The first prey of the Mac App Store

News & General Discussion
1

Don’t know if you realized it but Feral Interactive had the funny concept that getting through Lego Harry Potter Years 1-4 at 50 bucks on the mac app store on Jan 6th.
Well by Jan 7th its already gone again and going by the mail I just got from Macgamestore.com, they have at least on other platforms reduced the price already to 40 bucks …
According to official words though it seems that apple pulled it cause the 7GB size of the game lead to more or less always corrupted installs on the end user machines.

So what do you think, what kind of chance to entertainment programs really stand on the mac app store if they try to get away with the Steam “out of reality and sanity” boxed prices for pure digital distributions or any kind of 40 bucks+ for games at all?

My view on the matter is that the mac app store targets mass market, similar to Steam and Impulse, but that unlike the later two, the mac App Store will ensure competitive pricings, not “monopoly and cartel” price fixations that helped Steam and and big publishers to offer games at 3x the price you pay in stores (here in europe its laughable, Amazon.co.uk costs a fraction of steam and that for a physical distribution + packaging fee etc) without any real costs or competition (due to no second hand, no “store next door”, no aged games, running out of space, …)

I for one hope that the Mac App Store will lead to some conclusions on the end of publishers that ripping off users with digital games at physical prices and shit like won’t get them anywhere and that their future is much darker than they think off if they follow this path

PS: I wanted to edit the title but just realized that this seems to be no longer possible … doh

2

Sounds familiar…Payback had problems on the iOS app store initially because of size issues, where it was fine on the developer’s end, but got corrupted on the app store, because the DRM didn’t work right above a certain size. It’s Feral Interactive, by the way, not EA. I think all their Lego games are $40 when new, so it’s kind of odd if it was actually $50 on the Mac app store. Actually, as far as Steam goes, I don’t think I’ve paid over $20 for a game, because of the sales they have all the time.

–Eric

3

Updated the EA part.
Was under the impression that they are the publisher and feral just the dev, cause EA has the global exclusive HP license till quite in the future, not?

hehe … as for steam and sales: Impulse and Steam both got some cash around christmas for the indie bundles and alike … invested like 25 bucks and will have games till summer :wink:

4

I can’t find any mention of EA being involved with Lego Harry Potter…Feral is the publisher (on the Mac, Warner Bros otherwise); Traveler’s Tales is the dev. Or TT Games as they apparently want to be called now.

–Eric

5

Very interesting subject which is one of my main concern these days : games pricing.

First a few things about pricing on Steam. In france, physical stores sell new games on PC from 65 to 80 dollars and I don’t even speak about console games which are more like 80 to 90 dollars. New games on Steam for us have an average price of 10 to 20% lower and it’s going down to 50% a year later and even 75 to 90% cheaper during special discount periods. If you buy games from amazon in france, you can have lower prices but they use a trick of not having to include VAT (19,6% round here) in the price. Since they have offices and depots here, they can safely make their products cross the border without having to pay taxes which is an absolute aberration. If you buy from a digital retailer with no offices in france, your package may be checked by french customs services and you have a small chance to pay additional taxes bringing the price to something probably higher than prices on Steam. Steam who does include VAT in their prices so you will never have bad surprises. That being said it may be indeed quite different in other countries with different taxes system.
I’m quite happy with Steam, very much like Eric I rarely pay a game (indie or AAA) more than 20 buck (15 euros) since I wait for discount offers on games I want. You could argue that their pricing when the games launch are a bit high for digital distribution but just wait for a few months and it’s more than reasonable.

Now I don’t quite get what is shocking about a game like the lego title being sold at 40 bucks. The fact that most of the games on the appStore are sold 10 times cheaper ? Games which are mostly :

  • way shorter
  • made by smaller teams with much less expenses since they work on far less ambitious titles
  • made by people barely able to pay the rent with what they earn with their work and I don’t even speak of putting money in the bank for their old days…
  • made by people too humble to recognize the real value of their work

Don’t mistake me, I’m an indie game developer so I’m defintely one of those. But I am very very concerned about the average prices used on the appStore with pretty much no distinction between a two weeks and a twelve months project ! With these kind of prices, you’re doomed to make veeeeeeery small games, bigger gamer which are hit sellers… or you just starve. The competition is quite fierce and selling enough copies of a game on these platforms requires talent, skills and sadly luck. There are out there talented people in dire financial situations just because they invested too much time in a game which doesn’t get what it deserves in term of sales.

With the arrival of major players, I personaly think that prices will eventually increase on these distribution channels and I also think it is necessary for everyone.

6

Are you actually a game developer !?!

Why are you endorsing people not get paid for the work they put in? Why are you thinking that someone is being “ripped” off for paying $40 for a game that normally costs $65!?

Why are the Steam prices of $20 “insane and out of reality”?

As a person who has actually made a living for the past 25 years making games, not some hobbyist, I can tell you, this BS “race to the bottom” or “give it to me free” crap is not how you are able to sustain a living making games!

If you make a quality product, why would you charge less?

People should be compensated for the work they do. It’s not sinister, monopolizing or a rip-off to want to be able to eat and pay your bills.

7

I don’t see a problem charging more for mac games. In fact it should be that way to stay in line with prices of apple computes which are about twice more expensive than pcs.

8

I agree that digital download versions of games should not cost as much as boxed retail versions because a) boxed retail copies involve a lot of additional costs for the developer/publisher and b) for the customer there is of course a perceived as well as real diminished value in a digital copy (not having a package and manual, not being able to resell it, not having a backup in case the digital delivery system goes down, decides to not offer the content anymore or is just not accessible due to internet connectivity issues), that´s besides the point that digital delivery can add own advantages.

