Matrix Games, Whatever Are You Thinking?

[spelk]

What?  Let me get this straight - there is a Linux version available if you buy from the devs or Steam, but not if you buy from Matrix?

You'll have to not hold me to this, because I haven't tried the Linux version of Steam yet, but from what I gather, your Steam key for Unity of Command will transfer over to the Linux Steam client.

Over at the UoC forums, Tomislav responded to a users problem with Steam/Linux demo version with:

I think your best bet is to buy the game from our site. Download the windows version and you can use it with Wine immediately.

You also get a Steam key for whenever linux is sorted out.

I will be fixing the issues with 64-bit linux distros as soon as I get the DLC out to testers. Just a few people reported issues, but of course our goal is to get everybody sorted out   

I sort of inferred that this would mean your PC/Steam key would work on the Linux/Steam client. I'm not sure though. I might be reading it wrong. I think if you buy direct from the UoC devs, then they'll probably see you right, whatever platform you want to install it on.

I don't know whether Matrix supply an install for Linux systems, but I'd doubt it. I transferred my Matrix bought Unity of Command over to a Steam version so I could get at the Red Turn DLC before Christmas. The Unity of Command devs, Tomislav in particular was very helpful in making the transition happen for me.

[Huw the Poo]

Well I just looked for myself, and it's true: Unity of Command is available for Linux on Steam, but not from Matrix, who are only selling Windows and Mac versions.

[Greybriar]

Hi guys,

nobody has the right to sell the games any more except us. We own them exclusively now. We are the only place it can be legitimately bought. All other sellers have been contacted and asked to remove the games from sale. If we allow others to sell it will be at the same price as us. However it takes time for the hundreds of stores that Paradox licensed it to to be contacted, respond and remove the games. Going forwards you wont be able to get Ageod games anywhere except direct from us so there will be no price discrepancy, but it is not something that we can fix overnight.

It is true that Paradox sold these games at ridiculous prices on Steam and Gamer's gate but that's a thing of the past that will never happen again. These are massive games and justify a sensible price point. We can;t fix the mistakes from the past but we can make sure going forwards it all works.

Do you have a link to that?

[undercovergeek]

Hi guys,

nobody has the right to sell the games any more except us. We own them exclusively now. We are the only place it can be legitimately bought. All other sellers have been contacted and asked to remove the games from sale. If we allow others to sell it will be at the same price as us. However it takes time for the hundreds of stores that Paradox licensed it to to be contacted, respond and remove the games. Going forwards you wont be able to get Ageod games anywhere except direct from us so there will be no price discrepancy, but it is not something that we can fix overnight.

It is true that Paradox sold these games at ridiculous prices on Steam and Gamer's gate but that's a thing of the past that will never happen again. These are massive games and justify a sensible price point. We can;t fix the mistakes from the past but we can make sure going forwards it all works.

Do you have a link to that?

about 7 or 8 down

[Zulu1966]

Hi guys,

nobody has the right to sell the games any more except us. We own them exclusively now. We are the only place it can be legitimately bought. All other sellers have been contacted and asked to remove the games from sale. If we allow others to sell it will be at the same price as us. However it takes time for the hundreds of stores that Paradox licensed it to to be contacted, respond and remove the games. Going forwards you wont be able to get Ageod games anywhere except direct from us so there will be no price discrepancy, but it is not something that we can fix overnight.

It is true that Paradox sold these games at ridiculous prices on Steam and Gamer's gate but that's a thing of the past that will never happen again. These are massive games and justify a sensible price point. We can;t fix the mistakes from the past but we can make sure going forwards it all works.

Do you have a link to that?

http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=3303077
As was said - about 8 down.

[Slick Wilhelm]

This whole "bargain shopping" mentality that many of us in the Wargaming niche possess, has the potential to kill off the wargame development that we so love.

Do I agree that paying $50-80 for a five year old game is a bit excessive? Yes.

Do I think paying $19.99 for a new wargame is a good thing for the industry as a whole? No.


It takes serious financial investment to produce wargames, and an acceptable profit in order to want to continue to make them. Personally, I'm surprised that the cost of computer wargames hasn't gone up instead of down in the past twenty years. I can't see that many new wargamers are coming into the fold, but maybe there are?

At any rate, I'm willing to pay at least $50 for a wargame these days. What matters to me is that the developers who create the games I love make a nice fat profit so that they want to continue making more. IMO, this whole "Wal-Mart" way of shopping for wargames will ultimately hurt us.

Hell, I already have more wargames than I'll ever be able to play before I die. but I keep buying them because I like to see what the developers are doing with the genre as time moves along.

[Grimnirsson]

IMO, this whole "Wal-Mart" way of shopping for wargames will ultimately hurt us.

+1

BUT...Matrix should make demos available if they want our money...Distant Worlds is certainly a great game but I'm not sure if it is my style...I won't shell out my hard earned money without knowing how this game plays...

[Greybriar]

http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=3303077
As was said - about 8 down.

Thanks. I knew I'd read it before...somewhere.

