Amazon enters the games direct distribution market

http://www.amazon.com/b/?node=979455011

http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/02/04/079239

Looks interesting. Any Blitz coders using them yet?

thanks for the heads up

Yes, since Amazon own Reflexive, and most people who are on Reflexive are therefore now on Amazon.

The one point of contention at the moment, is that the prices of most games have been slashed from $19.99 to as low as $6.99 - only a select few remain at full price. The new pricing is not just limited to Amazon - the prices are the same on Reflexive itself, and also on all Reflexive affiliate sites.

What does that mean? Well, in plain English, royalties per unit have been cut by over 60%. Whether there's a marked increase in sales to compensate, only time will tell. We need a three-fold increase in sales to even things out, but I don't think that's going to happen.

Oh, and I find it completely stupid that you can only buy the games from Amazon if you live in the US.

I am mildly annoyed about it but staying open-minded; when all this Amazon take-over lark first came about there was no mention of heavy price slashes. I didn't even know until yesterday.

Eschalon is on there, but possibly for not much longer.

This is a the start of a price war that has no end in sight- except for "free" (advertising driven revenue) or perhaps $0.99 (games to compete with iTunes). This will kill any game that takes more than 3-6 months to develop, and all we will begin to see are ultra-cheap game portals saturated with endless versions of Breakout and Bejeweled. Jake, how long before BFG counters with $4.99 downloads for all games?

Basilisk Games was not given a choice in the matter, they just cut our price and put our game up. All our other vendors are now being undercut by Amazon and I highly doubt we are going to see sales compensate for this lower cost. We are a niche game, after all. Our customers are fewer and are willing to pay $20-$25 for a quality 30-hour RPG. Lowering our price does not increase our appeal to housewives.

We will likely pull out of Amazon/Reflexive and concentrate on portals like Greenhouse, Direct2Drive and Steam. If Basilisk Games decides to start making "Eschalon Adventures: Gem Match Melee!" then we will be happy to be on Reflexive.

when retailers want to sell something cheaper, they sometimes have to take less money per sale as the distributers might still sell at the same price, its just the shop wants to price something at whatever less than the competition

if you were selling the rights to download at a fixed rate per sale and they set the RRP at £20 you would get the same ammount of money as if they had put it up at £15 assuming that is that you didnt sell to them at 16 ;) (but if they wanted to make a £1 loss per sale ...)
but with online sales do you get a flat royalty or a percent of the RRP?, if it was flat who cares you get the same money, if its (as i think) a percent then it does suck

a fair system of a fixed wholesale price to the developer would be fair as i think they see game makers as a licence to print money as all they have to do is host the file, process the transactions, roll in the money and give you the loose change
but if game makers en mass said
"buy our games at £5 per download and sell it for what you like" i can see em dropping alot of games like a hot potatoe

Hopefully never. My games are now on Amazon for $6.99 too. I blogged about this stuff: http://greyaliengames.com/blog/amazon-launches-casual-games-portal/ There's been a big debate about it on Indiegamer too.

For those interested: Apparently they have three free games for download for the first week: Jewel Quest 2, Build a Lot, and The Scruffs

http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html/ref=amb_link_82997671_1?ie=UTF8&docId=1000319381&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center-3&pf_rd_r=1429JJHAQH2C9R4JFE7W&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=468589331&pf_rd_i=979455011

There's nothing to debate. Reflexive feels it can upset an established market by selling games at whatever price they want. This unregulated, unrestricted form of marketing is going to collapse the casual game market: too many games out there and not enough revenue flowing back to developers. This is a disastrous move.

My only concern now is getting Eschalon off of there as soon as possible. I am going to be selective about what portals get my games. And if any other developer had the balls to do so, they'd pull their games from Reflexive as well as this is the only way WE, as developers, can ever hope to get a fair return on our products.

I don't know, it's heading into this direction since quite some time already.

The games which people really want are still making a lot of money due to the quantity and depending on the platform the number of users increases due to impulse buyers. The iPhone is a very good example.

Then there are the niche market games like Eschalon which have their special audience and so aren't this much related to low prices.

