By Kieron Gillen on June 26th, 2009 at 7:20 pm.
Hmm. Blood bowl’s just been released via Digital Download. I almost didn’t blog about it. Which is some going when I normally leap a the slightest chance to mention the Skaven. The reason why is the small matter of its price. It’s forty quid, digital download only. And there’s no demo. That’s not on, is it?
I occasionally feel as if I’m alone on this one. I’ve a tendency to tweak marks down for clear price-gouging, because the mark’s sole purpose is a consumer guidance role. Accepting a game’s increase in price for no clear reason is a betrayal of the consumer advocacy part of the gig. Seeing the period when Activision were doing terrible ports of their superhero action games and releasing them for thirty five quid grated enormously. It doesn’t matter whether or not it’ll be reduced in price almost immediately – reducing from a higher price to a lower one is incremental, and if we let people release for more money then it really just leads to more expensive games.
But for a digital download – and a game solely released this way – it seems even worse. The thinking on matching prices online to those in the shops is that developers believe by undercutting the shops, the shops will stop stocking them. (They’re right here too, which does lead to the situation where you can more consistently buy a boxed copy cheaper than you can a download one – the sales skew that one a bit, of course, but they’re not consistent. By definition, really.) Perhaps the thinking is by releasing on Direct Download first they have to be more expensive than the shops, to discourage people from buying it from them now?
(I presume it’ll be hitting the shops eventually. Last I heard the 360 version was, which makes a PC version not doing the same a really odd decision)
Alternatively, they’re aware that as a game with a certain hardcore audience, some people would pay the little extra. They know not everyone will – but better they get the money from the people who will before the inevitable price cuts. Which is basic economics – different people will pay different amounts for different things and you make most profit by making sure everyone in each group pays as much as they can – but a difficult thing to accept when it’s as brutal as it is. I mean, extrapolate outwards. If – say – Epic let you have access to Gears of War 3 two weeks in advance of everyone else but you had to pay a grand for it… yeah, I bet there’s people out there who’d do it.
Okay, I’m going into thought experiments on this one. But fundamentally, it annoys.
Am I alone on this one?
(And – er – what’s it like, folks?)
26/06/2009 at 19:28 Heliocentric says:
Dicks to you mr game publisher, dicks i say.
I look forward to buying your game in a bargin bin before christmas. A pleasure.
26/06/2009 at 19:31 Lack_26 says:
I always found it grating when digital outlets sell for more than the shop, with a shop I understand why they sell at these prices, there are a fair few middle-men. But not so much with D-D.
I haven’t actually brought any digital only games other than on Steam, this is probably because I trust these companies less. I like boxes (kleptomania much?), but I trust Valve enough to buy their games Digitally, not the other companies though.
26/06/2009 at 19:32 Dominic White says:
I really enjoyed the beta version of Blood Bowl, but yeah, the price is offputting. I’m living out in France now, and the 50 euros they’re asking comes to about 43 quid.
That’s just not on.
26/06/2009 at 19:38 Colthor says:
Yeah, a game being launched for £stupid puts me off from buying it and makes me dislike the publisher a bit. Why do they think their game is so special I should pay twice as much for it as I would for most other games?
26/06/2009 at 19:40 Eamo says:
Well, considering I have two copies of the actual board game I am not sure what exactly the point of buying this would be anyway.
26/06/2009 at 19:45 jsutcliffe says:
A few things:
1) Boxed-retail release is scheduled for September. This strikes me as backwards. A digital release is presumably easier for pirates to repackage and distribute. Releasing to retail stores _then_ doing a digital release seems like it’d help avoid some piracy. But then I’m no game retail strategy genius, so I know nothing.
1a) It’ll also be on Steam around September too, I believe.
2) Forty quid is about the same price as the 3rd ed. box back in the day. Forty quid is also probably what you’d have to pay for two teams from GW these days. I have no issue with the price, and if I wasn’t watching the pennies I’d have snapped it up already.
***does a bit of research***
2a) Bloody hell. The Blood Bowl box is now 50 quid, and a single team is 30-40 quid. I’d stop complaining about the steep price for the video game.
26/06/2009 at 19:46 Bullwinkle says:
40 pounds? Really? I see the price as US$50. 40 pounds is outrageous. Frankly, I think $50 is too high.
Anyways, I’ll be waiting until it hits Steam in September. Then there will be a nice big sale. Thanks, Steam!
26/06/2009 at 19:46 JonFitt says:
Hmm, it appears as $49.99 here, which is the same price as all other full priced games (Prototype and Arma2 are both $49.99 on Steam).
26/06/2009 at 19:47 Benny says:
I personally prefer to buy the game on disk. While digital downloads are nice and convenient there’s something about having the box in your hand that makes it seem more worth the 30ish pounds you just spent on it.
It’s kinda half supprising though, as console games sell for that much on release and i know a few friends disapointed with left 4 dead on 360, costing more and not playing as well as the PC. Maybe they’re keeping to a single price across all platforms, which could spell bad if other publishers go the same way.
26/06/2009 at 19:51 Son of Montfort says:
You guys can hate all you want – we in the US had to pay $49.99. I would say it is worth every penny! I’m having a blast, were talking renewed my faith in PC gaming (I have been in the gaming doldrums since games like The Sims 3 were disappointing and preform poorly on my computer). The gameplay is simple, but engaging and some of the plays really get your heart pounding! So many tactics to choose and so much you can do to try and squeak out a win (I’m a Skaven man, myself).
I have posted my initial impressions and a mini AAR on the Wargamer.com forum – I will link here.
26/06/2009 at 19:54 mandrill says:
I’m not advocating t, or even condoning it, but I’m willing to bet that there will be many a potential buyer turning to the torrents for this one. The best and most effective method of combating piracy (IMO) is to cut the price.
