You didn't. And that is the answer to your dilemma. What it all boils down to is how long are you willing to wait to play the games?
Fans want to play the games as soon as possible thus the price is justified.
If you can wait, then by all means do.
Myself for example pre-ordered BttF. I don't care if it gets discounted right after the season is done. I am a fan and want check them out as soon as possible. Also I feel good having paid the full 25 dollars. TellTale needs to finance the company somehow and the bottom line is the 5 episodes are probably worth the money.
I have only used the sales to buy the seasons a second time. Except Puzzle Agent. I used a dollar off coupan (don't ask me why) though. Anyway, as Origami (and a few others) have said, if you can wait, then wait. I think if you can afford, pay full price, support them (more games possibly, for example) and just enjoy them as they come out. One of the things I like about pre-ordering is the wait between episodes which is fun, waiting, maybe slowly going insane thinking what is going to happen next. Oh, and discussing it with the many nice members here. For me, that makes the 5 months or so even better...
I've felt that way for a bit, too. Namely when the Devil's playhouse was two months in (second episode had just come out, I hadn't played it yet if I recall) and you could buy puzzle agent + The Devil's playhouse for cheaper than the people who preordered.
Then later there was a deal with a three seasons for cheaper than the people who preordered (still before the season was over).
Then another deal right after the end of the season.
And as far as I'm concerned, pre-order bonuses-wise, I might have well have got nothing. I mean the forum was okay I guess, but nothing too special.
At this point, I think I'll just get the games a year behind, when they're cheaper. Doesn't have to be ridiculous deals like "all of our games for five bucks" but it probably would be a bit cheaper, and I could get the whole game at once.
Also, I still haven't played... let's see, haven't played W&G apart from 1 episode, haven't played either of the Bone episodes, haven't played S&M 305, haven't finished puwwle agent... That's among the ones I own of course. I think I won't buy anything else until I'm done with what I already have.
I don't think there is much point in complaining, though. I mean, what are they going to do, stop having sales? I do wonder why they'd have sales so early though, you usually preorder thinking you'll get a better deal, but so far, people who preordered the Devil's Playhouse are pretty much the people who payed the most for it.
I must be the only one who was sad at paying $26 for W&G and $25 for BttF pre-orders then. I like paying full price for games made by studios I love. If I don't care about a game that much, that's when I'll wait and hunt out a great deal on it, otherwise I feel like I'm ripping off the studio that made it.
I still feel bad that I was too young and poor at the time to have bought Looking Glass Studios' games before they went out of business.
This is me speaking only as a video game fan and not on the direct subject of Telltale pre-orders. This is all my personal opinion and in no way indicative of TTG's stance on anything.
I pre-order games I'm looking forward to so that I can play them when they release and stay on the bleeding edge of games. The games I pre-order are the games I am going to buy anyway, reviews be damned. If I'm not sure about a game or it's something I want to play but can live with hearing spoilers, not getting the pre-order bonus item, potentially playing the game when the multiplayer population is nowhere near as robust as when the game released, or another pre-order perk then I just hold off until the game goes down in price - Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II for example. I'm guessing that game will have some deep discounts come the holiday shopping season so I'll hold off for that.
I've always thought of getting things on launch day at full price as the price of being an early adopter. The first generation iPhone for example was $600 on launch day, only to drastically go down in price 2 months later. I personally didn't feel slighted by that (many did) but enjoyed receiving that 100 dollar Apple Store coupon nonetheless.
Needless to say, I'd have a lot more money in the bank if I waited for everything to go on sale and didn't feel the need to have everything on day 1.
I guess I saw preordering the games as a way to support the company, and that giving a better deal so soon was a bit like telling the people who preordered "you tried to support us? Well screw you! Here is a better deal before you even got to enjoy what you paid for!"
I think my decision not to preorder the games anymore has more to do with not feeling like supporting the company anymore due to the direction it's taking than purely monetary matters. For that reason I don't mind the fact that I haven't played much of Puzzle Agent and it's being given with BttF and was part of The Great Adventure Bundle, which could be considered better deals. But I wanted to support the pilot program and still want to, so I'm glad I bought Puzzle Agent even if I never play it in the end.
