Business, Monetization → Requiem for a sales model: “try and buy” says goodbye.
So, it seems that there’s been a disturbance in the Force.
Amazon (mega online retailer that we all know and love) purchased Reflexive (small casual game publisher/developer), and they repriced all the games to about $10 a pop.
It seems that there are two camps now: one says that casual games should be $10 and remain simple and brief, while the other camp maintains that indie games are worth more because of their uniqueness and craftsmanship. The significance here is that not long ago, casual games were considered to be indie games (mostly). By any standard, if you are making downloadable games, this is news.
But what is really changing is the business models. “Try before you buy” has been the dominant choice for downloadable sales for many years. Clearly, that is not as cut and dried now.
We little people can’t compete with Amazon on price. And I firmly believe that we should not compete on price with anyone, ever. Lowering your prices is rarely the right thing to do when you need more income.
Competing on price only works for commodity goods. If you have to choose between toilet paper from company A and toilet paper from company B, well, usually you are looking at the price difference above all else. It’s folly to use that strategy for selling games–unless you are Amazon so that you can afford to eat the tiny margins and try to make it up on volume. But listen to what I’m saying!! Are we talking about rubber flanges for a sink drain or video games?! It’s suffocating my soul just to write about it.
So the real shift here isn’t about casual or indie games. It’s about sales models.
Luckily, I am not planning to use a single sales model for my future games, and I think that is something that even downloadable developers need to examine: you can’t compete on price if it’s of the “try and buy” model. Find other ways to monetize and give value to your customers that they can’t get from a big shop like Amazon. Sure, it might be cheaper there, but they won’t get one-to-one interaction with the developers or personal service or a “deluxe” version with extra features.
It’s kind of exciting to read about how others are interpreting these changes. What’s your take?
February 11th, 2009 at 5:57 pm
I dont think Try and Buy is dead, but the sales channels have to change. Steam is quite viable, so are the consoles.