That said, to me like for some others, Steam and some of the other digital delivery systems have turned out to be a great way to get games at extremely affordable prices, sure that might be different in other regions, but yeah, obviously its also not all bad at all in many regions.

On the iOS Market and even more so on the Android market the prices are dumped to a degree where i see that as extremely negative thing, both as game customer as well as developer.

Initially as customer it might seem like a great thing when everything is just super low priced, but when one thinks further about what all that involves its not nice at all.

It is just not positive at all when the market is crowded with games extremely low priced to a degree in which most don´t make their investment back and for many it is only possible to stay afloat by releasing as much content as possible and hoping for the time one sticks.
It definately has an impact on how much people can spend of developing more in depth content and especially on how much they can spend on doing more unique risky endeavours rather than prooven formulas.

Its one of the main reasons why we to a large degree only see unique things done by pupils and students or at most small indy teams who don´t pay for their living costs themselves in many cases or are small enough to not put that many employes and their families at risk.

The free to play model has already affected the flash web gaming scene very negatively for a long time, now portals are expanding to mobiles and also granting prizes for getting nice unity games on board for low fees, too to even further expand the pressure of offering everything for free (where in most cases only the portal earns a propper profit from that).

I´d be glad if the prices on the Mac App Store tend towards a more reasonable region.

What would you prefer?

When some developers still try the risky big thing in between and then close down as it has happened more and more often in the last few years when one or two of such titles don´t sell in good enough numbers due to things like constantly raised expectations for higher quality and lower prices and rampant piracy (I´m talking about good games that didn´t sell well enough).

Or would you maybe rather prefer all games becoming “free to play” and then being plastered with advertising everywhere, filled up with micro transaction incentives or being subscription based?

9

i dont agree games prices on steam are insane and out of reality, in here boxed games cost even twice as much … and if you get the sales you can get ridiculous prices, this Christmas i bought 12 games for 60 dollars on steam…

i think all people should be rewarded for their hard work… as they deserve, i also think that “race to the bottom” trend is bad, very bad for people that try to make a living from making games , specially in a first world country where everything is very expensive, its fine to some degree for third world countries, for example in here(mexico) you can make a living and maintain a family with 400 dollars a month, so making 1200 dollars in a quarter doesn’t seem to be that much of a challenge in comparison with whats required to make a living for example in the UK…

then now figure out how many sales would be needed after commission’s cut if the games would cost 1 dollar each to the end user… even here that would be a challenge, it would require selling nearly 600 copies a month to just cover the costs of living, to make a living in a decent way in a first world country you would have to at least scale it 10 times… so in short, 6000 copies per month just to barely make the cut, its quite sad

and if people cant make a living of something on their own, it gets unsustainable and less and less people will bother making anymore games, other than robin hood-esque people who doesn’t seek any kind of monetary income

just my opinion

10

Most boxed retail versions are not what they used to be. The last few I purchased I had to go and download anyways from a remote server, so basically buying the boxed version was useless. I remember before the manuals were nice, glossy, colorful, fully detailed booklets filled with useful information and you had a full physical copy of the game on the CD/DVD. Now you’re lucky if you even get a black and white one page print out with any game info, at most its just an advertisement for some service they want you to buy.

11

very true, i remember old pc games came with a very nice instruction booklet, in the case of flight simulator 2000/combat flight simulator 1 and caesar 3, they came with a entire 200 page book with every possible information about the game, a very nice cd case and a remarkably nice colorful box, in the case of caesar 3 it also included a very nice full color illustration

in contrast the last version of flight simulator FSX, came in a DVD case with a lame triptych with the image of a sidewinder joystick and a 360 gamepad

as QFS said, sometimes you still need to download a patch or a drm system and you need to register online to play and the manual comes as a pdf if at all… making the whole concept of retail box quite pointless as you get pretty much the same thing as digital distribution one

12

Yeah, i totally agree that boxed retail versions are largely not what they used to be in the past. I have fond memories of classic pc and console games coming in nice special boxes with lovely manuals and what not all, and yeah, those were the usual versions of those games sold at the standard price, not more expensive collectors´editions.
Its pretty sad how that has gone away largely and while i can accept that, i think it goes more than a step too far when some like Microsoft then do incentives like with the 360 games now having no thick plastic on the back side of the box right in the area of the disc. Which turns the boxes into something way less reliable (If they want to do something for the environment they should make the boxes out of more environmental friendly material, but not remove the entire protection idea of the box).

But despite all that, yeah, even if most of today´s boxed retail versions are pretty sad compared to what older ones among us are used to from older classic pc game boxes etc, well, of course still boxed retail copies involve higher costs for the developer/publisher (just creating the disc, creating a box, putting the disc (and maybe existing manual) into the box, shipping it to stores, getting store space etc all costs money of course.

That nowadays boxed retail copies being a shame compared to nicely made classic one´s manuals and packaging just is another convincing argument for me to go for digitally delivered versions but yeah, doesn´t make it any less reasonable that digitally delivered versions should be available earlier and cost a bit less (Ideally the difference that would otherwise be spent to get the box on the store shelves minus whatever the digital delivery platform holder charges in cuts).

Again, that´s just my stance on what should be the upper high end for games pricing for digital delivered copies, as i said i think on several digital delivery platforms like Android and iOS stores, Steam in many countries especially when they do bundle sales etc those prices are already undercut by a lot in many cases.