Change your pricing
Hunnenkoenig
Member Posts: 1,173
Game salad has potential, but I discover more and more flaws. I mean, no high score (ie open feint), no 3rd party plugins, no loading screens (I have no problem with the starting splash screen! more on that later), no portrait style... I don't know, if I will buy it right now.
To pay 2000 dollars for such an early version with so many missing features.... I don't know.
Even MMO developers ask only 60 dollars for their unfinished beta crap.
How do the developers think, somebody will pay 2000 dollars for software in the 0.x.x version?
You can't make prices for an early beta version, like for a fully developed software! It is not how it works!
You should be happy that there are even people, who want to test your software and even willing to pay and spread the word.
I would sure pay 200 dollars for the pro version in this stage, but not 2000. Maybe I would be willing to pay 2000 if it was a fully developed and fully functional software.
So my suggestion:
Ask only for 100-200 dollars until release (I know there is the express version) and develop the stuff like crazy and allow us to use every feature. I think, people would be nice and honest enough to let the splash screen on in exchange (I would).
When it is finished and you can offer a real useful software and it is in at least RC state, you can lock features and make a pro version for, let say 500-1000 dollars without support and if you want, a super pro version for 2000 with support.
To pay 2000 dollars for such an early version with so many missing features.... I don't know.
Even MMO developers ask only 60 dollars for their unfinished beta crap.
How do the developers think, somebody will pay 2000 dollars for software in the 0.x.x version?
You can't make prices for an early beta version, like for a fully developed software! It is not how it works!
You should be happy that there are even people, who want to test your software and even willing to pay and spread the word.
I would sure pay 200 dollars for the pro version in this stage, but not 2000. Maybe I would be willing to pay 2000 if it was a fully developed and fully functional software.
So my suggestion:
Ask only for 100-200 dollars until release (I know there is the express version) and develop the stuff like crazy and allow us to use every feature. I think, people would be nice and honest enough to let the splash screen on in exchange (I would).
When it is finished and you can offer a real useful software and it is in at least RC state, you can lock features and make a pro version for, let say 500-1000 dollars without support and if you want, a super pro version for 2000 with support.
Comments
For $99 you can use software to create an app (easily compared to anything else out there) and submit it to the app store and make money....if your app sells real well you'd have no problems in paying the extra money to remove a splash screen and have links to your other apps. Plus what ever else is added in the future.
You can make vertical games, albeit annoying and would involve more thought (I'm sure they're on the case).
You can use it for free try it out, and see what you think...
Admittedly the gamesalad splash screen stays on for maybe too long, but other than that its pretty cool software that allows me to make app games that I'd never be able to do with Xcode coding as it confuses the **** out of me.
Sorry if this sound like a rant, but I thought I'd rant to balance out yours...
anyway...download it, use it and be rich....(make a nice horizontal unique well designed game and life will be sweet)...
I was just talking in general.
I can live with the restrictions as of yet for 99 dollars, but the 2000 dollar price I find ridiculous for a software, which is not even in release state.
It is not very clever to make such a price from the business point of view...
I already bought complete terrain editors with toolset for 300 dollar and you make money using them too.
Sometimes I have the feeling, people try to get rich immediately. I discover very often people, who ask 2000 dollars for a simple banner ad on their site and they have only google banners since years there, but if you tell them that you pay 100-200 dollar for a banner, they refuse.
I know, what you can earn with google, so it seems, these people are pretty stupid.
It's like somebody comes to you and tells "I give you 100 dollar" and you say "go away, I wait rather a few months for somebody, who gives me 2000 dollar".
If you understand what I mean...
Sure, you don't want to be cheap and want to keep a standard, but then your service also must be worth for that standard and the competition is very big and similar, so you probably are not better than the others (It doesn't count for GS, due to being pretty unique, as far as I can tell).
I for myself rather sell my service for 100 dollar to 200 people every month, than for 2000 dollar for 2 people every 6 months....
But ok... they know better, what they want.
Using your logic you would rather have a lot of smaller priced sales. However, by pricing it cheaply at $200 they are only making $100 more than the base package. How much advertising do they get for this? 0
Companies (especially in infancy) value advertising more than a few bucks. I'm not saying this is why it is priced like it is, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was ONE of the reasons.
By pricing the PRO at $2000 they keep their logo on MOST games sold, which will make everyone who buys a GS game wonder "What the heck is Game Salad?"
See the logic here? By offering it for only $200 like some people suggest they lose BIG on free advertising. Seems like a great business plan (intentional or not) to me, especially for a smaller company like GS.
Hope this gives a different perspective. (thanks goes to tshirtbooth for the initial idea)
Given the feature sets of both the Express and Pro versions of GameSale *at-this-time*, you can get most of what you want done with the $99 Express edition...and you don't have to pay that $99 until you have your app ready to publish. How cool is that. A true try-before-you-buy experience.
Once they leave Beta, I would like to see the Express price go up to say $250 (to further reduce riff-raff apps) and the Pro version come down to say the $1,000 to $1,500 range. I think this would make them more if the ratio of Express users to Pro users is what I think it is. All this would need to rest on a nice balance of features between the two. And all this is me just pulling figures (in terms of how many I think are using Express versus Pro) out of my arse.
I currently see GameSalad as a sort of gift and am grateful for such. My traditionally developed iPhone app (i.e. Objective-C programming using the SDK within XCode) was a bear to develop (but does include backend server integration) and is still only 90% done. I lost interest in it due to it taking so long. GameSalad would make quick work of the app side of that project and I may just go that route once they support URL processing.
In the meantime, I will churn out the multitude of ideas I have had bouncing around in my head and I think in record time. Maybe some success with that will spur me on with some traditional style apps if GameSalad is still lacking at that point. To me, in-app-purchase and URL processing are big. Ad integration would be nice.
Go GameSalad!