Game Bundles

[thatbloke]

And as I said, when they start getting extortionate, expect to see me leading the charge.

I'm with Nanor on this one. and that quote of his sums it up for me.

 

[Nanor]

But that's only the price that they are selling it at. If you can retail them individually for 40 each, but stick them in a bundle where they average out to about ten dollars each, and still make a profit, doesn't that tell you something?

I'm not sure I quite understand you... Nearly every games outlet sells game for around that price. If I go to somewhere expecting to pick up TF2 by itself I can bet it to be around £20. If I wanted to go pick up TF2 and Portal that'll be around £40. Why do that when I can get both of those, another two games I don't have and two games I do have already for cheaper than the two games I want?

Heh, I was just indulging in nit-pickery, I saw your point.

 

[Tetsuo_Shima]

Every games outlet sells them at £20, right? In the bundle they go for £10 each. That's all well and good (and cheap!), but doesn't that mean they could sell them individually for £10 each? Even if they just made it a retrospective deal i.e. people who own HL2 and Ep1 already can pick them up for £10 each (or, as a nice happy medium, £30 for the three they don't have, but not cheap individually), that'd be a nice gesture.

 

[Nanor]

but doesn't that mean they could sell them individually for £10 each?

If they did that it would still be cheaper to be the Orange Box. That's of course providing you wanted Portal, TF2 and EP2.

 

[BiG D]

Every games outlet sells them at £20, right? In the bundle they go for £10 each. That's all well and good (and cheap!), but doesn't that mean they could sell them individually for £10 each? Even if they just made it a retrospective deal i.e. people who own HL2 and Ep1 already can pick them up for £10 each (or, as a nice happy medium, £30 for the three they don't have, but not cheap individually), that'd be a nice gesture.

Pricing software is a very difficult process. (Read the whole thing, dammit, or you'll miss the important parts!) Valve, in this case, has decided not to go with a tiered pricing system, and is treating everyone equally.

Essentially, setting a price on a product is a statement about the product's quality. Low prices will actually drive sales downward in some cases.

 

[BiG D]

Firstly, I have nothing wrong with bundles. I love them. I bought the id Super Duper Wooper pack from Steam and love every bit of it.

I had meant to ask this earlier: how many of the games did you already own otherwise? Why is this bundle any different?

 

[Tetsuo_Shima]

I had meant to ask this earlier: how many of the games did you already own otherwise? Why is this bundle any different?

I think part of the difference is - the games in the id bundle were originally sold as standalone and then were incorporated into the bundle later, as opposed to these new valve games which have been put directly into a bundle at their first release (thus prompting you to purchase software repeatedly). This is when it starts to get psychological, because whilst you don't like paying for the same game twice, if they released the new stuff as standalone at first the incentive would be to release them at full retail price, or for the cost of an expansion at least. It's complicated!

It's conclusive that games companies (but this can be applied to many businesses) have been screwing us over since birth, just that it takes something like this to realise it!

 

[Ronin Storm]

Going back a few steps in this conversation...

In this day and age, it's inexcusable for valve to deny customers (previous, loyal customers, no less) the freedom to customise which software they buy.

I'm not sure how you arrived at that assessment.

Sure, it'd be nice to pick and choose how we buy X or Y but we've always been at the mercy of the company selling the product we're interested in, in that respect. In this case, it's a little odd we can't buy EP2, TF2 or Portal individually but somewhere in there they've probably come to the understanding that they won't make sufficient money if they offer them individually.

They'll have done their maths. They know what they feel the market is willing to pay versus what they need and want for their games. We, the consumer, only get two choices: buy or not buy. It's the same choice we've always had. Does the cost of the games on sale (that, I assume, we want) represent good value for money?

It's not about whether it's $45 or $50 or even $130. Price is arbitrary, based on what the seller thinks you'll pay. Value is subjective, after all. It's only about whether you'll pay for the thing you want or refuse to pay because you're outraged by the pricing.