The fact that we in the UK get regularly gouged on the prices of pretty much everything for no good reason that I can see is beside the point. Cheaper goods = more sales, thats basic economics, its finding the balance point of profitability that is tricky.
I am of the opinion that this is a gouge pure and simple and I won’t be buying the game because of it. Then again £35 is a tad gougy too, and £30 is on the cusp of being so. I generally don’t even look at purchasing a game until its around £25, by which time everyone has moved on to the next big thing.
If Steam’s experiments with huge discounts have proved anything its that low prices drive sales and can generate more profit as a result.
26/06/2009 at 19:58 Hunam says:
£40 for a pc game lol is about how my gut feels on this one.
Also, to our American friends, $50 (£30) is normal for a PC game, but does it have the same type of expectancy as it does in the UK, that is, the retail price drops about 2 – 3 weeks after release. I couldn’t imagine paying more than £30 for a top end game like Sims 3 or Modern Warfare 2, you know, the blockbuster releases, but £25 ($40) is the pricepoint for PC games for me.
I really did quite like the look of this, but no demo and a silly price clearly means they don’t want me to buy it.
26/06/2009 at 19:59 jsutcliffe says:
@Mandrill
“If Steam’s experiments with huge discounts have proved anything its that low prices drive sales and can generate more profit as a result.”
I’m pretty sure the Steam sales are so successful because they’re so short, so we’re not comparing like-to-like here.
26/06/2009 at 20:00 Alex Hopkinson says:
It’s the joy of the $ to euro conversion gaming companies so love. If we in the UK can get it for the USD price of $50 then we can pay £30, which is about £5 more than many new PC games sell for on Amazon but still a very acceptable price. However if we have to pay 50 euros then that’s £40, which is the price of a new console game. Annoying.
26/06/2009 at 20:01 Bibliotekarz says:
I’m happy to say that for the first time i see a game which is cheaper in Poland than in Western Europe. It costs 99 zlotys here(box version of course), which is just about 19 quid. Lucky me!
26/06/2009 at 20:01 Vinraith says:
Damn. Like others, the lack of a demo along with the high price-point rules out the immediate purchase I was anticipating. They should REALLY get out a demo, they might get $50 out of me if they can provide some serious Blood Bowl nostalgia.
26/06/2009 at 20:04 Greg Wild says:
Exactly what I was thinking.
I’ve not paid £40 for a PC game in…err… ever. Let alone one which I’m not entirely sure is worth a the usual £20-25 markup without having played a demo to check.
Just spent £40 on both ArmA II and a selection of books on Iran, too. I imagine we’ll see it quietly brought down in price in a month or so ala Empire Total War.
26/06/2009 at 20:28 GreatUncleBaal says:
Finding any firm release date info for this game (other than the digital version) is rather difficult. I really feel that their marketing department hasn’t made the best of getting this game out there, which is a shame. And yes, £40 for a digital game seems counter-intuitive. I may pay that for a physical copy of a game I am massively looking forward to (if it’s got a huge manual or map or something cool bundled with it), but not a straight download. Will definitely wait for a demo or some reviews at least, as I’m more than a little worried at the lack of actual gameplay footage in the trailers (although the pissed dwarves etc are amusing).
26/06/2009 at 20:31 Archonsod says:
Given I liked Chaos League I assume I’ll like what Cyanide have done now they have the official GW sanction.
I’m not gonna pay £40 for it though. Particularly not when it’s download only.
Ah well, back to Sudden Death it is.
26/06/2009 at 20:50 invisiblejesus says:
“Finding any firm release date info for this game (other than the digital version) is rather difficult. I really feel that their marketing department hasn’t made the best of getting this game out there, which is a shame.”
Boxed release in the US and Steam release will be in September.
I used to love the Blood Bowl board game, and have been really looking forward to a high quality PC version. I think I’m going to wait on this one though; browsing their forums it looks like there are a lot of players who find it pretty unpolished, which supports my suspicion that an early digital release basically amounts to charging players full price for a beta test. The price point is something I can live with, but I’d rather wait for the game to get polished up a bit and release on Steam so I don’t have to fuss with running around finding patches.
26/06/2009 at 20:51 Matt says:
For a while now I’ve found it hard to sympathize with the crowd that so loves to complain about game prices. Comb through the release list from last fall and even the most avid gamer is bound to find several quality games he overlooked for less than $25.
Kieron seems to think that it shouldn’t matter what the price is after launch. And while I suppose there may be some truth to that for someone writing a professional review with deadlines and all that, I think it very much should matter for just about everyone else.
All it takes is the tiniest amount of patience (often as little as a month) and most games can be found for well over 20% less than their release price. If someone isn’t willing to wait a month for a cheaper price, all that says to me is that the price really wasn’t that big of an issue for them after all.
26/06/2009 at 20:51 Archonsod says:
Hmm, boxed copy is supposed to be international and released in France and Germany today. Amazon.fr have it for EUR 47,34 which is still £40 :(
26/06/2009 at 21:01 Ian says:
FORTY of my British pounds for a DOWNLOAD copy?
Nay, I say!
26/06/2009 at 21:05 Lady Bobz says:
It’s just money people. You have to fart it away on intangibles or it clutters the place up and attracts thieves.
26/06/2009 at 21:17 Hunam says:
It’s coming to steam et al in September according to the official forums, but as far as I can tell, the UK wont have a box PC copy, I do hope they change their minds/I am wrong about this.
26/06/2009 at 21:25 Hi!! says:
The lack of a boxed copy in the UK might be due to the problems at Ascaron, who is the regular UK distributor for Focus Home Interactive (the publisher of Blood Bowl). I’ve tried to figure out the fate of Ascaron UK ever since the bankrupcy, but haven’t found anything.
26/06/2009 at 21:27 reverseclipse says:
Does it look better than the beta? I enjoy the game play quite a bit, but i don’t want to put the money out unless it looks a lot better.
