Generating income on the Internet

[Supreme Cmdr]

Brad's got another one of his articles online. While I don't agree with some of it, he got the general gist of it all.

http://www.avault.com/developer/getarticle...name=bwardell10

[ 06-25-2002, 05:40 PM: Message edited by: Supreme Cmdr ]

[Guest]

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that I'd love to hear from Derek Smart how he did with BCM (he made it available at EB online) because that could be a good pathway as well.

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AND, the verdict is?

[Supreme Cmdr]

BCM did just fine - or there won't be a BCG, let alone a BCTC, BCTC, BCO or EFC to speak of. Though the additional sales of a wider coverage would also have been most welcome as any additional money is still money that goes toward the development of more cool stuff.

Small developers don't have the anxiety of having to sell humongous numbers in order to break even and/or recover costs and stay in business of developing games. If I had to sell anywhere near the kind of units of more high profile games in order to break even and see a profit, I too would have been sweating back in 11/01.

Everything boils down to profit and loss, as well as recovering the revenue stream (as he mentioned : getting your money from the publishers, retailers etc on time) from whoever has your product. With publishers, you have an advance you can probably live on. Going direct, you have no such luxury and have to live and die by the sales. And since retailers pay on a net basis less their returns (depending on the deal), you are still in a similar situation as with publishers and royalties : you have to pray that you get paid on time and that the returns are accurately reconciled.

So far, EB has been really good to me. No complaints there. But it is highly unlikely that I'd do another exclusive due to the impact and the flak I've taken from the other retailers (who sold my previous titles through publishers - and made money on them) - unless the end result was a major financial benefit. Its the difference between selling 1 unit and sell 1+n units, where n can be any additional sales that other retailers could generate, that EB couldn't. e.g. some people don't have local EB stores or they can't purchase online. You know, stuff like that.

Brad's right about the online game sales being low though. The EB store sales were significantly higher than the ebworld.com online sales; which in turn were significantly higher than the BMT Micro online sales. BMT only handled international sales, however.

[Soback]

There are very good reasons for online sales to be lower.

First, the shiping fees. It's cheaper to just go to the store and grab a game, even if the store is an hour away, you will still end up paying less.

Second, waiting time. Do you wait for delivery, and hope that nothing goes wrong, or do you drive (even long distance) and get the game the same day.

Third, online purchase. I don't buy stuff online. Only did it once, and got the wrong item shiped to me. Luckily the retailer was easy to get a hold of and paid for return shipment and even shiped the correct item to me express. But there's always the anxiety of giving out your credit card #, personal information (home address and such) and worrying about it being intercepted, or sold to anyone.

[Supreme Cmdr]

Another reason is that (as I just said to Brad via email) is that buying games online is more of a hazard these days for gamers, more than anything else. If you buy a game online, you have a harder time returning it (assuming you can) than if you bought it from a store where you can walk in and ***** to the manager about it.

Sad really.

[Guest]

However, put the next title of BC on E-Bay....

and it sells faster than ginger lynn's undies.

Guaranteed.

[Steve Schacher]

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AND, the verdict is?

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In one word, Weston.

[Steve Schacher]

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and it sells faster than ginger lynn's undies.

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Have you been playing Wing Commander III again?

[Supreme Cmdr]

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Originally posted by Steve Schacher:

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and it sells faster than ginger lynn's undies.

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Have you been playing Wing Commander III again?

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He has, hasn't he?