 |
| 34. |
Re: Torchlight II Pre-Purchases Get Free Torchlight |
Apr 27, 2012, 11:30 |
WaltC |
|
|
Alamar wrote on Apr 26, 2012, 11:22:
nin wrote on Apr 26, 2012, 11:10:
Woot! And only $20! Played the hell out of the last one, and I'm sure I'll do the same here!
Yes, $19.99 is definitely a sweet spot for a game like Torchlight. I was dumbfounded at the amount of game and content it offered (though much of it was randomly repetitive.) The mood, the music, the play--reminded me so much of Diablo 2 and was why I liked it so much. It has almost a mesmeric quality about it.
This is a great example of how piracy generates revenue; many many people who pirate a product will buy a sequel. Which incidentally, is also why Windows is THE operating system of choice : )
-Alamar
The psychology of piracy is interesting. But to boil it down, if you offer general consumers a product which they find highly enjoyable or very appealing or very useful, and you price it right from the start, most people will buy it as opposed to pirating it. Same thing exactly is true of books and movies and music. That's why Microsoft and movie companies and the book publishers are not only "still in business" but *thriving.* If more people were pirating than not this would not be the case.
The problem for software, book, and movie publishers is when they release a poor or sub-par product and *expect* it to sell as if was a AAA title! That's never going to happen, and the publishers are idiots if they think it should. Products that aren't compelling and which are also priced as high as other very compelling products won't sell nearly as well as they might had they been priced right from the start. IE, a poor game, a poor book, or a poor song or a poor movie should be priced anywhere from 1/4 to 1/3 the price of an AAA title. At that point, even the sub-par stuff will move briskly.
But publishing cartels like the RIAA and the MPAA stupidly keep complaining that their bad stuff isn't selling as well as their good stuff and so they keep complaining about "piracy" to a Congress largely so technically non-adept most of them would have a problem listing in ten words or less the differences between a ram chip and a mouse.
People buy good software when it is priced competitively from the start, in a measure commensurate with its worth. But when the RIAA & MPAA companies keep trying to push poor-quality products on the public for the same prices as the good stuff--it isn't going to sell nearly as well no matter what they do. Whether the poor quality products they throw out into the market are pirated or simply ignored, the result is the same: far few people buy them.
Although I agree with you that it is likely that Microsoft's OSes are among the most pirated pieces of software in history, it's still a fact that Microsoft is the financial success it is because most people--yes, most people--buy Windows as opposed to pirating it (at least, this is true in North America and Europe. Probably not so much in China.) They buy it because they think that for the price it is an excellent buy for what it does!
A good example by which to prove that observation is desktop Linux distributions. Windows outsells them on the desktop 100-to-1 even though the Linux desktop is essentially *free* and has been for years. That's fairly dramatic proof that billions of people around the world find desktop Windows so much more valuable than desktop Linux for their personal computing needs that they gladly pay to own Windows and choose it over a desktop Linux distro which they could get for free if they so desired! You don't have to pirate desktop Linux to get it for free because it already is!