And then there is the rest of games, no matter if they are good or bad, which people just don't want or need to buy due to dozens of alternatives, already done, free available, ...

I said it many times already, alone with all the existing games, there is so much to play, you wouldn't have the time for doing this. Games became an inflationary good.

It is nice to see some of these games finally being sold at what is closer to their true value. Casual games have been grossly over-priced for a long time.

Most casual developers would consider that a personal insult.

And the majority of the casual games are an insult as well.

Indeed. The term "casual games" should be replaced by "cloneware". Most of the "portal" sites (another gimmick) are filled with nothing but cloneware. The same games are being sold in different versions with the only variation being the "theme" of the graphics.

Unfortunately games like Eschalon get sucked into the vortex and get classified as a "casual game" when it really doesn't fit into that category.

While I understand how hard a serious downturn in prices may hit developers, such a development could be good for the market in the long term. With most console games selling for around $50, finding great casual PC games for under $10 might bring casual players back to computer gaming.



Sure, to the developer they are worth more, but how about the players? It's all about opportunity costs and what else that money could buy.

Again, this is more of a problem with the system. There are plenty of portals out there that promise "a new game every day!". That means shit gets leaked into the system because we just don't see a game as good as Fairway Solitaire or Peggle come out every day.

Who alive here lived through the video game crash of the 80's? I sure did. Competition among game publishers led to a huge influx of bad games that nobody wanted. We're talking dozens of new cartridges per week. Retailers slashed prices to get rid of overstocked games, and ultimately the market just crashed. Consumers were jaded, retailers refused to carry the products, and publishers went bankrupt.

The same thing is happening now with casuals. I really don't think this is a bad thing. People who make good games will live through it. Portals that are more exclusive and have tighter quality control will be okay. I really just have a huge grudge with Reflexive. Their business practices are unethical at best. I am having a backlash with my other partnerships because Reflexive cut the selling price of my game in half. So far they have ignored my request to remove Eschalon and cancel the contract. I know of one other developer who is trying to jump from this sinking ship as well, but he too is being ignored.

I think it's like with music, the majority is just uninteresting and you get flooded with content nowadays.

Most games just are doing the same thing over and over again and concentrate on enhancing the gfx/sfx experience or they are trying to squeeze the most out of an already proofen idea and add a few tiny enhancements. Often these are some of the most dissapointing games if you're considering the ressources beeing wasted getting these games to their high polished states but still beeing boring.

There are just a few games were this really works out.

Anyway it's understandable from the huge market and that people want to pay their bills but if you see it as a customer or are looking at games as an art form it's rather dissapointing.

Sure you also can question decisions beeing made on sales figures and budgets but like with music, most people just can't do it right and lack the talent really coming up with something new which also works as a game which entertains you.

Too many people working on too many trivial games. Mankind should somehow work on more reasonable things instead.

Its going to go the way of the Comercial game industry. Flood the market with titles and a top few rake in all the cash! The rest are untested, bug ridden and uninspired. To be fair this is pretty much what is happening now already, but with prices coming down even lower you are going to get people coming in to make games that don't really have an interest in making games; but instead an interest to make money. That spells disaster!

You've inadvertantly hit the nail on the head. A vast number of people thought Peggle was crap. I initially liked it but the novelty wore off very quickly. The sequel "Peggle Nights" bored me to tears within ten minutes, because it was no different to the original.

Point being: Different people like different games. The above comments about "most casual games are an insult" are a waste of BRL's webspace, since the author won't have played "most casual games" so their judgement has no foundation, and just because he doesn't like them (does taumel like anything?), that's not to say that thousands of other people don't have differing opinions - different enough to have been happy to pay $19.95 a time for casual games.

No doubt a tirade of insults intended to magically prove me wrong will now follow. But I don't care.

Fribble frog-drops! How did I get in here?

@Gfk
Do i really have to explain this to you or were you just venting?

Obviously it's rather impossible playing all casual games which have been produced so far but if you have played some of them, worked on some of them and follow what's beeing released, then you get an idea of how it works. Only a minority of them is good. Some like those games, others don't.

