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[Capntastic]

Swords and Sworcery was like 6 or 8 dollars when it came out on iOS, and 8 dollars when it released on Steam later.  It has top tier art and soundtrack, had been promoted well, and had a huge following.

Considering he suggested selling it on Android for four dollars, and I'm assuming the Android market is similar to the iPhone game market in that there's thousands of one dollar titles, most awful but a few pretty darned good, I find it hard to suggest trying to eke more than a dollar per unit sold.

Especially when trying to earn off of volume of sales easily eclipses the profits of high ticket sales.  Several friends of mine in the iphone game and self-publishing industry consistently report better profits selling things at prices easily enough for a customer to justify 'on a whim' rather than 'well maybe when I have some more extra cash'.

[Paul Eres]

but that was a mobile game first, this will be primarily a pc game i think?

also, remember that price isn't set in stone. immortal defense was 23$ on release. after a year or so it went down to 15$. now it's pay what you want.

it's better to start high, and gradually go down, in an attempt to find the best price, because it's a lot easier to reduce your price than to increase it. plus each reduction in price (if significant enough) can get the game more attention

i think it's a really big mistake to believe that you should price games just based on what they are "worth" -- you should *not* price "bad" games lower than "good" games. that's not how prices work. do bad books sell for lower prices than good books? do bad movies have lower ticket prices than good movies? so where do you guys all get the idea that a game's quality should determine its price?

[Capntastic]

I'd argue that, assuming it's his first game, selling it for a dollar on the mobile platform seems more likely to rope in fans who would not bother otherwise, which helps out more in the long run. 

[Paul Eres]

yeah but i've already given him the advice that since it's his first game he shouldn't sell it at all; he should just make it free, and make a few more free games, and eventually go commercial after he learns how to make games. but that's besides the point here, since he's already decided to sell it, i think it's best if he charges a large amount for it, and then gradually moves the price down until he finds a price point he's comfortable with

i'm also talking just about the pc version here. if he makes a mobile version it should start at a low price, since most mobile games are very low in price

i don't really expect it'd have many sales at *any* price, though. let's say it's likely to sell 100 copies, just to die hard fans of sumer and chess-like puzzle games and people who buy it out of curiosity or buy it randomly for their kids because they think it'd be educational or something. isn't it better to have sold 100 copies at 20$ than 100 copies at 5$?

so my suggestion is

pc version: start at $15-$25, go lower gradually until you reach a point where it's selling a couple dozen copies a month

mobile version: $1-$5, but don't expect any sales at all since something like 80% of mobile games don't even sell a single copy (i'm exaggerating here but it's not that far from that)

[Capntastic]

I get what you're saying but I feel like people seeing the game with a big price tag might be offputting and sort of keep them from ever caring about it again.

Anecdotally, of course, when I was showing Immortal Defense off to my friends I got a lot of people straight up saying "Fuck paying that much for a Tower Defense game!" and taking it personally in a sense.

I feel it's best to get into people's hearts before trying to mine cash from the inside.

So we're sort of in agreement, in that Pompi shouldn't be aiming to make the big bucks off of his first product.  I just feel he should increase his fanbase as much as humanely possible through generosity in pricing.  Obviously, being free would be the best choice here.

[Paul Eres]

i don't think you can ever win most people's hearts, though. you're always going to have people who won't buy your game for some random reason. you can think of it like this

set A: people who will never buy your game (a very large percent)

set B: people who will buy the game at any price, within reason (a small percent)

set C: people who will buy your game if it's at a low price, but will not buy it if it's at a high price (an even smaller percent)

the people you want to target are set B, not set C, and definitely not set A. what you say makes sense if you were targeting people from set A or set C, but not if you're targeting people from set B

when you want to target people from set C, well, that's what sales are for. the launch price is for people from set B, which will in most cases make up the majority of your revenue

[James Coote]

I think the statistic you were looking for is that 80% of android apps (that are not free) sell less than 100 units over their entire lifetime

What about a free demo/lite version of the game? Some of Paul's "set B" people will turn into "set C" people over time, but only if you give them the chance, and a demo is one way to do that

[Chromanoid]

I know you don't like this idea, but here are more thoughts on f2p. If you have a story mode, where you can aquire units, make some available for cash earlier than possible through normal gameplay. F2P features in singleplayer games are more or less cheats that cost money. I think it's a good way to sell games to curious people who can pay for games, but don't want to pay upfront.

If you have a strong story and addictive gameplay with progression you might be able to go with a good demo like the developers of Defender's Quest did (look at http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/LarsDoucet/20120123/90942/Defenders_Quest_Deployment_Strategy.php).

A friend of mine (like you) also did a remake of a classic (pushover) for android. Sales are between 500-1000 now, installs of the free version are between 50,000 - 100,000. There might be some improvements to the demo to raise the conversion rate, but I think for games that are not really outstanding in fun and execution, a normal payment model doesn't work for mobile and browser games.

If people don't want to pay money for your game in a specific way, but they would pay in another way, why don't offer them this way? Pay to win is only bad for multiplayer experiences. You can combine demo, premium and item selling too. Just look at Triple Town, I think it monetizes very well and has a way to pay for everyone.

[Ooops]

I think you can safely charge around $10 for the multiplatform version. I haven't tried the game, but I've read about it on the forum, and it's not in a crowded category. There is very little competition for this tyle of games.

Tower defense games, or bejeweled-clones have to sell for less than $5 because there are literally dozens, if not hundreds, of alternative.

Your game is in a niche. People won't stumble upon it by chance. If people end up on your website, or google-play page, it's because they are already interested. You can therefore charge a "full", but reasonable, price.

[PompiPompi]

Thanks for the advice everyone.
I wanted to sell it for $16 full price, but you are right this is my sort of first commercial game, and nowadays games are very cheap.
However, my game is in a niche and there arn't many like it(for better or for worse) except for refurbished Archon version, which happens to be $9.99 on steam.
So I think a $9.99 for the multi platform verison is a good price, especially if I am going to add more platforms.
For the Android version I will start off with $3.99.

[moi]

the truth is none of this matters because unless you have a lot of press and marketing and/or use shaddy crowd tactics to cheat the rankings, you will sell very few numbers on android.

[moi]

do bad books sell for lower prices than good books? do bad movies have lower ticket prices than good movies?

Actually yes, they do (not ticket prices, but DVD prices).
I am talking real low quality product (B or Z movies), not bad in a subjective, artistic meaning (like Transformer is a bad movie but not a low quality movie)

[Archibald]

What multiplatform has to do with price? Why would anyone want to pay more to get the game for more than one platform? Why a Linux user would want, even for free, a Windows version?

I always though multiplatform only affects the number of potential consumers, not how much they are ready to pay...

[PompiPompi]

What multiplatform has to do with price? Why would anyone want to pay more to get the game for more than one platform? Why a Linux user would want, even for free, a Windows version?

I always though multiplatform only affects the number of potential consumers, not how much they are ready to pay...

Well, you get both a mobile and a Desktop version...

[Christian Knudsen]

I think your pricing is fine. Like you say, you can always lower the price, while it's a lot harder to raise it. And with a low default price, it's also a lot harder to create sales, which are sometimes in and of themselves newsworthy and able to garner attention.