Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!gem.mps.ohio-state.edu!ginosko!uunet!yale!eagle!jtreworgy
From: jtreworgy@eagle.wesleyan.edu
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: No more Cinemaware stuff for Amiga !!!????
Message-ID: <347@eagle.wesleyan.edu>
Date: 4 Aug 89 11:28:08 GMT
References: <6712@warpdrive.UUCP> <1505@ndmath.UUCP> <43756@bbn.COM>
Lines: 78

In article <43756@bbn.COM>, denbeste@bbn.com (Steven Den Beste) writes:
> Before I go on, let's take a common example of a case where this doesn't apply.
> Suppose you see a painting at an art show, and the price on it is $500 or
> $1000. It doesn't pass the "weight" test - you can buy a print for $10 that
> looks just as good. But the painting is one-of-a-kind, and as such the design
> time (the time spent by the artist) massively outweighs the manufacturing cost
> (in this case, the cost of paint and canvas, plus labor for the frame and
> suchlike). Since the manufacturing run is exactly 1, the design cost makes up
> virtually all of the selling price.
> 
> So it is for software. In a deleted section, Greg says he understands why a
> compiler costs $500, but doesn't think that games should cost that much - $25
> at the most. The cost of developing a really high-quality game at a big
> software house is staggering, and can exceed the cost for a compiler.
> Even when this is divided among all the copies
> which are sold, it still represents a lot of money. Worse, in terms of
> accounting you have to think of that money as being borrowed from a bank, with
> interest to pay. A package costing $300,000 to develop (say, 4 person-years
> of effort) may need to pay back twice that before it breaks even,
> depending on the times involved.
> 
This is absurd. You're making the wrong analogy here. The game should cost the
same as the print. It's not one of a kind, and it's not going to increase in
value over the years, and you're not going to enjoy it as much the second,
third, etc.. time you look at it (or play it).

>>I wish that just ONCE a software company would TRY distributing a really good
>>game for $10 a copy...just to see what happens.
> 
> It's been done. There were a couple of "magazine on a disk" that were selling
> for about $8 for the Amiga, and I believe they both went belly-up. More
> interesting is the fact that these were distributing documentation and software
> from the public domain, so they didn't have to pay the programmers - and they
> STILL went under.
> 
I believe he said ".. a really good game ..". There is a difference between a
magazine on a disk and a really good game. Most people aren't interested in
paying 8 bucks for a magazine. But might for a really good game. (As a note,
"Jump Disk", the oldest Amiga magazine-in-a-disk, is thriving. And the others
went under because they couldn't pay their writers... of articles, that is). I
can say, definitively, if I saw a game advertised in a magazine, with a neat
slick full page color ad, for $10 or $15 (retail), I would buy it that day. I
am not a victim to hype, however, for $50 bucks retail. I wait until someone
I know gets a copy (or a pirate copy rolls in), I play it, and decide if I
want to spend $30 (mail order) for the thing. If the game holds my interest
for more than an hour, I buy it. Otherwise, I dump it. Nobody is losing any
sales because I got a pirate copy of it. Oh, if nobody I knew ever got a copy
of the game, and it looked really neat in the ads, I might eventually break
down and buy it. Not likely, but possible. Supposing this game turned out to be
really poor. The company would have lost a sale had I had a chance to see it
first. Is it wrong, then, that I saw it first and didn't buy it?

>>                                                If the sales of Dragon's 
>>Lair are as bad as people have been saying (since piracy) maby the manufacturer
>>could try it with that package as a test (what have they got to loose if
>>sales are near 0 now).
> 
> Even if the per-unit manufacturing costs is low, the total amount invested to
> try what you are saying would be large, and they don't really want to throw
> $40,000 or $50,000 down a rat hole. You are welcome give it a try when YOU
> have that much money you are willing to invest in an experiment...

For most people, there is a lot less resistance to parting with $10-$20 than
with parting with $30-$40. A LOT less. I buy $15 CD's all the time. I only buy
a piece of software once every 3-4 months. I probably get about the same
enjoyment out of them. That's why I buy CD's so much more often.

> 
> Steven C. Den Beste        ||  denbeste@bbn.com (ARPA/CSNET)
> BBN Communications Corp.   ||  {apple, usc, husc6, csd4.milw.wisc.edu,
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-- 
James A. Treworgy               "You should have seen me with the poker man,
jtreworgy@eagle.wesleyan.edu     I had a honey and I bet a grand,
jtreworgy%eagle@WESLEYAN.BITNET  Just in the nick of time I looked at his hand"
Box 5033 Wesleyan Station                           -Paul McCartney
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