I murdered our retail plans today

Quoting Lord Reliant,

The only bad thing I can think of from a lack of retail presence is getting your game into the hands of folks that haven't/don't use online distribution. And possibly a level of marketing (getting your game out into the public more). But, Elemental is more of a niche title. Sins could probably stand alone in retail since it's an RTS.

What avenues will be selling these two games? Steam? Impulse? Origin?

I suspect two endgames for DD.

Either Steam will be broken up via Antitrust, or each AAA publisher will have their own DD service, with mid-range and lower publishers using Steam and possibly others.

There will still be a market for collector's editions.

Quoting Alstein,

reply 26

I suspect two endgames for DD.

Either Steam will be broken up via Antitrust, or ....

In that case, they would have to do the same to Xbox live, PSN and all other monopoly platform holder - which is simply not going to happen.

Quoting KarmaGirl,

reply 23

Much rather concentrate on the game and ignore the retail politics. In the end, it's much better for the gamers.

Quoting KarmaGirl,

reply 24

I was think art prints or posters or some collectable, personally. Could have something much cooler than a box and we could mail it direct. We'll need to see what doors open once we adjst to the "no retail" idea.

i used to be against this, but I think the last boxed PC game I purchased was sins original release. Boxes just take up too much space if you ask me. So I say good riddance. Just give me a color PDF of the book . I hate Black and white PDFS

Well, I for one wish you guys the best, but between this and the steam requirement, I'll be moving along. Good luck.

Quoting Island Dog,

reply 28

Quoting KarmaGirl, reply 23Much rather concentrate on the game and ignore the retail politics. In the end, it's much better for the gamers.

Quoting KarmaGirl, reply 24I was think art prints or posters or some collectable, personally. Could have something much cooler than a box and we could mail it direct. We'll need to see what doors open once we adjst to the "no retail" idea.

This model is starting to take place in what I consider the sister genre to TBS games (fighting games), collector's editions sell very well there.

I wouldn't knock Retail Outlets for their business model. Typically people are being self centered and short sighted when they bash Retail. Yes Retail has its issues and draw backs, BUT...their ONLY goal is to MAKE money. They do that by stocking items that are the most likly to generate MORE income than it costs to stock the shelves. While I can see that software sales really do not belong in the brick and mortar retail environment there are still PLENTY of products you want to go see and touch before comitting to buying..cars, TV's, appliances etc, so things like movies, and software and music should rightly be leaving the Retail brick and mortar stores.

But still there is a place for those establishments, just like all of us in the real world, need to be more efficient and frugal so too do they. Just sayin.

Quoting DarkSide73,

reply 29

i used to be against this, but I think the last boxed PC game I purchased was sins original release.

Same here... my last boxed game was the Kalypso version of sins for the French localization... since Kalypso version was a lot more expensive that the Stardock one, that they have never made any localization for the patch, i have end up with a game speaking French and English !!!

Almost forget, for these last boxed game, a trip to a other country was needed because it cannot be found in any game computer store in my country and nobody was wishing to order it !!!

On the other hand, with other game, i have a good experience with Steam game who have localization... game are easy to found and order...

Only problem is the size of game... before if have no speed limit but only 60gb month transfer... with newer game being over the 15gb in size, it was becoming a problem... well, i have now a limited speed ( 2 line at 2k mbits ) but unlimited transfer ( up and down )...

Anyway, boxed version remain useful for third world country where the general population continue to use dial-up modem... by example, i am thinking of the distributor 1C that Stardock have use for russia... maybe you receive only 15$ on the 40$ sale but it is better that receive nothing or almost nothing ( only in big russian city, people have good internet connection ) because of no sale... piracy/hacking is rampant in country like Russia and not local boxed release will only improve it...

And about risk... don't say that you are afraid of taking risk... Stardock have publish sins of solar empire, a game that no other publisher was wishing to release, a game that nobody have believe in it... Stardock have take the risk and it have pay-off... before trinity, stardock have already sold over 2 million copy... today, it is less a risk that in the past because sins of solar empire is well know in the gaming world...

By your own words, majority of sins sales are from retail... is it a good financial strategy to cut of from retail when they make the majority of your sales... seem like the Impulse syndrome : "We make too much money, so we need to get rid of it"... by the way, pretty sure that Steam take is share of profit too, maybe not so much that retail but a stardock central release will have be 100% income for you... why make a new stardock central when your product end-up to need Steam...

I am really curious to know what Stardock team have be smoking lately... selling impulse, moving to steam exclusive, killing the retail... what will be the next step... Is it Stardock trying to suicide itself... each option that you wipe out lead to a lost of customer, it will come a time when you will not have enough of them for survive... it is sane for a business man to kill it main distributor? If i was holding share of Stardock, i will begin to sell them because there is something not right going on !!! Open new door for more opportunity is great ( using steam platform like for trinity ) but closing door is bad ( selling impulse, killing retails, steam exclusive )...

Well at the same time I do like Stardock's boxed copies I am still very happy with this because I'm still getting the games themselves!

I think I'll always shop retail on some level ... but DD has a lot more pros vs cons now than it did several years ago.

I only buy games through digital distribution as it is (unless I find an exceptional deal somewhere else - as its trended the last few years, the best deals end up on digital platforms). As you'll likely be releasing E:FE on multiple DD platforms (or so I'd assume), you'll have even more exposure when you do go live. I think dumping retail is the smart move here.

