Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!rutgers!mit-eddie!uw-beaver!cornell!batcomputer!pyramid!prls!gardner
From: gardner@prls.UUCP (Robert Gardner)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Dongle blues
Message-ID: <8450@prls.UUCP>
Date: 20 Jan 88 00:15:06 GMT
References: <2374@crash.cts.com>
Reply-To: gardner@prls.UUCP (Robert Gardner)
Organization: Philips Research Labs, Sunnyvale, California
Lines: 28

In article <2374@crash.cts.com> miket@pro-charlotte.cts.com (Mike Thompson) writes:

>Just think, if a fully documented game
>only cost about 5 dollars, and was a good program, it could be
>quite succesful in the computer market.  
 
The problem with the analogy between books and computer games is that
of market size. Anyone that can read (English) is a potential customer
of a book. Only those that own the particular computer system that
a computer program is written for are potential customers. There are
many orders of magnitude difference between these market sizes. Given
that, it's amazing that you can buy software for under $50.

Publishing costs have little to do with software prices. Even for the
smallest outfits, they rarely are over $5-$10 per package. Return
on investment is what determines prices (and competition, of course),
and that depends on market size.

Another failure in the analogy is the difficulty in copying a book
compared to the difficulty in copying software. Again orders of
magnitude difference.

Until everyone that can read owns a computer and software is copied
as infrequently as novels, don't expect software prices to be as low
as book prices.

Robert Gardner
Great Wave Software