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Forums - Gaming - (IMO) Desperate pricing for a Tomb Raider in need.

Fei-Hung on 06 September 2016
Ka-pi96 said:
You think the $60 price on PS4 is because they are desperate for more money? Nah, I'm sure it still would have been $60 on PS4 even if the Xbox/PC versions had sold 10m between them.

What kind of publisher wouldn't release a brand new game (even if it was released on other platforms earlier) at full price?

I agree that they could have still launched it at $60 although having sold 10 million copies, but the reason for it would have been different. 

 

It's like selling something very expensive because it has sentimental value, or because it is an extensive valuable item or because you are desperate for the cash and you need the most you can possibly get.



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binary solo on 06 September 2016

I think with a $100 million budget they were screwed either way.

MS stumps up $20 million for 1 year exclusivity but Xbox has too low of a user base to make profit, which was always obvious.

Multiplatform release gives you more sales, but you now have to make over $100 million to break even, which means >3.7million full price sales or equivalent. Which was maybe more likely than achieving ~ 3 million in full price sales without PS4, but still not guaranteed.

I can totally see the allure of a $20 million cash up front injection. Money now is better than money later, but I don;t know if it was the right path to achieving or maximising profits. It's possible SE simply overestimated the popularity of the reboot and they should have forced a lower budget on the game, thereby reducing the level of concern over profitability.



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Fei-Hung on 06 September 2016
binary solo said:
I think with a $100 million budget they were screwed either way.

MS stumps up $20 million for 1 year exclusivity but Xbox has too low of a user base to make profit, which was always obvious.

Multiplatform release gives you more sales, but you now have to make over $100 million to break even, which means >3.7million full price sales or equivalent. Which was maybe more likely than achieving ~ 3 million in full price sales without PS4, but still not guaranteed.

I can totally see the allure of a $20 million cash up front injection. Money now is better than money later, but I don;t know if it was the right path to achieving or maximising profits. It's possible SE simply overestimated the popularity of the reboot and they should have forced a lower budget on the game, thereby reducing the level of concern over profitability.

That's the crazy thing. According to SE they needed 5 million sales for the first TR to be successful. 

 

I think at the time it made sense. To feed of the uncharted hype and use that to drive up sales of TR during holiday season. Uncharted being launched around the same time may have helped keep RotTR afloat amongst the big hitters. However, the 11 month delay is what ultimately screwed the pooch. An early summer release would have been perfect. People would have played uncharted and then traded it in for RotTR a month later. Paying full price wouldn't have been so much of an issue. 

 

Now they are competing against big guns and half a dozen other new releases with people full well knowing the game will most likely be heavily discounted by the end of November. 



Mr Puggsly on 06 September 2016
Fei-Hung said:

Now they are competing against big guns and half a dozen other new releases with people full well knowing the game will most likely be heavily discounted by the end of November. 

Many games get discounted by the end of the year, even CoD.

RotTR was also against "big guns" last holiday. That just part of releasing a game during the holidays. The Tomb Raider remaster sold really well on PS4 and I anticipate the same for RotTR on PS4.



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Mr Puggsly on 06 September 2016
binary solo said:
I think with a $100 million budget they were screwed either way.

MS stumps up $20 million for 1 year exclusivity but Xbox has too low of a user base to make profit, which was always obvious.

Multiplatform release gives you more sales, but you now have to make over $100 million to break even, which means >3.7million full price sales or equivalent. Which was maybe more likely than achieving ~ 3 million in full price sales without PS4, but still not guaranteed.

I can totally see the allure of a $20 million cash up front injection. Money now is better than money later, but I don;t know if it was the right path to achieving or maximising profits. It's possible SE simply overestimated the popularity of the reboot and they should have forced a lower budget on the game, thereby reducing the level of concern over profitability.

Right, multiplatform does give more sales which is why buying exclusivity for $20 million makes little sense for a mega budget game.

Here's a thought. MS gave R* $50 million for GTAIV DLC, but it was apparently a loan. Maybe SE needed some money to help fund numerous delayed projects.



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