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[Dataflashsabot]

A modern point-and-click adventure game (think Blackwell Legacy or something like that), sans voice and with lower music quality, put on maybe 5 to 10 floppy disks and distributed in the classic big box, complete with huge manual. The price would have to be higher and many computers don't have floppy drives, but I'm sure you could get 100 classic adventure game geeks to buy it (I know I would, if I had a floppy reader)!

Is this the worst idea since Hiter's mum and dad got it on? Would YOU buy it?

I dunno if this belongs here, but putting it in General seemed a bit of a cop-out...

[Christian Knudsen]

Like you said, no computers come with a floppy drive these days. It's a terrible idea. You might as well sell a movie on Betamax.

[Dataflashsabot]

The sort of people who would buy it are the type that would have a way to read their original Monkey Island disks

USB floppy readers are pretty cheap, and some online computer stores still offer it as a configuration option.

[Christian Knudsen]

I'd imagine that if some ol' adventure fan wanted to play Monkey Island today, he'd download it in a few seconds instead of having to fiddle around with an external floppy drive (if he even has one!) and 5 install disks. I just feel you'd be creating a completely unnecessary barrier by selling the game on floppies...

[pgil]

Why not just put it on a CD? Still pretty nostalgic (with included jewel case, box and giant manual), and bonus: people can actually play it 

[Enshoku]

Haven't had a floppy drive in 3 years, so I cant say I would actually purchase such a thing.

[InfiniteStateMachine]

as long as you compress it with a sequenced ARJ archive :p

[guille]

I agree with the CD thing. Much better. I wouldn't buy anything on floppy disks and I still have original games on floppies, but back then I didn't have any other option.

[Richard Kain]

For the retro-charm, it would actually be a good idea. However, it wouldn't work for a very technical reason. Sony has stopped producing 3.5" floppy disks. There may be one or two manufacturers still producing floppies, but they would probably be hard to find and charge more than you would normally expect. (Sony was the original designer and manufacturer of the 3.5" floppy format) The production costs for this would be much higher than just shipping the game on a pressed CD.

It would be much better for a limited-run promotional. Possibly a version that was sent to the press to hype the game up.

Hmmmm...now that I think about it a little more, it might be feasible as a mail-order deal. Shipping a package like this to retail would be far to unwieldy and you'd lose all the possible profit. If you just had the box sleeves printed up, and did the label printing yourself, it could work. You would be looking at a smaller number of sales, but a much better profit margin per-unit. Maybe you could distribute the title digitally, and have a cross-promotional link for if anyone wanted to buy the boxed special edition.

[Gold Cray]

Staples still sells floppies. They've got a pack of 50 for $24. If you stock up now, you won't have to worry about getting them in the future. Like Richard said, it's a good idea for the retro charm, but from the other posts I gather you won't have to worry about selling very many.

[LemonScented]

If you can still get hold of floppies, print up boxes and manuals and stuff, I think it'd be a lovely (if expensive and impractical) thing to do. Whether you'd have any people interested in it would depend on whether you can get a sufficiently excited audience, though - the game would have to be considered pretty special to make it worth someone's while shelling out on a "special" edition.

If I was doing it, I'd put a CD version of the game in the box as well, just so that people would still have access to the "full" version of the game (with audio, etc), and that people without floppy drives might consider buying it even though the floppies themselves are mostly just "prestige tokens".

It's the sort of thing that would have worked for (say) the recent updated version of Monkey Island - sell the shiny new game on a CD, but have the original on floppies in the box as well. That's a popular game with a nostalgic appeal though, so your mileage may vary.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

you don't have to have a floppy drive to use this; you could also get a download link. you'd have the game on a floppy too, but you would have no reason to read it from there. it'd just sort of be a symbol that you own the game.

similarly, i still keep my starcraft cd's around, even though you can re-download the game from blizzard as long as you have your id key. it's just sort of a symbol.

[Skofo]

Make sure that the standard copy of the game sells well before making a "limited edition" of it.

[zacaj]

Include a floppy drive!   If theyre going to shell out all that money for floppies, they might as well spend $5 more and have you add in a drive

[nikki]

yeah that's what i thought too:

sell a usb 3.5" floppydrive in the same go!

[N. Crayon]

Personally, I'd probably make a nice box and a thick manual and a floppy disk, but then just put a registration key on the floppy. It's there, and you could put the game on it, but now it's just a nostalgic notecard.

Alternatively, you could make the jewel case for the CD you ship to people in the shape of a floppy disk, so you still get the old-school feeling without giving people plastic they can't use.

[obscure]

All 3 of people who would buy it are the type that would have a way to read their original Monkey Island disks

Fixed that for you
Seriously, it is a good idea only if there is a market. Is there a nostalgia market for floppy based software that you know if? If so how big is it? If not then probably not a good idea as it will be costly to produce and the game will be lower quality (no speech/lower quality sound).

Anyone know of a USB stick that looks like a floppy? If you could find one that would give the retro feel but have more space and everyone could actually use it.

[Radix]

The fact that it's so unusual but has grounding in game history could potentially get some decent attention as a novelty. I think including a floppy drive would be hilarious icing. They're only a few bucks, you don't lose anything by offering it, why not? I think it's a cool idea.

For the record I built my last PC (two years ago?) with a floppy drive for the sake of old games. Doubt I'm alone, not that it matters with the include-the-drive idea.

[iggie]

I think a game on custom USB stick sounds cool. A multiple floppies game sounds bad, just a technical annoyance compared to CD.
By the by, I love this genre and if a decent game came out I'd prefer to simply download direct from the Indie developer's site with PayPal.

[weasello]

I would buy it if it came on a dozen floppy disks and came with a huge manual, AND came with a download link. I won't bother to use floppies (or CDs/USB sticks for that matter, physical media is for chumps), but I'd love to own it just to say I did.

And also reading the manual.