26/06/2009 at 21:40 Fede says:
@ Lady Bobz :this is a reason why it’s not bad to attract thieves :P
26/06/2009 at 21:58 Ben says:
It’s pretty fantastic, actually. I’m not sure what people are seeing that’s unpolished; I haven’t seen anything aside from a few translation goofs (i.e. a menu popup warning that “You don’t have any player. Would you like to buy some?”). I haven’t encountered any bugs. It’s an absolutely spot-on adaptation of the boardgame.
As for why you’d want it if you already have the boardgame, I can think of several reasons. Online multiplayer lets you play friends who aren’t in your area, and it’s got a pretty slick single-player campaign mode, too. I’m really loving it, even if it is a bit on the pricey side (and it is).
26/06/2009 at 22:17 Elman says:
50€ is pretty much the regular price of a game here in Spain. Which is why I buy pretty much everything on the Internet, from the UK: I usually get to save like 20€, and on top of that I get the original dubbing, instead of the (Usually terrible) Spanish one.
In this case I’ll be forced to buy it here, and I’ll be able to enjoy spanish text with english voices… Ugh. Well, it could be worse (See Starcraft’s dubbing…).
However! I’ve never played Blood Bowl, and there’s no way I’m buying this without playing it first. I’ll find a way to give it a spin before I buy it, you can be sure about that. Since when is it fine NOT to release a demo?
Oh well. Apart from that, it looks like a great game.
26/06/2009 at 22:20 Brass Gerbil says:
@jsutcliffe
“I’m pretty sure the Steam sales are so successful because they’re so short, so we’re not comparing like-to-like here.”
Actually, you’re incorrect there. Steam’s weekend sale technique is called “loss-leading,” and it’s one of the time-tested methods for increasing long-term revenue. Think of it as second-order advertising.
Initial high prices scare away customers who are “on the cusp.” But a weekend of loss-leading can generate enormous word-of-mouth advertising, and you can gradually climb the price. That’s retail marketing 101.
Also keep in mind there may something else at work in this case: a future non-compete agreement between the manufacturer (publisher, in this case), and a bulk retail outlet, (Steam, here). They don’t want to hamstring their long-term revenue by undercutting their own distribution deals. This is why it’s usually cheaper to buy a retail product from the middleman than directly from the manufacturer. It’s just market protection.
16/09/2010 at 21:59 jackflash says:
That’s not a loss leader. A loss leader is when you sell one item at a loss and hope that will induce them to buy other items at full price. Non-rivalrous goods can’t really be loss leaders because there is no marginal cost of production or distribution. Obviously, you can still sell them at a price so low that no matter how many units you sell you won’t recoup your costs of production (so overall you sold them at a “loss”), but steam sales tend to generate huge amounts of revenue for the product on sale because of the high volume.
26/06/2009 at 22:57 Lafinass says:
I’ve never particularly understood the price parity between digital distribution and brick and mortar. Why is the consumer expected to pony up the same coin when there is no stocking cost, no inventory to manage, and pretty much a reduction in the ‘middle man’ cost across the board?
26/06/2009 at 23:31 Stromko says:
When I saw the price I decided not to buy it. I’m not willing to play full price for a Tournament-style game. For 50$, I want a full world or a big storyline or something like that. I’m also not willing to pay 50$ without absolutely loving the demo, and there’s no demo so, no.
26/06/2009 at 23:36 liquidindian says:
It’s not the £40 that’s putting me as such, it’s the 21-day window for download, then that’s your lot, matey. It’s just not what I’m used to for digital downloads. Maybe I’m spoiled, but I feel that Steam & Gamersgate & even GOG have set the bar by allowing us to download multiple times, and to provide a service that’s less than that for more money is enough to convince me to wait until September.
26/06/2009 at 23:38 JonFitt says:
@Hunam:
Annoyingly with the crap state of PC games sales in the US, there’s not the price drop I was used to in the UK. Your big stores if they even have any PC games* will still sell them at $50 6-months down the line. I haven’t found a good delivery retailer that is better than Amazon.com, there’s nothing as good as Play.com that I’ve found so far.
So basically, I either wait for a Steam sale, or get it from Amazon.com later when the price has dropped.
* Went into 2 Gamestops to try and buy Sims3 for the missus and was told they no longer stock PC games apart from copies of WoW!
27/06/2009 at 00:02 Flappybat says:
This seems to happen to non-mainstream games. Arma2 was put up for 40 euros two weeks before release but you can pick up the box for £25. Not that many digital games are cheaper which there really should be far more fuss about in the press. I’m buying less games on Steam (except sales) as they almost all command a £5 premium over boxed copies for no reason.
On Bloodbowl, I got it and am enjoying it but find it bizzare that they put A or AA effort into it but didn’t bother to round off many of the edges. I mean, whenever an event happens you get a big box of white text on black background on screen, the game telling you to use your imagination because there wasn’t any room in the budget to tell you about it.
27/06/2009 at 00:08 Flappybat says:
Make that “show you it”.
I guess I will expand a bit more on the game. I think it’s bizzare they didn’t smooth it out a bit more for massmarket.
You don’t need to change the game at all, the basics are very simple. It doesn’t translate to a real time mode like Dawn Of War (and it was a mistake for them to even try) but with the computer handling all the work you barely even need to think about numbers. Some solid work on making the presentation easily understandable with good feedback and communication from the game to the player and it could have been as mainstream as Dawn Of War. Instead they threw their hands in the air and said it’s always going to be a hardcore game and relegate it to selling a couple of thousand copies.
27/06/2009 at 00:16 Jubaal says:
Aye, I played the beta and was very impressed with it. However I’m very disappointed that the digital download is £40 and the boxed copy does not come out until September. I cannot see this helping their sales.