This is me speaking only as a video game fan and not on the direct subject of Telltale pre-orders. This is all my personal opinion and in no way indicative of TTG's stance on anything.
I pre-order games I'm looking forward to so that I can play them when they release and stay on the bleeding edge of games. The games I pre-order are the games I am going to buy anyway, reviews be damned. If I'm not sure about a game or it's something I want to play but can live with hearing spoilers, not getting the pre-order bonus item, potentially playing the game when the multiplayer population is nowhere near as robust as when the game released, or another pre-order perk then I just hold off until the game goes down in price - Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II for example. I'm guessing that game will have some deep discounts come the holiday shopping season so I'll hold off for that.
I've always thought of getting things on launch day at full price as the price of being an early adopter. The first generation iPhone for example was $600 on launch day, only to drastically go down in price 2 months later. I personally didn't feel slighted by that (many did) but enjoyed receiving that 100 dollar Apple Store coupon nonetheless.
Needless to say, I'd have a lot more money in the bank if I waited for everything to go on sale and didn't feel the need to have everything on day 1.
You speak the truth, and I am also speaking for myself and not the company I work for.
I feel pre ordering is way to secure my copy and that I can play it before my friends have to save up for it. Price changes happen, it's how the economy works, if something is selling well sometimes they drop the price so more people have the opportunity to buy it and enjoy it.
I am not going to pre-order BttF, I will wait until the games are released and buy them then 1 month at a time. The added bonus of Puzzle Agent for pre-ordering is not really pulling me, because I am not at all interested in Puzzle Agent.
Scratch all that, this changed my mind.
Get free full season Collector’s DVD. Available for order after series finale (you pay only for shipping and handling).
I should have remembered that they did this when you either pre-order or buy special edition.
The Season DVD isn't a pre-order only or Special Edition-only perk. You can get the disc when you buy the games at any time. Those who bought Tales of Monkey Island for $5 during the Pirate sale could get the DVD, or the full season discount to the Delxue edition.
You know, I had that feeling. But I wasn't 100% sure, I should have gone with the feeling in my gut and not posted. Would not have made me look like an idiot.
But heck, the money for the MJ Fox foundation is a good cause, and maybe Puzzle Agent will grow on me just like Sam & Max did. And I am in the lack of some good Puzzle games at the moment.
same first game i bought from them and will be the last if they cant even get there games working with the rec specs and test them im never gonna buy a nother game from them again i dislike being forced to be a beta tester for them
I guess I saw preordering the games as a way to support the company, and that giving a better deal so soon was a bit like telling the people who preordered "you tried to support us? Well screw you! Here is a better deal before you even got to enjoy what you paid for!"
This doesn't even make sense. You are preordering to support the company, and then you are upset when it goes on sale later? If supporting the company was part of the reason you preordered the game, why does that later become negated when you decide you'd rather have paid less money for the game?
Telltale is still around because of people paying full price for their games. If everyone waited until they blew them out for $5-$10 a season, they would not even break even on their games. Not to mention that usually a sale on a game is indicative of a need for a spike in cashflow, and not something they're doing specifically to laugh in your face for having pre-ordered.
Yeah, I only felt bad when there were sales for products I regretted preordering. Made me regret preordering more. As I said, even though I haven't played much of Puzzle Agent, I don't regret paying for it even though I could have had it for free a few times since then.
I guess I only got annoyed when I regretted supporting the company. When I disliked the products. But then I have to be fair, if I could go back I wouldn't buy said products when they go on sale, I just wouldn't buy them at all.
Anyway, it seems to me that it's a bad marketing plan to put things on sale right after they're released. Obviously people are more likely to wait for it to go on sale, and that means you get less money. That's far from the only reason I haven't bought BttF, and I might not buy it at all but it does play a part in my decision that I know if it looks good and I want to buy it right after it's out, I can probably get it for half price if they keep the same policy as they have so far.
