Woooahhh ! $99 - $2000 is a BIG JUMP IN PRICE !!!
a.quaihoi
Member Posts: 3
My friend just put me onto this software and looks pretty neat, I will play with it in the next couple of days but I just noticed the price for the " Pro " version. 2K is awfully steep from the express price --> pro version!! - Just to include a splash screen !?
OK - so you can theoretically make a decent amount of money IF your game is really popular - but wouldn't the developer promote your great tool in the process anyway ?
In my opinion on a Business scale, a better price point for the Pro Version should be in the area of up to $500 --> which would entice more people to buy the software and actually use it for serious content work. For 2K I would expect the same software with 3D game development, a box with a CD, and a 500 - 1000 page printed in colour user manual - seriously.
I mean, Apple gives you all the developer tools for FREE, you just have to invest a little time reading and or collaborate with a team of artists / programmers / musicians - and look at their business model with itunes - artists get 70 %, everything is priced so well that everyone buys so content sells in volume and the company profits. Good business model I thinks.
The tool looks good, but not good enough to part with 2K for a yearly license, do you guys think that indi developers have this sort of money to splash around ? In reality, some one on an average wage of say $25 KPA, has to think long and hard about blowing this sought of dough and every year too ! This stress gives little headroom for creativity.
Think about it.
OK - so you can theoretically make a decent amount of money IF your game is really popular - but wouldn't the developer promote your great tool in the process anyway ?
In my opinion on a Business scale, a better price point for the Pro Version should be in the area of up to $500 --> which would entice more people to buy the software and actually use it for serious content work. For 2K I would expect the same software with 3D game development, a box with a CD, and a 500 - 1000 page printed in colour user manual - seriously.
I mean, Apple gives you all the developer tools for FREE, you just have to invest a little time reading and or collaborate with a team of artists / programmers / musicians - and look at their business model with itunes - artists get 70 %, everything is priced so well that everyone buys so content sells in volume and the company profits. Good business model I thinks.
The tool looks good, but not good enough to part with 2K for a yearly license, do you guys think that indi developers have this sort of money to splash around ? In reality, some one on an average wage of say $25 KPA, has to think long and hard about blowing this sought of dough and every year too ! This stress gives little headroom for creativity.
Think about it.
Comments
I am also an owner of Torque 2D for iPhone, which I paid a flat $750 for the indie license. Their commercial license is $2250. Mind you, there is no software difference except for the splash screen, but the indie license does limit you to making $250,000 in revenue using the engine and the license is NOT transferrable to another person or organization, whereas the commercial license is.
Remember, GameSalad is still in beta, so there may be additional features that will only be applied into the pro license.
You can always upgrade. That's what I'm planning to do as soon as one of my games hits a decent revenue barrier. (I'll pay, but I'd rather win via the upcoming Macworld contest!) I don't mind the splash screen, but I would prefer using my own to promote my own company, or put something else there, depending on the particular application.
Looking at the bigger picture... Having an in-game link is definitely worth it if you link it to another one of your iTunes App Store apps. Also, the more I realize it, GameSalad doesn't have to be just for games. If you're good enough at programming, you can make non-gaming applications, so not having a GameSalad splash screen for a regular app would make sense.
I think the price is fair IF......
It wasn't in beta and wasn't so buggy. Although those two kind of go hand in hand
Don't get me wrong i am having fun. And it is a great system.
And once all the bugs are worked out more than 2k would be acceptable...
In fact $99 seems kind of low for what it does at the basic level once it quits crashing so much. (i feel like i am married to the save button)
Just my 2 cents.
Having said that i do see myself upgrading though
The middle ground version, for say $499, would immediately show your own custom splash screen, and at the bottom of the screen it would say "Powered by GameSalad", and in any credits screen you would place a link to GameSalad.com.
Pro users would still get the fully customized splash screen, and no requirement to mention GameSalad anywhere, and they also get the email support, which itself could easily save you more than $2000 of effort each year.