27/06/2009 at 00:16 Feanor says:
Calling a download digital is redundant.
27/06/2009 at 00:17 leeder_krenon says:
OK WE HAVE ESTABLISHED IT IS EXPENSIVE. no more posting on this is going to make a blind bit of difference and frankly i am sure nobody else wants to read another bore wittering on about how £40 is expensive. it is expensive. we all agree on that. so what we want to know now is:
IS IT ANY GOOD?
thanks.
27/06/2009 at 01:01 Nick says:
19.something % VAT =(
Fuck it, I bought it cause its a game I have been wanting for about 10 years. Necromunda next pls kkthnks.
27/06/2009 at 01:03 Nick says:
And yes it is very good.. as it is Blood Bowl. I have only played a Hot Seat game thus far but it was very entertaining, nice little animations for things and the rules all seem present and correct, including events like my player getting brained by a rock thrown by an angry fan (the events and special rules appear as text boxes in turn based mode.. I could care less about real time so I have no idea if they’ll even occur there).
In short.. it’s Bloodbowl and Bloodbowl is a good thing.
27/06/2009 at 01:24 Son of Montfort says:
Leeder_Krenon, see my post above – go to the link and read my mini-AAR. Oh, it’s good… it’s REAL good!
27/06/2009 at 01:25 Nerd Rage says:
@Feanor
So are phrases like “ATM Machine” and “GPS System” but that doesn’t stop the majority of people from using them that way. While it is redundant to specify that the download is, in fact, digital, that’s the way it’s always used in marketing. They make sure to tell you it’s a digital download, because a significant portion of their customers need it spelled out for them by a cadre of fuzzy little puppets singing a catchy tune about how a secret society of fairies devote their lives to putting the digital in your download service.
I noticed at one point that the help page of some or another download website specifies that the customer will be required to have an internet connection in order to access the download service. How many shades of silly is that?
27/06/2009 at 01:26 Nakki says:
It’s same with Anno 1404 and digital download. Both Steam and Gamersgate ask around 50 euros, while I could get the game for 33 euros INCLUDING SHIPPING from Play.com.
Why the hell can I get game with physical box and dvd shipped from a foreign country to my front door for about a third cheaper than just downloading it? I thought the prices would favour the buyers with digital download, not just increase profits of the sellers by a huge marigin.
27/06/2009 at 01:27 Nakki says:
Yes, just for refrence: here in Finland new games cost about 50 euros to physically buy from a physical store too.
27/06/2009 at 02:05 Rosti says:
This is an interesting development. I’ve had this title on my list of DS-Games-to-grab-if-they-don’t-look-crippled for some time now and this might just make it more attractive.
27/06/2009 at 03:13 Dave L. says:
I’d be more angry about the 21 day limit on the download once you’ve purchased it than the price. Much as I really, really want to play this, I think I’ll hold off until September and either get a boxed copy, or get it off Steam.
27/06/2009 at 04:05 Stompbox says:
Actually as an Australain 50 euro for a new release is cheap. We pay more presumably because it is believed we are descended from theives.
27/06/2009 at 05:44 Mr. Brand says:
New PC games are 40-50€ here, while console games are up to 50% more (from reasonable stores – we have some which are just insanely overpriced). $50 seems sorta cheap, but a bit much for download only.
27/06/2009 at 07:56 Dan says:
It’s all about perceived value. £40 for a digital download is expensive (though not really more so than Steam et al charge for some releases) when compared to a boxed copy, and whilst it may be saving an plastics, you’re still using electricity to get it so the green argument goes out of the window.
As people have said though, Blood Bowl tabletop costs £50, plus £25-30 per extra team. Equally, I’ve willingly ploughed a few hundred into WoW, a game which will have a final cut off date beyond which I can never play it again.
For those who are complaining about the 21-day limit – it does say that if you need it again after that period, you just have to email them and they’ll send you a link. I never really understood this as an argument anyway, as if you scratch your physical copy then you’re stuffed – you can’t get another.
What’s Blood Bowl like then? It’s Blood Bowl – it really is, and as such it’s brilliant. The AI plays a decent game, but makes enough mistakes to not feel like a robot. There’s plenty to do in the single player game, and the scope for online leagues, each of which can contain a host of separate divisions, is immense.
That said, turn the commentary off as soon as possible – there’s only about 8 phrases and they get dull after three turnovers.
Anyone for an RPS league?
27/06/2009 at 08:05 Jim Rossignol says:
Digital games have to become cheaper. In fact, I’d say that the sales on Steam make it very clear that cheaper digi downloads are publishers’ chance to make more money on the PC again. If they don’t take that opportunity, then they deserve to fail.
Of course Blood Bowl could be reverse psychology, so when they reduce it to £15, we all go “ooh!” And they still make money.
27/06/2009 at 08:49 Alex says:
High prices like this remind me of the way Paramount handled the Star Trek franchise when it came time to release all the series on DVD. You’d normally $50 for a season’s worth of episodes, right? Well, knowing the nature of the fan base, Paramount put the MRSP at $100.
27/06/2009 at 09:25 Autopanda says:
Of course, if you think it’s too expensive, there is fumbbl.com and it’s Bloodbowl alternative.
27/06/2009 at 10:14 Kieron Gillen says:
Jim: “Of course Blood Bowl could be reverse psychology, so when they reduce it to £15, we all go “ooh!” And they still make money.”
Exactly my point. They get the money from the people willing to pay forty quid, and then they reduce the price and get it from the rest of us.
KG
27/06/2009 at 11:13 toonu says:
HAHAHAHAHAHA wtf are they taking? NO THANKS TO EXPENSIVE DOWNLOADS.
Goblin teams ftw, goblin picks up ball, troll picks up goblin, troll throws goblin to end zone, goblins score. Repeat.
