelle
  -------------------------
  Michelle Bushneff
  Plan B
  www.PlanBEnterprises.com
  -------------------------



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