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[PompiPompi]

I have decided to try and finish V1.00 of SB in two months.
I have a question about which price I should ask for.
There is a PC version and an Android version. Which price I should ask for the Android version in the Google Play market place?
And which price I should ask for Android+PC in Indievania?
I asked for $7.99 for the alpha of the PC + Android in Indivania, and that is suppose to be 50% off of the price. But I think I am dillusional, because games nowadays are a lot more cheaper. :/
Should I ask for $3.99 for the Android only in Google Play and $7.99 for Android + PC in Indievania(full price not 50% off)?

[tametick]

I'd ask for $10 for the PC version and $1.99 for android (that's what I've been doing with Cardinal Quest, although I eventually dropped the price to $5 for PC when sales started trailing off).

[James Coote]

Why those prices?

Are you looking at the competition and trying to price similar to them (market oriented) or are you thinking "I spend x amount of time/money on this, so I add 10% and get my price" (cost plus)?

Or there are a whole bunch of other ways to decide price: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pricing_strategies

Another thing to consider is elasticity of demand ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_elasticity_of_demand ). How many sales do you gain dropping the price from $10 to $5? That's halving the price per unit, so it would only make sense if the number of sales doubles. Did it?

Then it also depends on the type of game and moreover the type of audience you're aiming at: http://www.whatgamesare.com/2012/05/your-game-is-a-graph.html

[PompiPompi]

Twice of 0 is sitll 0.
Since I never had a succesful game being made, I am a bit worried.

[Chromanoid]

maybe a monetization method like you can find in triple town would be a good idea.

btw i think you should be worried. getting money from indie games in a traditional manner is very hard. you should think about ads and virtual item selling.

you might want to look at http://openfeint.com/developers/f2p#sell and smilar services...

[PompiPompi]

maybe a monetization method like you can find in triple town would be a good idea.

btw i think you should be worried. getting money from indie games in a traditional manner is very hard. you should think about ads and virtual item selling.

you might want to look at http://openfeint.com/developers/f2p#sell and smilar services...

Eww

[Falsen]

From my experience, finding the right price for a game is very difficult. There are a lot of factors involved and I really couldn't say what the best price for Sumerian Blood is. There are a lot of articles on the subject but no definitive answers.

It still might be worth checking them out if you haven't already: http://www.pixelprospector.com/the-big-list-of-pricing-resources/

We originally sold Dark Scavenger for $9.99 which is probably the most common price for a non-mobile indie game but a few reviews pointed out that the price was a little high. In the end, we lowered it to $4.99 and coincidentally, (or not) that is when we actually sold a few copies.

Like James Coote said, if possible, I would look at the competition and price your game accordingly.

[eyeliner]

maybe a monetization method like you can find in triple town would be a good idea.

btw i think you should be worried. getting money from indie games in a traditional manner is very hard. you should think about ads and virtual item selling.

you might want to look at http://openfeint.com/developers/f2p#sell and smilar services...

Eww

Amen to that. Freemium model should cease to exist.
After seeing your (honestly? sucky) video, I'd wager $5 on PC, but only after playing a demo. On Android, the market is completely messed up, so good luck out there. Aim to something between 1 and 2 dollars.

Why not post it on Desura in Alphafunding? I find it a nice pool to test the waters.

[PompiPompi]

Wow such a low price? And you say you are against freemium? XD

[Moczan]

Do you honestly think that it's worth more, comparing to other indie games? I know it's hard to compare, but go to "less than 5$" tab on Steam and try to answer, is your game a much higher quality than most stuff there?

[PompiPompi]

There are two prices for my game. The Android price and the "multi platform" price.
The game will probably have more platform supported than Android+PC, like iOS, Mac and Linux.
For the multi platform price you will get all binaries for all the platforms.
Most of the games in the $5 area are either not new, or don't have multiplayer. So I think I can take a little bit more than $5 for the "multi platform" price.
I am thinking maybe $8 or $10 for the "multi platform" and $4 for the Android market. I can always reduce it if I want. Would be harder to increase it.

[eyeliner]

Pompi, for me, your game didn't hit a string. Maybe because you stated that your game is a game based on another game from which I never hear or read about. Graphics wise, nothing major, gets the job done.

Only from looking at the video and reading the text. No playing, mind you.

For less than 5$, you can get Commandos 2 or 3, CivIII Complete (OMFG!!) and a whole lot of others, so your point dies.

If you have the game mostly finished, why not take a look at possibilities of ramp it up graphics wise? Even I, someone who overlooks graphics found your game ugly. But I like your avatar, though, figure that.

[Capntastic]

There's such a glut of decent to good games out that the expectation of people dropping 10 bux on a relatively unknown game is gonna be a huge speedbump to getting your product out there.

[PompiPompi]

Well actually, I have a really good game for comparision regarding the price. Archon in Steam sells for $9.99.
Obviously it's a lot more famous than my game, but it's good to compare to.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

one important note: you have to compare prices *at launch* not current prices

sure, you can get a lot of great games for 5$ right now. but could you get them for 5$ *at launch*? no

[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'.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (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. 

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (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.