27/06/2009 at 11:17 Lykurgos says:
I’ve bought it, and don’t really see why anyone would object to the pricing. As Kieron mentions, different people are willing to pay different prices and they are quite sensibly taking advantage of that.
Whilst the price is directly quantified, the enjoyment and longevity each customer will experience are not. However, having played the beta and expecting some great multiplayer experiences, I believe the price vs enjoyment & longevity equation is extremely favourable for this one.
Give me a 200 EUR knock-out game that compels me to keep on playing into the small hours again and again over a string of “okay” 40 EUR a pop games anytime.
27/06/2009 at 11:22 Crispy says:
No demo, no purchase. It’s that simple.
They’re asking to be raped by piracy by releasing on a non-trusted digi-download service, with no demo and a high price point. Not that I condone or practise piracy, but it’s situations like these that give pirates very strong arguments for their position. “You tried to screw us, so now we’re gonna screw you, but harder.” – that’s what they’re saying right now.
27/06/2009 at 12:39 Super Bladesman says:
I’m guessing this will likely be something akin to a rebranded Chaos League as well? For £40?
No ta.
27/06/2009 at 12:47 D says:
I still have no idea how this game plays aside from football and warhammer. They haven’t shown even a single gameplay trailer? And from youtube, I get the impression that I would find the ‘chaos league’ mode more interesting than the turn-based.
Ofcourse, there are also no gameplay videos of the ‘chaos league’ mode.. So, no sale until reviews show up.
27/06/2009 at 13:06 jalf says:
@D: Do you need to know more than that it is “football and warhammer”? :D
27/06/2009 at 13:10 jalf says:
Fifty f’ing euro? That is just absurd. I trust RPS to wake us up when the price has been halved.
Or because you’re silly and buy from local stores. We get charged pretty much the same from retail stores in Denmark, which is why I haven’t bought anything from them for the last 4 years or so. (Last I bought was HL2).
Instead, I buy for €20-30 from play.com with free shipping. You should do the same.
27/06/2009 at 13:10 Heliocentric says:
This game is worth £10 to me, the release hype with a decent demo or excellent write up could have pushed it to £15.
One month after release my expectation of price will fall to around £5 maybe £10 again with an excellent write up or demo, but come christmas? And the tidal wave of games as gifts? This game is worth nothing to me without a demo or a fan-fucking-tastic review.
Well done publisher.
27/06/2009 at 13:11 jalf says:
ok, and if the edit button worked, I’d obviously delete the above again. Thought you said austrian, not australian. :D
Although Australians at least get US prices on Steam most of the time, so you can usually save money there.
27/06/2009 at 13:16 The Apologist says:
It is too expensive.
It’s inspired me to get Chaos League out again, and it will tide me over till this is more like £25. Shame. They could have had my money today.
27/06/2009 at 13:33 Heliocentric says:
Would
I’m actually excited about trine, had a nice demo. £25 is too much, and thats on steam which i trust. But publishers are scalping a small number of fanatics when they could be making a killing by selling a metric crapton of copies at a lower price point, but what do i know.
27/06/2009 at 13:42 Driadan says:
I’m thinking that they might want to get as much money from each group as they can. As you guys said some people are willing to pay 50€, some others 40, and so on… but without a demo you risk that people don’t want to pay so much without knowing the product, so some (all?) of them will try first a “free copy” of the game before buying. Since they already have a copy, there is no need to rush and buy it, so they’ll wait ’till price drops. So that initial thought of getting as much money from each group might not work.
27/06/2009 at 13:59 jalf says:
@Driadan: Yeah, but it’s usually said that sales fall off extremely quickly in the games industry. If your game isn’t a success within the first week, it generally won’t become one. Keeping that in mind, it seems a strange move to make 80% of your customers wait some unspecified length of time, allowing them to forget about the game.
27/06/2009 at 14:24 Nick says:
@Helio I’m sure they care how much its worth to you.
27/06/2009 at 14:49 EyeMessiah says:
I too was going to purchase it, until I actually saw the price this morning. Feh! I haven’t paid £40 for a PC game for years.
27/06/2009 at 15:42 Ben says:
@Super Bladesman: It’s not a rebranded Chaos League. It’s a much better game. I didn’t like Chaos League, but I’m loving BB.
27/06/2009 at 16:17 Orange says:
Even as a Blood Bowl fan I’m not going near it until it’s 10 quid or less. Steam sales have shown the way on PC game pricing.
27/06/2009 at 16:28 Mark L says:
First off, let me just say that I’m an American, and therefore got it for the much more reasonable price of 50 USD. That said, this is a wonderful game so far. It seems to be an extremely faithful port of the tabletop game (at least, in the mode I am playing!). The AI is solid thus far, and has definitely given me a challenge, and the gameplay is just incredibly addictive- I play match after match and hours go by without noticing.
Bottom line for Blood Bowl fans is that if you’re looking for a faithful port with good AI, this is it.
27/06/2009 at 16:33 Heliocentric says:
@nick no, they don’t care. They clearly don’t want anyones money at all.
27/06/2009 at 16:34 jalf says:
@Nick: And perhaps that’s why most publishers are struggling to make a profit. In most markets, it is considered good business sense to care how much your customers are willing to pay.
27/06/2009 at 16:45 Dan says:
If all people want is a turn based way to play Blood bowl over the net then there are 1 or 2 apps that already do this, like Skijunkies BB client. 40 quid for a game that by all accounts is not polished, and a 3D version of already available free software is a rip off by anyones definition.
Would you pay 40 quid for a 3d axis and allies clone when AAA is available open source? i wouldn’t. Plus no boxed game till september indicates to me they don’t feel it’s finished.
27/06/2009 at 16:47 Vinraith says:
@Dan
For a functional AI I’ll cheerfully pay full price, you don’t realize what a luxury it is to still have access to friends that play these things until they’ve faded away on you.
