Let's Talk About Pricing(Did I Speak Too Soon?) (Gaming)

by Kahzgul, Saturday, January 23, 2016, 21:44 (3023 days ago) @ RC

I'm not surprised by this stuff any more. The point for them is profit, not total number of sales.

Classically, the lower the price, the higher the number of sales. Higher price, lower number. But the relationship between these two is not directionally proportional. At some point between '1 cent' and 'A MILLION DOLLARS' there is a point where total value of sales ($$$) is maximised. Which is where they want to be. In recent years, game companies have worked out that for many items this point is actually on the higher end of the price scale, with fewer total sales.

There is also this theory about so-called 'whales.' I believe it originated in gambling, but is now used in the construction of business models for games. Whales are the regulars, the super-fans, the people with too much money and few other interests. Because the whales spend so much (hundreds, thousands even) they account for a disproportionately large share of the revenue compared to how many they are. For the developer then, it's OK to baffle, bemuse, anger, or even put-off many, many players with high-priced cosmetic items, so long as the whales keep buying them.

Try to look at this way though: those whales are keeping your game prices lower by putting in so much cold hard cash. Even if those cosmetic items have little value to many players, they prevent games from being $80... $120 up front instead. People can play more games a bit and be more choosy about those they really get into.

:)

Which is all true for free to play games like Path of Exile, but in a game like Destiny, the whale buying every single emote and all of the collector's editions isn't making the game cheaper for the rest of us. It's purely extra income for Activision and Bungie. We were promised that these FTP style items would fund future expansion content, but so far all we've seen were limited time events which were later taken away from us. At this point, I'm surprised there's not been additional, permanent content, like extra strikes or - honestly - another raid.