And, I guess, that's where the dividing line really is here. Big D and Nanor seem to feel that the prices are more than reasonable, good value for money. Tetsuo and elD seem to think that the prices carry an unreasonable element to them, that the products could have been cheaper if they'd been sold separately or without HL2 and EP1 bundled, and thereby not (sufficiently?) good value.

Personally, I see a package of games that I might enjoy but I'm not entirely sold on any of them yet. $45/50 seems a lot to spend on games I might not actually want. The fact that HL2 and EP1 are bundled in doesn't factor for me either way; it feels irrelevant to me that I have superfluous licenses as long as I feel that the price for the trio of games that are the main thrust of the package is one I'm willing to pay.

If Portal is really good, I might buy the bundle just for that in the same way as one might buy an album just for one song -- though, with online music sales of individual tracks one might say that attitude is redundant now.

Could it have been cheaper? Maybe so. But it isn't. None-the-less, you still retain the power to vote with your wallet.

 

[BiG D]

In this case, it's a little odd we can't buy EP2, TF2 or Portal individually but somewhere in there they've probably come to the understanding that they won't make sufficient money if they offer them individually.

I believe they will still be offering them individually (they do, after all, have individual prices listed in the pack.)

 

[Tetsuo_Shima]

If Portal is really good, I might buy the bundle just for that in the same way as one might buy an album just for one song -- though, with online music sales of individual tracks one might say that attitude is redundant now.

And, tying in with the quote of mine which you started your post off with, with the advent of steam, broadband and downloadable games, why can't we make it redundant in respect to games as well?

 

[BiG D]

If we're using iTunes as an example, it works exactly the same way as steam, no? You can purchase a track on its own, or you can get a slightly discounted rate for buying a whole album. If you buy a track, and then decide you want the whole album, guess what? You're paying for a track you already own...

 

[Tetsuo_Shima]

This is true, but here's a thing. I paid 0.79 for a single track the other day (not off of iTunes, but I believe 0.79 is the going rate on iTunes anyway). Most albums have, say, ten tracks on. 10 x 0.79 = 7.90, which is cheaper, or at least equal to, the price at which the entire album retails for (I'm assuming it's a new release, here). In that respect, you may customise to your hearts content - buy the whole album if you love it, buy one track if that's all you enjoy, or buy 3,4,5 .. tracks and not feel ripped off over it. Although the games market is a different kettle of fish, is it so inconcievable that valve could attempt the same thing?

 

[BiG D]

Aha! So essentially, micropayments are less offensive to you. (Interesting because I feel exactly the opposite.) When you start dealing with more expensive products, it makes it harder to make bundles worth buying. Do you think anyone would buy the Orange Box if it was only a discount if you were going to buy all three games anyway?

Edit: I just had a thought. I have a feeling that if Valve had not listed HL2 and EP1 in the list of games, and instead said "also includes a coupon code for a free copy of HL2 + EP1" you guys wouldn't be complaining. If they had made it sound like an "optional" bonus, I really doubt you would take issue.

 

[Ronin Storm]

And, tying in with the quote of mine which you started your post off with, with the advent of steam, broadband and downloadable games, why can't we make it redundant in respect to games as well?

It'd be nice.

But also a step change in scale. A music track is maybe £0.60 to £1.00 each. A game is often £15 to £50 each. Order of magnitude difference. Similarly, scale required to create and market a song is going to be substantially smaller than that to create a game. Finally, the number of songs released is many times more than the number of games released. My point, there, is that games are under higher risk than music; bigger costs with a lower release number and probably more fringe audience equals bigger risks.

It seems generally accepted, in the business world, that bigger (value) risks require more investment to manage or mitigate. I can imagine (though I admit I'm just guessing) that Value senior management have looked at the money put into developing and marketing EP2, TF2 and Portal and come up with a number X of how much that's cost them. Then they've looked at various different ways of selling that and considered the likely take-up in each instance; each of those will give a value Y. Y - X = profit, some (much?) of which will be reinvested into future game development.