27/06/2009 at 16:48 Heliocentric says:
I’d pay £40 for the necromunda game. I’d even murder a man for the necromunda game.
27/06/2009 at 16:54 Jim Rossignol says:
I’d bring a man back to life for a Necromunda game.
(Brink looks a bit sci-fi city gang-warish.)
27/06/2009 at 17:21 Heliocentric says:
Thing about necromunda is allies that can’t shoot for toffee who get scared and have guns which may jam, or even explode in their faces. The nearest thing is brothers in arms. No mmo is going to be squad vs squad with player order driven ai members who can permanently die.
27/06/2009 at 17:35 Nick says:
A proper campaign of Necromunda in PC form would be great.. especially if they included stuff like the mutants and spire hunters.
27/06/2009 at 18:12 eyemessiah says:
I almost bought it there. I have the purchase page open in my browser right now. But they don’t even seem to have any gameplay videos on the site. Come on guys, meet me halfway!
27/06/2009 at 18:15 EyeMessiah says:
I’d really like to buy it right now, but I worry I’m going to end up paying double what everyone else will eventually pay – and for the privilege of basically beta-testing it. Yes a necromunda game would be fantastic.
27/06/2009 at 18:32 Nick says:
For what it’s worth I have yet to encounter anything broken beyond the odd sentence being grammatically incorrect in english.
27/06/2009 at 18:42 Heliocentric says:
There are loads of videos floating about on the webs.
Still, they seem highly edited. Additionally, i’d hunt down an entire bloodline of pidgeon’s for a gorkamorka game but i’d want the gorkamorka game to be a real time shooter like bf2 with racing missions etc. Lose a limb and tha’ doc can give you a better one with rotary saw (for example) on it.
27/06/2009 at 18:50 Flappybat says:
Hah they’ll never do a proper gameplay video as when the opponent takes their turn you spend a good thirty seconds to a minute staring at a pitch with nothing happening. The automatic camera also has the most boring camera angles ever invented so I just leave it on manual.
No bugs so far.
27/06/2009 at 18:50 Greg Wild says:
@Jim
Aye, Necrumunda would make for an excellent game. As would Mordheim for that matter. I can see it working for all kinds of formats too – FPS, RPG, TBS; and then any of those in on an MMO scale.
A man can dream :D
27/06/2009 at 19:16 Benjamin_Barker says:
So I only(?) had to spend $50, and I bought it. It’s a new TB game, I’ve long been curious about Blood Bowl, and I’m unlikely to play it in any other form. If I had something better to do I’d have waited a couple of months for the price drops or maybe for the DS version.
Haven’t read the wargamer link, but I find unpolished the slowish menus and loading, and the limited saves: one slot for each campaign. Don’t click on a pass or move you didn’t mean, as it’ll take a minute to return to a load menu and several more to reload the save you probably don’t have. You’ll also have to read the rules outside the program, and I had to google around to find the right version.* These frustrations have gotten in the way, but inside the matches the game is solid. Only a decent interface (also sluggish, but ok in TB) but most importantly: very challenging and fun, with good AI (at least for a newbie). So… I’ll get my $50 worth from the game, but I do feel a bit like I’ve been beta-testing.
* http://www.games-workshop.com/MEDIA_CustomProductCatalog/m1310002_BB_Complete_Blood_Bowl_Rulebook.pdf
27/06/2009 at 21:24 H says:
I don’t get it, I really don’t. Who the hell will pay higher than your regular game price for a game they can’t demo first?
I can totally understand why you would want to download a pirated copy and play it first – or, you know, at all – rather than splash out and risk it.
It doesn’t seem to make any sense to me, or am I missing something?
I really, really hope any reviews bear this in mind, because it’s not on, it’s really not.
27/06/2009 at 22:53 Flobulon says:
Erm, has it pointed out that there’s a typo in this post title?
Or am I just being incredibly thick, and its some sort of pun?
27/06/2009 at 23:00 Kieron Gillen says:
No, me being shit.
KG
27/06/2009 at 23:13 Bhazor says:
The ridiculous thing about overcharging for downloads is that as theres no middle men or storage/shipping costs they can make more money while charging less than they would in retail. But by charging more those customers will just buy the retail (or warez) version. Meaning the publisher makes less money from that sale meaning they essentially undercut themselves.
That along with region restrictions and idiotic regional pricing is why publishers deserve everything that happens to them. Like being absorbed into an amorphous blob by the bigger boys.
28/06/2009 at 01:02 Taillefer says:
Sounds like a prime candidate for an RPS verdict.
28/06/2009 at 06:52 wyrmsine says:
Well, I’ve been playing it (it’s Blood Bowl, after all, and that gets me right off the bat), but I’m having some issues. Lone Skaven are beating the crap out of my Minotaur 100% of the time – I’ve played 5 games so far, and the meaty bastard goes down like a cheap streetwalker at the mere thought of ratbreath. Am I totally crap at the game, or is something broken?
28/06/2009 at 10:41 Nick says:
Hmm, that sounds a bit off, if they have no other skaven in his tackle zone you should be able to pick their tackle dice as the mino has more strength.
28/06/2009 at 17:17 Gulag says:
Ahh, Fluk it. Despite my reservations about the price, the release strategy, the wait for Steam option, the price, I’m going to just have to buy it now. At the end of the day, this is a developer that took the risk of making a game I thought I’d never see, and I hope my money goes towards something equally awesome, like Necromunda.
Played the beta and loved it. Why they wouldn’t put out something similar as a demo is beyond understanding.
28/06/2009 at 20:46 Woges says:
I’ll wait for a box. I haven’t played since it first came out in ’87, and I don’t remember buying cheerleaders & such. Looks fun hopefully has legs as well.