That stating an opinion is a waste of BRL's webspace is, well, your opinion. It's rather interesting how you've changed from an BRL offending to an BRL protective mode. Anyway if you're implying that it's due to that they sell their products to those who are making casual games as well then that doesn't make a lot of sense. It's like you would accuse someone beeing insultive to a guitar manufacturer just because he dislikes most of a certain music style.

There are quite some games i really like but i doubt that yours are amongst them. ;O)

...which only serves to contradict your earlier statement that "the majority of casual games are an insult". That's your opinion - fair enough. But are you going to say that no casual developers should price their products at $19.95 any more because you don't like many of them? If that isn't what you meant, then what exactly are you getting at?

Aside from the fact that it was just a passing comment and this thread isn't anything to do with BRL, I don't agree with everything that BRL does, and when I don't agree I'll say so. I'll defend them (and anybody) to the hilt when I think they're right.

I personally think most 'casual' games I've seen are an insult to buyer intelligence. Wave after wave of tedious puzzle clones - not for me that's for sure. Also they seem so watered down and patronizing to the IQ - like the 'No child gets left behind.' slogan where everything is aimed at the very lowest common denominator. I'm not sure if the prices are too high or too low, have to think about that one.

@Gfk
Well, i can't seem to follow your "logic" how this contradicts something i've said before.

I also didn't suggest that developers generally shouldn't charge $20 for their games. It depends and i did state that with my Eschalon statement.

Short recapture:
Niche market games with a special audience can continue selling at a higher/usual price as well as games people really want to play but games which are just a more or less good copy of something else (vs. free games, old games, budget games, similar cheaper game on other platform, other clones on the same platform, ...) most likely will have to lower their price tag due to all the alternatives.

But even if you have to lower the price this can be a good thing because it can increase the impulse buyers. On top, all this very much depends on the platform you're focusing on, for instance iPhone vs. PC and so on. Maybe software companies can put enough pressure on certain platforms to countervail this but even then you'll have to compare against all the already existing games.

It's about supply and demand.... The entire market is supply and demand.

There are way to many developing the next match3 and not enough craving the next match3.

I, from a consumer standpoint, am glad the prices have gone down. Complaining that your next crappy remake of pong won't see the light of day because of that is futile. Although, from a developers standpoint, I am saddened to see that so many pong remakes (understand the symbolism with pong plz before blindly posting a rebuttal) have driven the prices to this point. Every Indie developer (GFK being in this category) worth anything of their time (covers a lot of indies) has quit their full time job just to churn out game after game after game.

Hell, any one of the Mario Party games covers over 7/8 of the casual market in their mini-games and I can pick anyone of those up for $20 in the used bin (the Mario Party titles).

It's high time the casual industry starts to wise up and add a bit more if they really expect to get more. Some of you have done really well over a years time doing the casual scene however just as any market, it eventually becomes no more fruitful than having a normal 8-5 like the rest of us. Start pushing the envelope, actually taking some risks with your time via code and R&D. Show the casual community why you think your product should actually be worth more than 6.99, why you should be paid more yearly than your run of the mill corporate software developer. The days of charging $120+ an hour for development (whether it be consulting or via revenue over the lifespan of a product) are over, adapt to the time or fail.

<whoa, what did I have to eat this morning :-/ >

By the way, i just noticed that v1.2 of fieldrunners has been released, as a free update. Now please tell me why i should buy a $20 pc tower defense program for instance when i can have so much fun on my iPodTouch with a €4 one and this already sucks up too much time?!

-> http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=292421271&mt=8

Developers have voted with their feet.

104 games have just been removed from Reflexive at the request of their respective developers. This represents almost 10% of Reflexive's entire catalogue.

I'm certain that more will follow. Could be potentially catastrophic for Reflexive.

Awesome- Basilisk Games was one of them.

[edit] In fact, I can confirm that they are "busy" over there tonight. The email response I received from my termination request had someone else's name at the top because they had been copying-n-pasting emails.

Hah!

In many ways, it seems the top games are the buggy, untested and uninspired ones these days, whilst the masses and less well-known/successful developers' titles are often much more bug free, either due to time taken or simplicity of code/number of factors to test.

Most likely it will be the developers who left who will suffer, and rightfully so.