That's an incredibly strong and clear statement about what companies need to do in order to minimize the effect of piracy on their bottom lines: make products that are compelling enough that people will see their value and be glad--happy, ecstatic, even!--to buy them at reasonable prices! Piracy will never be 100% eliminated, but a company can darn sure knock out at least 90% of it if their customer-value-for-the-dollar strategies are sound and their products are compelling enough to inspire strong demands. Smart companies don't fight piracy with a pack of ambulance-chasing attorneys suing and threatening their customers--that's a dead end strategy if ever there was one. Smart companies *overcome* piracy by offering fantastic value to their customers and fantastically useful&desirable products. Microsoft has been doing that, on balance, for most of its existence--and that's why the company is still here, let alone why it has become dominant in many areas. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| It is well known that I do not make mistakes--so if you should happen across a mistake in anything I have written, be assured that I did not write it! |
|
|
  |
|
| |
| |
|
Date |
Subject |
Author |
| |
1. |
Apr 26, 11:10 |
Re: Torchlight II Pre-Purchases Get Free Torchlight |
nin |
| |
2. |
Apr 26, 11:22 |
Re: Torchlight II Pre-Purchases Get Free Torchlight |
Alamar |
| |
3. |
Apr 26, 11:27 |
Re: Torchlight II Pre-Purchases Get Free Torchlight |
nin |
| |
27. |
Apr 26, 21:40 |
Re: Torchlight II Pre-Purchases Get Free Torchlight |
.net_Drifter |
| >> |
34. |
Apr 27, 11:30 |
Re: Torchlight II Pre-Purchases Get Free Torchlight |
WaltC |
| |
4. |
Apr 26, 11:45 |
Re: Torchlight II Pre-Purchases Get Free Torchlight |
Acleacius |
| |
5. |
Apr 26, 11:54 |
Re: Torchlight II Pre-Purchases Get Free Torchlight |
nin |
| |
6. |
Apr 26, 11:55 |
Re: Torchlight II Pre-Purchases Get Free Torchlight |
Angrius Maximis |
| |
17. |
Apr 26, 15:03 |
Re: Torchlight II Pre-Purchases Get Free Torchlight |
Cutter |
| |
7. |
Apr 26, 11:56 |
Re: Torchlight II Pre-Purchases Get Free Torchlight |
deqer |
| |
8. |
Apr 26, 11:58 |
Re: Torchlight II Pre-Purchases Get Free Torchlight |
nin |
| |
9. |
Apr 26, 12:04 |
Re: Torchlight II Pre-Purchases Get Free Torchlight |
ASeven |
| |
10. |
Apr 26, 12:11 |
Re: Torchlight II Pre-Purchases Get Free Torchlight |
Malachii |
| |
11. |
Apr 26, 13:12 |
Re: Torchlight II Pre-Purchases Get Free Torchlight |
Bucky |
| |
14. |
Apr 26, 13:40 |
Re: Torchlight II Pre-Purchases Get Free Torchlight |
peteham |
| |
13. |
Apr 26, 13:16 |
Re: Torchlight II Pre-Purchases Get Free Torchlight |
Graham |
| |
15. |
Apr 26, 14:07 |
Re: Torchlight II Pre-Purchases Get Free Torchlight |
SXO |
| |
36. |
Apr 27, 14:11 |
Re: Torchlight II Pre-Purchases Get Free Torchlight |
Elessar |
| |
16. |
Apr 26, 15:00 |
Re: Torchlight II Pre-Purchases Get Free Torchlight |
deqer |
| |
19. |
Apr 26, 15:34 |
Re: Torchlight II Pre-Purchases Get Free Torchlight |
Alamar |
| |
20. |
Apr 26, 15:49 |
Re: Torchlight II Pre-Purchases Get Free Torchlight |
Slashman |
| |
21. |
Apr 26, 16:24 |
Re: Torchlight II Pre-Purchases Get Free Torchlight |
briktal |
| |
28. |
Apr 26, 22:28 |
Re: Torchlight II Pre-Purchases Get Free Torchlight |
ColoradoHoudini |
| |
33. |
Apr 27, 10:29 |
Re: Torchlight II Pre-Purchases Get Free Torchlight |
WaltC |
| |
12. |
Apr 26, 13:12 |
Re: Torchlight II Pre-Purchases Get Free Torchlight |
Esoteric |
| |
18. |
Apr 26, 15:34 |
Re: Torchlight II Pre-Purchases Get Free Torchlight |
DangerDog |
| |
22. |
Apr 26, 18:02 |
Re: Torchlight II Pre-Purchases Get Free Torchlight |
eunichron |
| |
23. |
Apr 26, 19:33 |
Re: Torchlight II Pre-Purchases Get Free Torchlight |
Jivaro |
| |
24. |
Apr 26, 19:34 |
Re: Torchlight II Pre-Purchases Get Free Torchlight |
jacobvandy |
| |
25. |
Apr 26, 19:59 |
Re: Torchlight II Pre-Purchases Get Free Torchlight |
Cutter |
| |
26. |
Apr 26, 20:05 |
Re: Torchlight II Pre-Purchases Get Free Torchlight |
PHJF |
| |
29. |
Apr 26, 22:49 |
Re: Torchlight II Pre-Purchases Get Free Torchlight |
xXBatmanXx |
| |
30. |
Apr 27, 01:16 |
Re: Torchlight II Pre-Purchases Get Free Torchlight |
Krovven |
| |
31. |
Apr 27, 01:22 |
Re: Torchlight II Pre-Purchases Get Free Torchlight |
xXBatmanXx |
| |
32. |
Apr 27, 03:46 |
Re: Torchlight II Pre-Purchases Get Free Torchlight |
Krovven |
| |
35. |
Apr 27, 11:44 |
Re: Torchlight II Pre-Purchases Get Free Torchlight |
Verno |
|
|
Twitter 