28/06/2009 at 22:07 veerus says:
I learned of BB after buying Chaos League but I immediately fell in love with the concept. To me, BB’s real time gameplay was to be the better, more updated version of CL with better online play. So I bought it. In reality (and probably due to not being playtested by the beta testers), real time mode is significantly worse than that of CL (though nothing that couldn’t be fixed in a few patches)…
Since real time mode sucked, I tried the turn-based mode. And now I’m hooked! The AI isn’t terrible so the ability to always be able to play against a competent opponent is great. Plus there’s also the ability to play online which I expect will be quite popular.
Basically, despite the fact that real time mode is poor, the turn-based gameplay makes up for it. As others mentioned, the cost of buying the board game and a few teams can be quite costly. And you don’t get a full-time opponent or online play with it. I’m extremely happy with the purchase.
28/06/2009 at 23:22 Aldezhar says:
I live in Norway and hence can choose currency. Bought it for 49.99 USD. That translates well to NOK compared with stores.
The worst part is that the small letters saying “limited amount of activations” does not appear until after you pay. That would have been a dealbreaker for me. Damn them…
Game is good though.
28/06/2009 at 23:47 jalf says:
Thanks for the warning
28/06/2009 at 23:51 Vinraith says:
Indeed, thanks Aldezhar, that’s reason enough to pass until/unless it’s changed.
29/06/2009 at 08:50 Steve says:
It’s expensive in the UK because the £ is weak as hell. You can’t blame the publisher for that, it’s the same price as every other game in the rest of Europe.
29/06/2009 at 10:01 Scautura says:
Actually, the pricing is way off…
$49.99 for US (that would be £30.30 – but if you manage to buy it for this they still whack 19.6%VAT on it and end up charging £36-7)
£39.99 (with 19.6% VAT!!!!! WHAT???)
I don’t remember the Euro price, but it ended up being less than £40 when I saw it. (Amazon FR has it for 42.81Euro, which is £36.81, and 47.32Euro, which is £40.25)
I would have bought it if there wasn’t such a disparity, but once again we’ve been shafted in the UK. Of course, there’s always the argument that “you’d pay more than that for the boxed set and teams” etc…. But that’s comparing apples and oranges.
29/06/2009 at 11:45 Choca says:
Anyway the game is quite good, there are some bugs though and the difficulty settings for the AI are a bit wrong (hard mode seems actually easier than normal mode because the AI plays “safer” on hard which leads to less “lucky” dice rolls).
The muliplayer UI could use a big improvement too, and long pass play is for sissies :o
29/06/2009 at 12:29 Woges says:
So it’s a rent for £40. I agree with KG that’s not on, but they are not the first to do it, and plenty seem fine with it. I’ll pass until the situation changes.
29/06/2009 at 12:32 Thrawny says:
No demo, No sale.
29/06/2009 at 12:36 Woges says:
Online BB is an appealing concept though, so I hope they sort something out.
29/06/2009 at 13:34 Choca says:
Online BB is an appealing concept until you face someone who’s been playing for 20 years :D
29/06/2009 at 14:17 Gothnak says:
I’m a proper boardgaming geek and have been waiting for this to come out for ages, so i ended up paying the full £40. Also, at least in my head i know that £40 is going straight to the dev, not to a rubbish shop taking 50% of the profit. I want them to make more teams, add more rules etc, and i see this as a way of saying ‘thank you’ for finally making the darn game!
By the way it is awesome (even if you have to turn the settings down to prevent your video card exploding) and Chaos Rules.
I played it all weekend when i wasn’t enjoying the sun, and will be playing it for months to come!
29/06/2009 at 14:20 Gothnak says:
Also, the problem with your Minotaur vs Skaven is that you are probably getting ‘Both Down’ rolls meaning that their skaven has ‘block’ and your minotaur doesn’t. Make sure you are picking the correct dice when you attack or block as you want different ones depending who’s turn it is :).
29/06/2009 at 14:47 Woges says:
It might be advisable to learn the game a tad better before taking on the 20+ year vets. It’s going to have a ranking system before long though right? So that problem could be solved then.
29/06/2009 at 16:06 Geoff says:
“If – say – Epic let you have access to Gears of War 3 two weeks in advance of everyone else but you had to pay a grand for it… yeah, I bet there’s people out there who’d do it.”
Yes, and that’s exactly how it *should* work. Direct downloading makes this sort of economic shenanigan even more possible, not less. If you can afford to spend $1,000 on a game that just came out, and it’s worth that to you, then DO. That’s how you support the people bringing you that game, and send the message that it’s that valuable to you. If it’s not worth that to you, wait.
It may be frustrating to you to wait a couple months to play something, but surely you have no shortage of good stuff to play? And by doing things this way, impatient rich dudes get to subsidize your gaming pleasure. Niche games aren’t going to sell a hojillion copies even at $10, but if they can sell 100 copies at $1,000, they’re off to a great start at justifying their development costs and providing joy for the rest of us when they eventually make it to $10.
There is no shortage of gaming bounty to be found for less than $20, but it’s mostly stuff that came out a year or more ago. You of all people know that’s not a bad thing. The “low marks for high pricing = consumer advocacy” thing makes a certain amount of sense, but those reviews will still be there two years from now, when the price has dropped.
Just this morning, I started reading old reviews of Serious Sam and Painkiller, to see if they’re worth my time. I think Steam wants to sell me Painkiller + Expansion pack for $10. That’s practically a lunch here, so all I want to know from the reviews is will I enjoy it? The time I’ll invest in playing it far exceeds the money.
29/06/2009 at 16:47 Choca says:
@Gothnak : “By the way it is awesome [...] and Chaos Rules.”
Amen to that. Once you give block to all your chaos warriors, you can really smash pretty much every one except dwarves (damn stunties can take a punch).
@wyrmsine : Your minotaur should stomp pretty much every skaven in sight but beware of stormvermin, because they have block from the start and your minotaur doesn’t, meaning that they will take you down on a “both down” result.