I do agree about the Pro pricing, $2000 is a large amount (well, it is for us) for what you get, it can pay itself off if your app is successful but thats a risk since its all based on "potential", most of us are either small indie devs or hobbyists with a budget of $0 so $2000 is a vast investment for us for not quite the large benefit.
Looking at the other iPhone game toolsets out on the market (Torque comes to mind) the pricing is fair for full licensing, not to mention that Game Salad is kind enough not to make us having profit or publishing limitations on either version, and not having to pay any other royalty fees for making money off their toolset.
I do like Colin's idea, something I've always had in the back of my mind too for the customized splash screen and especially for the pricing points he mentioned.
Speaking of the splash screen, one thing I wish Game Salad would change about theirs is perhaps add some text saying "now loading" or some sort of progress bar, when I got a few of GS created apps, I immediately thought the app froze due to the long loading times on the black GS load screen, I'm sure others have as well.
My fried also put me onto the Torque game tools, I downloaded it had a little play but didn't pursue it due to restrictions in time, yes BeyondtheTech is right, GS doesn't have as much restrictions as the other guys - but seriously they do need a middle ware version.
It's also great to see that there are mature minded people on this forum who understand a joke or parody of a situation, you guys wouldn't believe what people would post up on another well known iphone dev forum if I asked the same question, they;d be talking about " zeal " and all that other junk and pretty much being idiots about something like this.
Software crashing ? he he he anyone used Hash's Animation Master ? If not, you guys don't know anything about a software that crashes - but at the end of the day you can create master pieces and the annoyances cease to exist even when they occur - it's the old " good artists don't blame their tools thing " - Yes - +S should be second nature to us all, I mean Photoshop and Illustrator also crash from time to time for no apparent reason.
Ok Settled then, lets go and enjoy some game salad !
from $99 to $2000 is really a big step... 20 times more expensive!
And featutres like Personalized splashscreen, Web link and network support are frankly not enough in my opinion.
I remember that with subscription there is not upgrade....every year now you have to pay 2000$.
Just my opinion and sorry for my english.
Although i don think it will effect GS too much.
You can just tell by he majority of the questions here that most would not be able to create anything but the most basic of game in flash.
It is scary how many more apps are gonna be in the app store then.
When it hits apple could probably raise dev membership to $1k and still see a 1000% increase in members
I'd like to give GS another $500 of my money when my subscription runs out to 'stay pro' (early subscribers were bumped up to pro after the price cut to $99). I don't see myself giving them $2000 as I just can't afford it.
$500 for the pro version seems fair to me. I'm very happy having paid that much for it, effectively, already. But that's just my opinion, and others have their own!
Dr. Sam Beckett never returned home...
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The same situation in Flash is trivial to deal with. So for people like me, who mainly use Flash and other tools, GS may be ruled out as an option because of an individual issue like that.
At least for now the performance in GS is a lot better than it is in Flash for the same exact scene, so if you can make something equally well in both tools, GS would give a better end application. But then there are a lot of things that Flash can do that GS can't, and so in some cases you might give up a little performance in order to do a wider range of things.
The main thing going for Flash though is that there is no splash screen, or any other way to tell that the app was done in Flash. There is no yearly payment, and you could buy about four copies of Flash for one year's worth of GS Pro.
It all doesn't matter much to me, I have both tools (and Unity, and XCode), so I'll just use the tool that is able to do what I need to do.
Happy paying the $99 for the standard membership...but at the moment I can never see myself paying the $2000 amount. More extras are needed.
Must say though, I've only been using Gamesalad for about 2 weeks, but it is great and so easy to pickup from someone with an animation/graphics background and some old (out of date) Flash MX Action Script knowledge.
When flash rears its head soon it surely must change things a bit....
(My first app should be ready for the App store by Sunday), now tinkering with it....and tinkering is fun.
I mean, for 500$ as many others i could subscribe the pro version.
But for 2000$ every year is really impossible ( at least for me ).