It does annoy me when there are deals that regulars can't have and new people get, but that happens more often with things like Internet plans (new people subscribing get more stuff for the same price you pay and they won't let you trade up because you've been a customer for years. It makes no sense to me).
Many companies are cancer fans and enjoy the growth of new customers without seeing the value in the customers they already have in the first place - the majority of them buys the stuff anyway - , that's nothing new. Offering a digital product adds its own flavour as well.
Anyway what's interesting is that the opposite exists as well and it's often just a matter of the business field you're in, how the strategies are defined and how they differ.
but i really dont have a good feeling about that crazy sales.....
usually if a game gets cheaper its because it doesn't sell that well....
i really starting to ask myself how the sales figures of TTG look like.....
but i really dont have a good feeling about that crazy sales.....
usually if a game gets cheaper its because it doesn't sell that well....
i really starting to ask myself how the sales figures of TTG look like.....
Every product ever made goes down in price over time. It's standard business practice. When a product comes out, the demand is very high, so they are able to set a higher price point, as demand drops down, they lower the price point as incentive to get people that are on the fence to jump in. This is one of the few places I've seen people actually upset that something goes on sale. Which is especially odd considering the niche/indie nature of the developer, you'd think they'd be more prone to attracting fans that want to support them and help keep them in business, but apparently not.
but i really dont have a good feeling about that crazy sales.....
usually if a game gets cheaper its because it doesn't sell that well....
i really starting to ask myself how the sales figures of TTG look like.....
You've got to think about the very real differences between physical copies and digital distribution.
Physical copies: numbers are limited by the investment in production runs, which has to be done well in advance of sales. If products sell better than expected you risk losing customers when it sells out, and getting more product quickly is expensive. If a product doesn't sell, then you've got to cut the price until it does to avoid having to pay storage costs.
Digital distribution: numbers are only limited by the amount of bandwidth and server power you can throw at it, and this can be done in a fairly short amount of time at little extra cost if demand picks up. If a product sells really well, you just rent some more servers (or something like that). If a product doesn't sell, there's nothing that is taking up space or that has to be sold off before tax time.
These big differences mean that sales by digital distribution companies mean very different things than the bargain bin has in the past. Steam has twice a week sales, and often for really successful games. Check out Steam's Weekly Top Sellers from time to time and bear in mind that the list is not ranked by copies sold, but by dollar figures. Right now there's a huge sale with lots of different games offered, so the top results are still full priced newer games (mostly) but check out other weekends when only one game is on sale. A great deal can knock a new-ish game off the top, simply by sheer numbers, even if that sale is only selling for fraction of the price. Because digital distribution offers flexibility that phsyical copies don't, sales like this can rake in the dough, instead of just being a way to cut losses.
Sales aren't a bad sign. In fact, that Telltale has a month worth of deals to offer just shows how confident they are in their lineup, and how many more people they think they can reach with the right amount of buzz.
Comic books don't count. I already have a comic book worth $50 and it's been OOP for less than 2 years.
Bullshit. SHODAN said every product ever made. SHODAN and you didn't make these specifications about what doesn't count until after the fact. You're just discounting it because it doesn't fit in line with what you said but it does count, so what you said is bullshit.
It'd probably be more accurate (but still somewhat hyperbolic) to say "Every product still in print goes down over time." A reprinting of Superman's debut would be a lot cheaper than $1M. (Of course, due to inflation, even that would probably still be more expensive than the original printing was when released, so I'm not sure what my point is.)
I'm referring to products sold brand new, not second hand at auction 72 years later.
So if a really old store that has been standing since "Action Comics #1" came out dug through it's back room and found a never-opened, brand new, surprisingly well-preserved copy of Action Comics #1, it would still sell for less than a dollar?
So if a really old store that has been standing since "Action Comics #1" came out dug through it's back room and found a never-opened, brand new, surprisingly well-preserved copy of Action Comics #1, it would still sell for less than a dollar?
