New Era for Game Pricing?

I was excited to see an article today announcing that at least one innovative game developer has decided to try a bold new pricing scheme similar to that of Radiohead’s 2007 album In Rainbows.

The developer Eidos Interactive will allow people to pay whatever they think is fair for a copy of Championship Manager 2010, although there is also a transaction fee of approximately $4. However, charging as little as $4.01 for a game that is already quite popular in certain markets is a pretty radical sales strategy to take, and could usher in a new era of pricing for lesser-known developers and games.

I, for one, am a big fan of this strategy from a business standpoint for a number of reasons. First, there’s a good chance that they’ll attract many new people to the game who would have never considered paying full price for it in the past, myself included. By offering later updates at a small price, they have a good chance of hooking many new customers and getting them to continue playing the game and buying future versions.

Additionally, they obviously will be getting a lot of positive press coverage for this move, as well as generating a lot of goodwill for their actions. Since traditional game companies spend a ton of money on advertising to get the word out about their games, taking advantage of free press and blog coverage, as well as social media and word-of-mouth, can be a great way to save money and make the game more profitable even at a much lower price.

Finally, I think this kind of innovative thinking encourages new developers to think creatively like this and find ways to get good products to market outside of the traditional model of finding a developer, paying for advertising, making deals with retail partners, etc. The download model worked very well for Radiohead once they were no longer part of a large label, and they claimed that they as a band made more money from offering the album at any price than with any of their previous albums, and they were able to maintain creative control over the product. Hopefully the same will be true for independent game developers.

Got a news tip? Send it to press@mmomfg.com and we'll shower you with love!