If GS-Pro was $500 a year, they probably would have a ton more sales. Also having a few "additional" features like an iPad template, changing the activity indicator between scenes, leaderboard support, wifi, Xcode native support, etc.....would merit a $950 a year fee.....maybe paid monthly?
Many games out there don't even get enough dls to cover the expense of the license and without important revenue features such as in app purchases, admob type service it would make it quite difficult to turn a profit that justifies the expense.
Now that I know there is a 20 second splash screen I don't even think I will finish the game I started. I would be seriously pissed if I had to wait 20 seconds for the splash screen to go away and it would definitely keep me from playing a game. I feel 10 seconds is long but reasonable. 20 seconds will just make our customers hate us.
I really want to go Pro for those additional features, but we're talking serious cash there. I still think it should be at $500 until it hits 1.0.
I'm very excited about CS5 and can't wait to get my copy next week, but I'll not give up on GS for simple gaming.
If the price of GS seems too high, don't buy it, but you will not find another tool that is this easy to work with. It's just that simple. But the great thing is you can work with it free, and then if you want to make an iPhone game, buy the express.
HOWEVER... most of the people saying flash has more features are correct
again HOWEVER the point to GS is you don't have to learn flash
Thats the selling point. If you know how to use flash and can make a game this quickly GS probably isn't for you. I for one am OK with flash and have used it for nearly 10 years now and i love GS.
I did shell out the fee for the license about a month ago and it really didnt seem like that much for what it is. I have spent more on advertising.
If you are making at least $300 $400 a month than you should probably upgrade to Pro.
If not its not time yet. Its not a matter of rather or not Gendai is pricing it right for you. Its a matter of does THEIR product and THIER price make sense for what YOU are doing
I would say more than half my sales come from the URL link so it makes sense
I think a lot of people just think its a lot of money and they want the GS logo off.
I know, and fully understand that GameSalads selling point is its ease of use compared to the other engines (heck, thats why Im here), but I still cant see how $2000 per year for an incomplete engine can be justified, especially when it offers so few features above and beyond the standard version.
Its a great tool... and one Im enjoying using. But I do have serious doubts about the kind of games I can produce with the engine, and its long term use... so Im planning on a couple of releases with the engine, then re-evaluate if its worth continuing with or switching over to a different engine.
I think i'd have to see a number of sorely missed features, improved documentation, and far better transparency and engine info from the developers at Gendai before I'd consider stumping up $2000 a year tho...
I guess if things work out, and I get a decent selling game out of it, I might look at it differently tho....
Certainly not arguing because I agree
But once you start getting a taste of the app store honey that URL feature starts sounding more and more valuable. That's what got me.
The thing i don't like however is that its yearly - that can add up but a lot changes in a year so we'll see.
Now the bad news - take an annual subscription business model coupled with the fact that you must rely on their server for compiles - deal breaker IMO.
GS as they improve the product also forces every one of us to upgrade and rework bugs constantly because we can't isolate our development and compile ON OUR computers.
Each new feature brings bugs that we are forced to deal with whether we're ready to or not. Sorry but that's like Microsoft forcing you to constantly rework your documents every time they make a code change.
The solution? - Our Mac checks their server for a valid license - but the compile and the version of the software is under MY control - not Gendai.
This is an unacceptable situation, and as much as I like GS - if this doesn't change by the time my license is up. I'll have to consider other options.
Which is a shame. I really like the software - but the implementation - never had software like this before.
This is intended as a genuine concern - not a rant. Please take it as such.
But I think it's a little misleading.
Anyone can download GameSalad and make a game, whether express or pro.
I wouldn't pay a developer $2000 to put in a URL and a custom splash screen.
I think that's the difference.
It's not 'here, take $2000 and make me a game from scratch.'
It's more 'here's a finished game, can you add some URL stuff and a custom splash screen please?'
Followed by 'You want HOW much????'
Dr. Sam Beckett never returned home...
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