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Interesting nudge - the background image for the "discount edition" button is a pile of maggots. Aside from that, patio11 is right - there's nothing good about this idea. If you can't immediately identify half a dozen horrible mistakes in this scheme, your first priority should be to do some reading on pricing.
Wait a minute? This looks like the best bits of Master of Orion 2, upgraded to modern graphics standards. I've been waiting for something like this for a long time. Now if only this workday could end so I can run the demo... :-)
I wish will make a new version of Master of Orion (the first part). The slider system was brilliant, as was having no `buildings' in your `cities'. MoO II, while itself a fine game, left that legacy, and feels much closer to Civilization than to MoO.
I think this is a great idea and very upfront for the reasoning. There are many games I know nothing about and would like to try, having the discount edition (barring there is a demo) lets me do this at little cost to me, and if it is a hit, I will be a lifelong customer paying full price onward. I dig it.
No, pricing is fine, it's just that the anti-piracy brigade get more airtime than the validity of their arguments merit... as has been demonstrated ad nauseum by experiments such as this. It's almost as if they know damned well that their reasoning is wrong, and are just trying to milk as much as they can before the rest of the world catches up. Hey, wait a minute...
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How so? He's selling twice as many at full price as the discount price according to his real time stats. To my mind, that seems like this isn't a failure at all.
I didn't think too hard because as soon as I saw his rationale for cost-based pricing I stopped thinking straight. So, just to get you started: * Don't price things based on what they cost you unless you it's an ore or sorghum. * Don't solicit customers that don't value your product. * Don't demand that customers think carefully about which button to push to make a sale. * Don't make the cheap option the first button…
I just looked at the genius of guilt-based discriminant pricing, and was amazed it worked. (assuming honesty in reporting)
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The penny rule. The number of people who go from pirates to $2.99 is dramatically outweighed by the people who go from $5.99 to $2.99. (Do the math; that's a net loss.) The only way this works out for the developer if this scheme results is PR and raising awareness overall amongst people who are potential customers who wouldn't have known about the product anyway.
$5.99 is also an absurd price to begin with. By the way, the next time someone on HN asks what "market segmentation" is or why product managers get paid money, this thread would be a good object lesson.
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I didn't think too hard because as soon as I saw his rationale for cost-based pricing I stopped thinking straight. So, just to get you started: * Don't price things based on what they cost you unless you it's an ore or sorghum. * Don't solicit customers that don't value your product. * Don't demand that customers think carefully about which button to push to make a sale. * Don't make the cheap option the first button…
Hmmm... I didn't take his rationales seriously at all. I'm surprised you made the mental leap to think the stats might be made up, but not the leap to think that his cost based price might be fudged and provided solely to encourage sales at the higher pricepoint. I just looked at the genius of guilt-based discriminant pricing, and was amazed it worked . (assuming honesty in reporting)
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$5.99 is also an absurd price to begin with. By the way, the next time someone on HN asks what "market segmentation" is or why product managers get paid money, this thread would be a good object lesson.
Yes, this thread is an excellent object lesson--he achieved self-segmentation in his market using nonstandard practices all without a product manager while simultaneously creating great PR.
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Yes, this thread is an excellent object lesson--he achieved self-segmentation in his market using nonstandard practices all without a product manager while simultaneously creating great PR.
I don't know what this comment means, except for the "great PR" part. I agree, it's great PR; unfortunately, since people will clearly pay much more than $5.99 for a solid expansion to a game, you're going to have a hard time convincing me that a confusing pricing scheme that practically begs people to pay less than $5.99 is a success.
I think you're a smart guy and being disingenuous here, but I'll play along.
A market segment is a sub-set of a market made up of people or organizations with one or more characteristics that cause them to demand similar product and/or services based on qualities of those products such as price or function.
source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_segmentation
If there are users who will pay 2.99 but not 5.99, this strategy can still capture their value today, but simply pricing at a higher price will not. You posit that people will pay much more than 5.99 for an expansion pack for this game and I don't think you're in any position to know that about this game.