Game Design, Programming and running a one-man games business…

“Let’s talk about ipad pricing! dagga-dagga-dag-dag-dad-dad-da!”

cliffski

That doesn’t make sense unless you read it to the tune of ‘kung fu fighting’. Anyway…

Enough of that.

I’m very close to releasing Democracy 3 on the ipad. I’ve pretty much decided it will be $9.95 on there. Let me waffle about the decision…

  • It can be argued that this is painfully high and nobody will buy it. I suspect this is an over-reaction and not true. It’s not angry birds, it’s a complex and deep strategy game, and I suspect players of those games are more prepared than the average ipad customer to pay $9.95
  • This is less than 50% of the PC price. Granted, it has no mod support, fixed resolution, and it’s on a tiny little ipad, not a nice kick-ass PC, but really there aren’t many compromises being made to play it on ipad. In other words, this is very competitively priced vs the PC version.
  • Theoretically a $9.95 game can set a decent benchmark price and maybe be discounted later, yet still be actually worth having on sale, unlike a 50% off on a $0.99 game.
  • It’s not the sort of game you buy on a impulse to play on the bus for 10 minutes once. It isn’t flappy birds. My impulse purchase market is probably zero.
  • Democracy 3 is in profit, even if I lose money on the ipad (I paid to have it ported), then it’s not a disaster, I could absorb the loss.
  • I think it’s in the greater interests of gaming (yes seriously) if we can establish a wider range of price points on IOS. There is no actual technical reason for that form-factor to be for cheap shovelware. There is no real logical argument for saying you shouldn’t be able to have a business selling $39.99 games on IOS, exclusively. maybe this will be a tiny nudge in that direction?
  • The sadist in me looks forward to the violent frothing at the mouth of the kids who complain about game prices. Deal with it! :D

So am I nuts? or is this GENIUS? or should it be priced at $24.95 like the PC version. Only time will tell, obviously. BTW if you work at apple, or know someone who does, and might be interested in promoting and featuring a non-casual game on IOS, please get in touch, I’m a PC gamer primarily so my knowledge of the ipad gaming market is very scarce.

I may have to buy that song on itunes now…

15 thoughts on “Let’s talk about ipad pricing! dagga-dagga-dag-dag-dad-dad-da!”

  1. That’s a good move IMO.

    Can’t help but feel that many supporters of the ‘mobile games must be free/f2p is the only way’ group lose sight of what they are supposed to be doing. Sure, a $10 game is never going to have 10million users, but the only reason a ‘free’ mobile game needs that many is so that 1% of the players will spend enough for you to make money.

    I’ve download a number of games on my android tabet, but the only one I’ve ever spent much time with (in fact, possibly the only one that I’ve continued to play after the 1st month) is Zen Pinball – a proper game (IMO!) that I paid upfront for a few Marvel and Starwars tables

    What matters is that it makes money for you, so if selling 10,000 does that, then great :)
    Of course, if you somehow do sell 10million, I hope your new found wealth won’t impact GSB2 development negatively ;)

  3. Just to re-iterate my tweet because I want you to more seriously consider the mobile market, I’m fine with a $19.99 price point. I like your games but I’d also really like them on the run with my iPad while visiting family out of town. I can’t take my desktop with me everywhere and your games seem like they’d adept well to a touch interface.

    Either way, keep up the great work. I enjoy reading your blog entries and playing your games.

  4. XCom launched at $19.99 on the iPad, and reports are that it did fairly well if I remember correctly. Given that Democracy 3 is also a complex, full game compared to 99% of the games apps on iOS, I think a $9.95 entry point is more than reasonable.

    There’s definitely a market for more complex games on tablet devices. I’d buy a copy to support this move, but I don’t own an iPad (Android only here).

  5. How well did the iPad port of GSB do? I remember it launched at $17, but it’s down to $10 now. Are you willing to share some round numbers?

    Also, there have been several polished, deep games released at the $10 price point recently (FTL, Baldur’s Gate II). Others think the market is there.

    Also also, Democracy 3 sounds like the kind of quasi-educational game a parent might buy for a child, and a lot of kids have iPads.

  6. Here’s a question. Would it be possible to offer a ‘free’ trial version for the iPad, then offer a paid $10 version?

  7. I would like to enquire about in-app purchases. Will the IPad version have all the released DLC as in-app purchases (IAP) or are they already implemented? If the DLC is ment to be released as IAP i would lower the starting price for the base game below 9.99$. Succesful board games like Carcassone, Siedler, Empire or Talisman are well below the 9.99$ price tag.

  8. There’s *definitely* a market for premium, deep, games on the iPad. XCom, deep and engaging RPGs like Baldur’s Gate, and SW: KOTOR etc. It doesn’t all have to be free-to-play Bejewled clones.

  9. But free-to-play Bejewled clones are meh fav0riights. Yeah, but seriously I don’t own an iPad, but I did spend like $8 on FF1… For Windows phone.

  10. Genius.

    You can always lower the price if you feel you need to, much more difficult to put it up.

  11. Oh – will existing PC users/customers get a discount on the iPad version? Pretty please?

  13. Also interested if dlc will be available on iPad.
    Plan to buy it (and dlc) if possible.
    Baldurs gate…x-com…KOTOR, iPad is slowly becoming a viable gaming platform. Slowly, oh so slowly.

    Can’t wait to play D3 on iPad!

  14. Really hope a port to Android is planned. Would gladly pay $10 for the game and another $10 for the DLCs. Most of the PC-gamers I know use Android tablets, so it might be a good move.

  15. iPads do not have “fixed resolutions”; they have fixed aspect ratios (4:3). The iPad 2 has an XGA (1024 x 768) resolution while retina models are 2948 x 1536, pumping out four times the number of pixels and hence requiring higher definition assets.

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