Are you being deliberately obtuse? A copy of Action Comics #1 from the original printing would not be "brand new". The reason that Action Comcs #1 is so expensive is it's rarity. Products that continue to be produced become less rare over time.
SHODANFreeman made a poorly worded statement, but it remains true that mass market products that remain in production almost universally go down in price over time. It's foolish to nit-pick the exact wording that was originally used, when it's plain to see that the basic principle is accurate.
Even then, it depends on a lot of factors, and the rate of depreciation varies, and I think that the rate matters. I think it's safe to be upset when you order something for full-price and then it's half that LESS THAN TWO MONTHS later, when you still haven't had even 2/5ths of the product delivered to you, much the same way you might be upset if there was a 99% off sale on every item in a resturaunt's menu about five minutes after you ordered, before you had much chance to even munch at the breadsticks.
This maybe sounds reasonable if you're living in a TTG only world but as soon as you enter the reality you have to compete with other games which people play in their free time, which btw is a limited resource. Games nowadays are more than plentiful around and you have to compete in one or another way against other games, $1 iPhone games, strong budget titles, pirated games, sales deals on other platforms like steam, second hand games, classics and so on.
If you're really after a game and can afford it then you'll also buy it. If you aren't then you might get interested for a reduced price, that's what those deals are for. From TTG's point of view this is not a loss, this is a gain. I don't think it makes any difference if you reduce the price after the second episode, third episode or at the end of the season. It might upset the less business minded users less but you also might loose sales due to that in the meantime users bought another game instead. You'll probably have to find this out via your sales stats, customer feedback, ... supply and demand...
^
Exactly if you really want it show support and pay the full price.
If you can wait out then wait. I am familiar with TellTale giving abrupt discounts.
I don't care. I still pre-ordered BttF for full-price.
Digital distribution in particular has prices fall as time goes by, usually until it hits the minimum the publisher is willing to sell it for.
Why? The rules of Supply and Demand. Digital Distribution has perfectly inelastic supply. That is to say, the supply line on a Supply and Demand chart is vertical. This means that only demand affects price. As more copies sell, the less new copies people want; demand goes down and price follows until it hits the vendor's minimum price (barring sales).
Even then, it depends on a lot of factors, and the rate of depreciation varies, and I think that the rate matters. I think it's safe to be upset when you order something for full-price and then it's half that LESS THAN TWO MONTHS later, when you still haven't had even 2/5ths of the product delivered to you, much the same way you might be upset if there was a 99% off sale on every item in a resturaunt's menu about five minutes after you ordered, before you had much chance to even munch at the breadsticks.
When I make a decision to buy something, I decide that it is worth the price that I am being offered. If it goes down in price later, big deal, I paid what I thought it was worth. I'm not so entitled as to think that I deserve any lower price than what I myself decide to pay.
Comments
You didn't. And that is the answer to your dilemma. What it all boils down to is how long are you willing to wait to play the games?
Fans want to play the games as soon as possible thus the price is justified.
If you can wait, then by all means do.
Myself for example pre-ordered BttF. I don't care if it gets discounted right after the season is done. I am a fan and want check them out as soon as possible. Also I feel good having paid the full 25 dollars. TellTale needs to finance the company somehow and the bottom line is the 5 episodes are probably worth the money.
Can I ask why you buy the seasons a second time?
Owh....I forgot about the whole multiple platform releases.
With different accounts?
Or can you purchase a game multiple times?
And you do this because you see it as a means to donate money to the company?
Like, when you can buy a season you already own for 10 dollars, you do it because you want to donate an amount of 10 dollars, right?
Then later there was a deal with a three seasons for cheaper than the people who preordered (still before the season was over).
Then another deal right after the end of the season.
And as far as I'm concerned, pre-order bonuses-wise, I might have well have got nothing. I mean the forum was okay I guess, but nothing too special.
At this point, I think I'll just get the games a year behind, when they're cheaper. Doesn't have to be ridiculous deals like "all of our games for five bucks" but it probably would be a bit cheaper, and I could get the whole game at once.