You should also know that the minotaur is very strong but not invulnerable (his AV is “only” 8), which means that back up is always welcome when he’s assaulted by multiple enemies.
I would also advise against buying the minotaur from the very start of the game in order to buy Team Re-Rolls instead ; RR are cheaper when you buy’em at team creation and they are a godsend for chaos in the early game because your players may have good stats but they’re not packing any skill (whereas a dwarf blocker will start with block, tackle and thick skull)
29/06/2009 at 17:10 Woges says:
@Geoff, yeah that’s fine, but money is not the only issue here. It’s also a limited time DD with limited activations; meaning that the people handing over their £40 now are ‘probably’ getting the worst deal in more than one factor.
29/06/2009 at 17:42 Gothnak says:
@Choca – I missed the usefulness of rerolls early on and bought a Minotaur, had some very very close matches at first. I lost my last match 2-1 to the Reikland Reavers (Who took a very early 2-0 lead), but they only had 3 players on the pitch when the fulltime whistle went and all of them were stunned. i lost 2-1, damn short halves!
29/06/2009 at 18:09 Optimaximal says:
@Dan
Granted, it’s probably a knee jerk reaction, but when you consider past form (i.e. EA Downloader, Plinus (Time Gentlemen Please) spring to mind), services which tend too mention time-limited downloads often try to charge extra to extend the download window – for example, w. Time Gentlemen Please, once you’ve downloaded it once, that’s it.
I’ve spoken to Dan & he’s going to try and sort something, but if you want to download it more than once, you have to pay an extra 50% on top of the price. It’s just wrong in a day and age to prohibit even a sensible amount of downloads when the bloody server is going to be serving the damn file anyway whether I’ve paid the extra £1.50 or not.
29/06/2009 at 18:34 Geoff says:
@Woges
Oh I’m not defending the DRM. Simply the practice of games releasing with higher than the “standard” or “reasonable” price, then gradually lowering it over time.
29/06/2009 at 22:43 Woges says:
You used to be able to get replacement disks very cheaply a long time ago; customer service isn’t what it used to be imho.
30/06/2009 at 00:41 undead dolphin hacker says:
Just thought I’d update with a note on this game’s pirate status:
For a low-profile game such as this, the torrent sites are reporting around 1500-2000 simultaneous users either seeding or downloading the game. That’s more than, say, the Sims 3.
This is what happens when you:
a.) Don’t have a demo of any sort.
b.) Charge $50 for what is essentially a very late beta by the sound of it.
c.) Charge 40 pounds to the poor sods in the UK (roughly $66).
So yeah. Pretty crazy numbers for such a small title as this, but then that’s what you get when you do everything in your power not to have people buy your game in the first two weeks.
30/06/2009 at 09:18 Steve says:
The standard full price for a video game in most of Europe is around 50€, that’s roughly 70$.
Poor sods in the UK ? Yeah right.
30/06/2009 at 12:20 Wazco says:
Im not sure if its mentioned in the comments already but for any brits who want this cheaper, in the country field, change UK to United States and you get it tax free, it still ends up being the most expensive game ive bought but shaving £7 off the bill helps.
Im not going to get into the legality of it but for me it was legal as im from the channel islands and dont pay VAT anyway. (I actually sent them an email a wek ago asking how to get it tax free and what do you know they havent even replied yet)
30/06/2009 at 12:41 Scautura says:
What country field where?
I know if you put the code for the US product in you can get some money off (convert $50 to £ then add silly amounts of VAT) so can this be abused so you can get it for £30.30?
30/06/2009 at 15:15 Wazco says:
After clicking your credit card type where you put your name, email and CC details, theres a country field that defaults to United Kingdom for me, click the “change country” link. This probably wont work for Paypal though.
01/07/2009 at 09:45 Bursar says:
The key point that no one’s yet confirmed:
Is there a Dwarf Deathroller?
01/07/2009 at 16:26 Scautura says:
Why yes – there is… Squelchy non-Dorf teams for lunch?
02/07/2009 at 05:37 Walsh says:
This is what happens when you:
a.) Don’t have a demo of any sort.
b.) Charge $50 for what is essentially a very late beta by the sound of it.
c.) Charge 40 pounds to the poor sods in the UK (roughly $66).
Bwahaha, the old if theres no demo I have a legitimate claim to pirate it excuse. It doesn’t play like a beta to me, I’ve poured maybe 8 hours into it already. It plays great and captured the tense thrill of the boardgame.
02/07/2009 at 08:59 Brad says:
Hey, look, it’s authentic Blood Bowl complete with an authentic Games Workshop price!
Someone had to say it, right? I didn’t buy it (yet :-/) because I saw the US $50 price tag and I’m still trying to decide whether I want the portable or PC version…
02/07/2009 at 13:47 Ganabul says:
People looking for a cheaper alternative while they wait for the price to drop could do worse than check out http://www.fumbbl.com, which uses the skijunkie client mentioned above.
Someone mentioned fumbbl in the comments to an earlier bloodbowl thread, & I’ve been playing on and off ever since. My way of passing it forward ;)
02/07/2009 at 14:37 Chicken Dinner says:
I quote, from the latest patch notes:
“To enhance the performance of the game on your computer, the game resolution has been decreased.”
That is the entirety of the changes, and this required an entirely new bb.exe to be downloaded (24MB).
Seems fishy to me. Nothing like full disclosure to instil confidence in your customers.
05/07/2009 at 23:43 Pedwarpump says:
Much as it’s going to sound like whining, but who else has paid out for this? I doubt the randomness of the game engine, just having played my first game and suffered 9 double skulls in 11 turns :(
15/07/2009 at 02:26 Sunjammer says:
I wanted to do a Flash version of Necromunda a while back. On that topic; Gorkamorka?! I had more chaotic fun with that game than any other GW title