Every method of selling requires more money from them. Let me say that again; if they add a new method of packaging and a new vector to market then that costs them money. It costs them in development, in testing, in packaging, in marketing and probably in ways I've not thought of yet. Every single permutation needs testing. At their scale and exposure, those costs are likely to make your hair curl. Oh, by the by, each variation, each additional package increases complexity and with it risk and thereby their overheads.

So they've done their maths. This will possibly be why the Black Box was cancelled, because it wasn't an efficient way of making money. They do after all exist to make money from making and selling games. No money, no games. It wasn't too many years ago that there were ten different games publishers. Now we're down to five and some of those seem to be struggling. Games development companies fall apart all the time. So they plan for the long term, charge as much as they can so that you'll still buy their games (grumbling or not) and hope to stay in business this year, next year and years to come.

I admit I haven't heard any rumours of Valve being in any financial trouble but, one imagines, if they screw up this release then that'll be a huge setback for them. It won't take too much of that to happen before they can't dig themselves out of it.

 

[Ronin Storm]

I believe they will still be offering them individually (they do, after all, have individual prices listed in the pack.)

When you click on the games themselves, however, they do not list them as individual sales.

If you, say, click on EP1 then you see that it can be bought individually for $9.99. Not so for EP2, TF2 or Portal.

Yet.

 

[Tetsuo_Shima]

(This is a good discussion, I like it )

That is quite a valid point, it does devalue the Orange Box (or, rather, it makes the Orange box slightly redundant), maybe a way round it would be to price the three newer games slightly higher (like say 40 or so, to take into account the depreciation of HL2 and Ep.1) so that if you are brand new to HL2, buying the orange box is still worth it, but if you already have HL2 you aren't feeling quite so ripped off through having to buy the orange box.

I think you are starting to convince me ...

EDIT: Man, Ronin posted 2 comments whilst I was writing this one in This is in reply to BiG_D's

 

[Ronin Storm]

EDIT: Man, Ronin posted 2 comments whilst I was writing this one in This is in reply to BiG_D's

Yeah, well, what can I say...

I'm also replying in threaded so mine make a lot more sense viewed in the tree. But I'm quoting for all the linear readers too.

 

[BiG D]

When you click on the games themselves, however, they do not list them as individual sales.

If you, say, click on EP1 then you see that it can be bought individually for $9.99. Not so for EP2, TF2 or Portal.

Yet.

I have a feeling this likely means you can't preorder them individually. Other games in the "coming soon" list don't have prices either (Kane & Lynch (YAY!) and Race 07) though I assume they will eventually.

Who knows, they might not even know how much they want to charge yet (wasn't EP1 $20 when it came out, rather then EP2's $30?)

 

[Tetsuo_Shima]

Yeah, Ronin. Those factors were niggling at me, the marketing, development, packaging overheads etc. etc. I mean, and from a purely business perspective the decision to release the Orange Box alone was a decision made with the company's own interests at heart.

As BiG_D said (indirectly) in the shoutbox, it probably is a bit of a toss-up between feasibility and ethical business practice, and in this case the latter was made slightly sacrificial to ensure the former.

You're closer to convincing me ...

 

[Tetsuo_Shima]

Edit: I just had a thought. I have a feeling that if Valve had not listed HL2 and EP1 in the list of games, and instead said "also includes a coupon code for a free copy of HL2 + EP1" you guys wouldn't be complaining. If they had made it sound like an "optional" bonus, I really doubt you would take issue.

This is, actually, very true. So, it's valve's own fault that we've raised this issue; if the marketing team had been as on-the-ball as BiG_D is, they might've gotten away with it I guess maybe they thought '5 whole games for $50' would sound more appealing than 'three whole games, plus HL2 + Ep.1 as an afterthought'. In a sense, though, HL2 would have to be part and parcel because Ep.1, 2, portal, tfc require HL2 to run (I think).