Also, I still haven't played... let's see, haven't played W&G apart from 1 episode, haven't played either of the Bone episodes, haven't played S&M 305, haven't finished puwwle agent... That's among the ones I own of course. I think I won't buy anything else until I'm done with what I already have.
I don't think there is much point in complaining, though. I mean, what are they going to do, stop having sales? I do wonder why they'd have sales so early though, you usually preorder thinking you'll get a better deal, but so far, people who preordered the Devil's Playhouse are pretty much the people who payed the most for it.
I still feel bad that I was too young and poor at the time to have bought Looking Glass Studios' games before they went out of business.
I pre-order games I'm looking forward to so that I can play them when they release and stay on the bleeding edge of games. The games I pre-order are the games I am going to buy anyway, reviews be damned. If I'm not sure about a game or it's something I want to play but can live with hearing spoilers, not getting the pre-order bonus item, potentially playing the game when the multiplayer population is nowhere near as robust as when the game released, or another pre-order perk then I just hold off until the game goes down in price - Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II for example. I'm guessing that game will have some deep discounts come the holiday shopping season so I'll hold off for that.
I've always thought of getting things on launch day at full price as the price of being an early adopter. The first generation iPhone for example was $600 on launch day, only to drastically go down in price 2 months later. I personally didn't feel slighted by that (many did) but enjoyed receiving that 100 dollar Apple Store coupon nonetheless.
Needless to say, I'd have a lot more money in the bank if I waited for everything to go on sale and didn't feel the need to have everything on day 1.
I think my decision not to preorder the games anymore has more to do with not feeling like supporting the company anymore due to the direction it's taking than purely monetary matters. For that reason I don't mind the fact that I haven't played much of Puzzle Agent and it's being given with BttF and was part of The Great Adventure Bundle, which could be considered better deals. But I wanted to support the pilot program and still want to, so I'm glad I bought Puzzle Agent even if I never play it in the end.
You speak the truth, and I am also speaking for myself and not the company I work for.
I feel pre ordering is way to secure my copy and that I can play it before my friends have to save up for it. Price changes happen, it's how the economy works, if something is selling well sometimes they drop the price so more people have the opportunity to buy it and enjoy it.
Scratch all that, this changed my mind.
Get free full season Collector’s DVD. Available for order after series finale (you pay only for shipping and handling).
I should have remembered that they did this when you either pre-order or buy special edition.
But heck, the money for the MJ Fox foundation is a good cause, and maybe Puzzle Agent will grow on me just like Sam & Max did. And I am in the lack of some good Puzzle games at the moment.
This doesn't even make sense. You are preordering to support the company, and then you are upset when it goes on sale later? If supporting the company was part of the reason you preordered the game, why does that later become negated when you decide you'd rather have paid less money for the game?
Telltale is still around because of people paying full price for their games. If everyone waited until they blew them out for $5-$10 a season, they would not even break even on their games. Not to mention that usually a sale on a game is indicative of a need for a spike in cashflow, and not something they're doing specifically to laugh in your face for having pre-ordered.
I guess I only got annoyed when I regretted supporting the company. When I disliked the products. But then I have to be fair, if I could go back I wouldn't buy said products when they go on sale, I just wouldn't buy them at all.
Anyway, it seems to me that it's a bad marketing plan to put things on sale right after they're released. Obviously people are more likely to wait for it to go on sale, and that means you get less money. That's far from the only reason I haven't bought BttF, and I might not buy it at all but it does play a part in my decision that I know if it looks good and I want to buy it right after it's out, I can probably get it for half price if they keep the same policy as they have so far.
It does annoy me when there are deals that regulars can't have and new people get, but that happens more often with things like Internet plans (new people subscribing get more stuff for the same price you pay and they won't let you trade up because you've been a customer for years. It makes no sense to me).
Anyway what's interesting is that the opposite exists as well and it's often just a matter of the business field you're in, how the strategies are defined and how they differ.