To be fair, the only retail games I've bought for myself (for the past 3 years or so) have been PS3 titles.

Could always make downloadable a lightscribe template for the dvd burner and a case sleeve print for printing. Would be a nice touch.

Sounds good to me. I can't even remember the last game I bought at retail.

Plus there are *NO* PC games at retail anyway. Walk into Best Buy and all you see is WOW, couple shooters, a wall of SIMS and that's about it. Seriously. No way would either Rebellion or Fallen Enchantress get any shelf space outside of maybe 1 or 2 copies if you're lucky.

Retail for PC games has been dead, dead, dead, for a while so don't sweat it at all.

Quoting Frogboy,

reply 16

On a $40 game we net about $15 these days at retail.

There's MDF, which is effectively a slotting fee, as well as the manufacturing, the distributor's cut, the retailer's cut and that's before taking into account the costs of having a retail sales force to go out and negotiate with each retailer, attend their shows, etc.

That's just how retail is. They still sell more units than digital (at least for us) but there is also a lot of risk and cost associated with it.

Ouch, ~62% off the top has gotta make it hard to turn a profit after all the internal expenses. I'm surprised there are as many retail games out there as there are.

I would purchase, direct from Stardock a Collector's edition box if it came with cool content ... maybe even a disc.

The Half-rack at Gamestop that may still house PC games won't miss you. They are not in the PC game retail business, they are going digital as well. As for other retailers, you can't really call the stuff I find for PC at Target games per se.

I don't mind at all. Ever since the early 2000's when they switched from the large boxes to the DVD sized boxes, I stopped caring about the physical prodcut. The manuals became low quality, there were few if any extras, and the discs are more of a hassle than convenience. Also, the physical stores get too large of a cut for the low quality experience they provide.

What you can do, however, is a kickstarter project to sell physical items to collectors a few months after the game is released. This way there is no risk involved and you can make your fans happy.

Unfortunately if you live in rural or low internet access areas you will suffer, but the majority lives in areas with good broadband, or wifi. I haven't bought a game at a retailer since '05, and Lord Xia is right. You look in most retailers these days, and they have no decent PC game selection. No new releases. The same old WoW, Sims, or FPS crap.

So i say good call as well. More profit for SD = They can spend that profit for More, and Better games in the future, and they can charge a little less, because they dont have to deal with retail crap.

The digital world is coming closer and closer.

It's quite interesting that we are now in the middle of a change.

I think it's for the better. Cut out the middleman and make it cheaper to get your goods.

Quoting Campaigner,

reply 45

I think it's for the better. Cut out the middleman and make it cheaper to get your goods.

Well, from what i see, they cut the middleman but don't make the goods cheaper... they only make more benefice for share holder...

It is the same thing with food... by example, your hamburger become more expensive when price of beef meat increase but it never become cheaper when price of beef meat lower...

The only retail games I tend to buy nowadays are collector editions or cheap games on Amazon(Diablo 3 will probably be an exception).

One benefit of going all digital is that there is no longer the issue of retailers influencing regional prices.

That leads to my next question: Will Stardock use the dollar = euro like most games on steam or use a set dollar value and convert it to other currencies? I think that doing the second will make Stardock games very attractive to the people on Steam that really hate the U.S. dollar = other currency issue.

Without retailers though, that problem should be avoidable. I think the Australians especially will buy a lot of copies since they have the issue of paying twice as much if not more for most games. A game that cost half or less of what they are used to paying would be really attractive.

Quoting Thoumsin,

reply 46

Quoting Campaigner, reply 45I think it's for the better. Cut out the middleman and make it cheaper to get your goods.

Well, from what i see, they cut the middleman but don't make the goods cheaper... they only make more benefice for share holder...

It is the same thing with food... by example, your hamburger become more expensive when price of beef meat increase but it never become cheaper when price of beef meat lower...

Our new titles are typically $39.95 in 2011 dollars. Pac-Man for the Atari 2600 was over $90 in 2011 dollars.

Games are vastly cheaper today and you get a lot more.

I'm actually sad to see this, I still buy all my PC games through retail... and am glad to see more retail games come preloaded with steam now. Though I prefer consoles to PC, I just don't trust digital downloads nor do I really have an internet good enough to support it. I was planning to pay the extra cost of shipping to get a copy when the final version released for FE, but it seems I can't do that now.

I may try to get the beta today depending on how big it is (if anyone has knows please post it) or let it download overnight, but my backup plan was the physical copy if it was to big & just to have a physical copy...

Though I would take a DD of a PC game over streaming a game any day of the week, call me old fashioned, but I prefer that physical copy that I know if I take care of... it will always be there, and I'm not the only one. I think you may be missing out on a large part of potential customers, because not everyone has a good enough internet, trust DD, nor does everyone have enough bandwidth with ISP's having limits nowadays to download a game.

Maybe Stardock could start a system for those with poor internet connection to make a DVD with all the latest updates on it, and even if there was a cost for postage, some may be thankful that they can get a physical copy. It could be like the concept of the latest patch discs that Stardock was going to make for the first Elemental game could be used for the second Elemental game. Maybe there could be a postage charge upon buying the game and getting sent by mail the install disc, but subsequent updates have a minimal (or zero) cost for posting?

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