Rather than fussing about the price of your product, Newell suggests that it’s all about delivering “a service that’s better than what they’re receiving from the pirates.”
“For example, Russia,” he said, speaking at a recent WTIA TechNW panel, “you say, oh, we’re going to enter Russia, people say, you’re doomed, they’ll pirate everything in Russia. Russia now outside of Germany is our largest continental European market.”
“The people who are telling you that Russians pirate everything are the people who wait six months to localize their product into Russia. So that as far as we’re concerned is answered. It doesn’t take much in terms of providing a better service to make pirates a non-issue.”
He also talked about changing the price of a product on Steam, and watched how the gross revenue remained absolutely constant. “What we saw was that pricing was perfectly elastic,” he said. “There’s no way to use price to increase or decrease the size of your business.”
This was via an unannounced price change. When a product went on a media-advertised sale, the company saw a 40-fold increase in revenue.
Via GeekWire.
The Lone Steven
He speaks common sense. If you are going to make your customers jump through hoops just to actually be able to use your product then don’t be surprised when pirates break into your house and steal your silverware. Oh and steal the game.
If someone like Gabe Newell was in charge of the PS store, we would see it probably rivaling Steam. Although, where is a certain long await sequel to a series of games that everyone has been waiting for?
a inferior race
TBH I can completely understand the desire ro pirate when the publisher/ developer is either unable or unwilling to make a product availble in your country.
jikomanzoku
Some fair points there about the fire proof, thief proofing etc that I hadn’t considered. It does also raise though that they’re only gonna be available for as long as PSN is available or if PS3 software is supported on PS4. So those digital purchases have a finite life span unfortunately. I’ve bought an awful lot of PSN titles, so that realisation saddens me and I hope a workround is arrived at before it becomes an issue.
Borderlands GOTY went back up to £23 after a week or so – I was gutted as I would have picked it up again at 13 quid. Fun game, hopefully the sequel will successfully build on it :)
Darksidesystems
The whole lifespan of a digital copy is a concern now you mention it and not just on PSN. What about Mr. Gabe’s Steam itself? How long are all those great games we’ve paid for going to be available? More importantly, when is their next sale on?!
jikomanzoku
The sentence that interests me most here is:
“What we saw was that pricing was perfectly elastic,” he said. “There’s no way to use price to increase or decrease the size of your business.”
Be interesting to see whether this has a parallel with the whole online/day one pass scenario too.
Zephyre
“There’s no way to use price to increase or decrease the size of your business.”
Really? Price your next release at £99 and see what happens.
bunimomike
You’re thinking of it from a consumer perspective not a business one. What he’s saying is that if the product is expensive they sell less but it still raises a certain amount of revenue. If they go cheap then it sells by the bucket-load and the same figure can be achieved.
400 x £10 = 100 x £40
jikomanzoku
Exactly, there is only a finite amount of expendable income floating about.
rossthebassist
GAME seem to take a similer approach at the moment. launch its £39.99 then 2 weeks later down to £29.99.
dead island can be picked up for £20 at GAME or gamestation if your buying BATMAN, if you buy battlefield 3 next week you can get RAGE for £20.
i know its a cheap trick for GAME to make more money. BUT if they are gonna offer those kind of prices on new releases after a few weeks, then why would i buy day 1. ill just wait.