Hacker News Reader

Comment by cmircea | Hacker News Reader

The MPAA & RIAA are blind. They'd make a LOT more money if buying the real thing was easier than 1) spending time hunting for it online; 2) waiting for it to download; and 3) if it weren't overpriced. Same for games. $60 for a damn game? Valve's shown that $5 prices lead to massive increases in sales over $20+.

View on HN

I think you're oversimplifying. Millions of people line up to buy the latest Call of Duty game at $60, but I don't think the market for those games suddenly doubles if you sell it at $30. Especially when many of those $30 buyers were presumably already going to buy it at $30 anyway in a few months.

I think it depends on how good and popular your game is. If there's only a market for 10 million Diablo 3 players, then making the game $10 won't expand your market to 60 million.

However, if you have a pretty unknown franchise/game with maybe a potential of 1 million users at $60, then lowering the price to $30 may very well double or triple your market.

If you product is junk then nobody will buy it (within experimental error). Steam sales consistently pull in a heap-load of sales and there's been lots more this year than the previous. I think if say COD9 would be $10, not $60 it would sell many more copies; go below $10 and it's at the "whatever dude" pricepoint.

Regional pricing could also be used, if the company is greedy. People living in low-income countries aren't really going to be able to afford $60 for a game, but it were $10 for them, they might.

I don't think the market for those games suddenly doubles if you sell it at $30

Don't forget the support costs as well; they end up with double the number of people to support, but for the same amount of money.

Steam has also shown that if the price is good enough many people will buy it and then never play it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com