Same here. I don't play games by other companies, simply don't have the time and Telltale has consistantly kept me entertained.
usually if a game gets cheaper its because it doesn't sell that well....
i really starting to ask myself how the sales figures of TTG look like.....
Every product ever made goes down in price over time. It's standard business practice. When a product comes out, the demand is very high, so they are able to set a higher price point, as demand drops down, they lower the price point as incentive to get people that are on the fence to jump in. This is one of the few places I've seen people actually upset that something goes on sale. Which is especially odd considering the niche/indie nature of the developer, you'd think they'd be more prone to attracting fans that want to support them and help keep them in business, but apparently not.
You've got to think about the very real differences between physical copies and digital distribution.
Physical copies: numbers are limited by the investment in production runs, which has to be done well in advance of sales. If products sell better than expected you risk losing customers when it sells out, and getting more product quickly is expensive. If a product doesn't sell, then you've got to cut the price until it does to avoid having to pay storage costs.
Digital distribution: numbers are only limited by the amount of bandwidth and server power you can throw at it, and this can be done in a fairly short amount of time at little extra cost if demand picks up. If a product sells really well, you just rent some more servers (or something like that). If a product doesn't sell, there's nothing that is taking up space or that has to be sold off before tax time.
These big differences mean that sales by digital distribution companies mean very different things than the bargain bin has in the past. Steam has twice a week sales, and often for really successful games. Check out Steam's Weekly Top Sellers from time to time and bear in mind that the list is not ranked by copies sold, but by dollar figures. Right now there's a huge sale with lots of different games offered, so the top results are still full priced newer games (mostly) but check out other weekends when only one game is on sale. A great deal can knock a new-ish game off the top, simply by sheer numbers, even if that sale is only selling for fraction of the price. Because digital distribution offers flexibility that phsyical copies don't, sales like this can rake in the dough, instead of just being a way to cut losses.
Sales aren't a bad sign. In fact, that Telltale has a month worth of deals to offer just shows how confident they are in their lineup, and how many more people they think they can reach with the right amount of buzz.
I'm referring to products sold brand new, not second hand at auction 72 years later.
And for the full price, well, that's already been taken care of over 4 pages of this thread.
Comic books don't count. I already have a comic book worth $50 and it's been OOP for less than 2 years.
Bullshit. SHODAN said every product ever made. SHODAN and you didn't make these specifications about what doesn't count until after the fact. You're just discounting it because it doesn't fit in line with what you said but it does count, so what you said is bullshit.
Are you being deliberately obtuse? A copy of Action Comics #1 from the original printing would not be "brand new". The reason that Action Comcs #1 is so expensive is it's rarity. Products that continue to be produced become less rare over time.
SHODANFreeman made a poorly worded statement, but it remains true that mass market products that remain in production almost universally go down in price over time. It's foolish to nit-pick the exact wording that was originally used, when it's plain to see that the basic principle is accurate.
If you're really after a game and can afford it then you'll also buy it. If you aren't then you might get interested for a reduced price, that's what those deals are for. From TTG's point of view this is not a loss, this is a gain. I don't think it makes any difference if you reduce the price after the second episode, third episode or at the end of the season. It might upset the less business minded users less but you also might loose sales due to that in the meantime users bought another game instead. You'll probably have to find this out via your sales stats, customer feedback, ... supply and demand...
Exactly if you really want it show support and pay the full price.
If you can wait out then wait. I am familiar with TellTale giving abrupt discounts.
I don't care. I still pre-ordered BttF for full-price.
Why? The rules of Supply and Demand. Digital Distribution has perfectly inelastic supply. That is to say, the supply line on a Supply and Demand chart is vertical. This means that only demand affects price. As more copies sell, the less new copies people want; demand goes down and price follows until it hits the vendor's minimum price (barring sales).
When I make a decision to buy something, I decide that it is worth the price that I am being offered. If it goes down in price later, big deal, I paid what I thought it was worth. I'm not so entitled as to think that I deserve any lower price than what I myself decide to pay.