This whole "bargain shopping" mentality that many of us in the Wargaming niche possess, has the potential to kill off the wargame development that we so love....

....At any rate, I'm willing to pay at least $50 for a wargame these days. What matters to me is that the developers who create the games I love make a nice fat profit so that they want to continue making more. IMO, this whole "Wal-Mart" way of shopping for wargames will ultimately hurt us....

Wargames are a niche product--there just isn't much of a demand for them. If we don't support the companies that make them, we can look forward to playing the types of games that sell more copies. I don't know about you, but I'd prefer not to have a steady diet of First Person Shooters.

[bbmike]

This whole "bargain shopping" mentality that many of us in the Wargaming niche possess, has the potential to kill off the wargame development that we so love.

Do I agree that paying $50-80 for a five year old game is a bit excessive? Yes.

Do I think paying $19.99 for a new wargame is a good thing for the industry as a whole? No.


It takes serious financial investment to produce wargames, and an acceptable profit in order to want to continue to make them. Personally, I'm surprised that the cost of computer wargames hasn't gone up instead of down in the past twenty years. I can't see that many new wargamers are coming into the fold, but maybe there are?

At any rate, I'm willing to pay at least $50 for a wargame these days. What matters to me is that the developers who create the games I love make a nice fat profit so that they want to continue making more. IMO, this whole "Wal-Mart" way of shopping for wargames will ultimately hurt us.

Hell, I already have more wargames than I'll ever be able to play before I die. but I keep buying them because I like to see what the developers are doing with the genre as time moves along.

Well, yes and no. I agree that if you only buy games when they are deeply discounted you are probably doing more harm than good to the wargame industry. Games I really want to play I will buy on release day. Full price. Heck, even when I'm a beta tester for a game and get it for free at the end I STILL buy an extra copy to support the work.
That said, there are many games that I would never buy if they weren't deeply discounted. Sometimes these bargain purchases will lead me to buy newer versions of the game at full price. Sales can be a good thing.
One last thought - if you are going to charge premium prices for an old game you better have a good, updated demo of it for me to try.

[LongBlade]

This whole "bargain shopping" mentality that many of us in the Wargaming niche possess, has the potential to kill off the wargame development that we so love.

Do I agree that paying $50-80 for a five year old game is a bit excessive? Yes.

Do I think paying $19.99 for a new wargame is a good thing for the industry as a whole? No.

Before Slitherine took control of Matrix there were precious few times games would be discounted. You could typically find a game for $5 less at NWS but other than the annual holiday sale the price was the price.

Slitherine has been able to boost volume by discounting the price, but I'm not sure they're doing themselves a favor in the long run. When gamers know that another sale is around the corner, most will wait it out. The shelf life of, say, Conquest of the Aegean is much longer than Battlefield 3. Six months after its release the shine is off BF3. Six months after CotA was released many gamers were just getting into the heart of it.

It's not my company and nobody has asked me what I thought, but I suspect the long term effect of this new marketing strategy will produce less revenue.

[Arctic Blast]

So, let's see...

Reducing the number of places where the games are available is apparently a good idea. We won't try to just harmonize prices across stores, we'll just have it removed from larger storefronts that have more customers coming to them...

...at the same time, we'll try to get Panzer Corps out there via Steam Greenlight, because we want a larger audience to see it.

Consistency, anyone? Are they making this up as they go?


Is pricing wrong on new games? Absolutely not. But the insane prices of their back catalog make absolutely no sense, and they don't offer a reasonable point of entry for anyone new to a series.
Does every game in the Slitherine catalog belong on every site? Again, absolutely not. But a decent chunk of the catalog could certainly benefit from wider availability.

This whole 'legend' that large scale strategy games just don't interest anyone beyond a small little core has been proven absolutely false by the success of a company like Paradox. Think about it : they have actually managed to not only interest a fairly wide spectrum of gamers in massive and complex titles like Hearts of Iron and EU, they've done well enough that they've really become a solid little mid-market publisher in their own right. Clearly, it CAN work as a business model.

But too many of these little companies cling to what increasingly looks like an outdated business model. Do that for too long and you run the risk of being the next Shrapnel. Their one golden goose (Dominions 3) walked out the door for a broader audience, and Shrapnel may as well be dead man walking. And a lot of these smaller developers are realizing they don't NEED a publisher any more. It's a new age. Games can be self published now, and more and more indie devs are flocking to that. You need to convince these guys why they need you. And debacles like taking nearly 2 months to patch up Unity of Command to the level it was at everywhere else certainly aren't very convincing.

[Zulu1966]

Of course the biggest issue in discussing the issue of wargames sales is that no one has any idea what they are or the profit they make. We only know they work at some level due to the fact they keep producing them. The only indications I have ever seen is a couple of anecdotal slips of the tounge.

Steve at battlefront said it enables them to live reasonably comfortable middle class life styles and in a conversation with someone at matrix they told me that roughly 60 % of their developers are full time. So it works to produce the content on some level - what that level is no one exept the guys who do it have the faintest idea what it is.

I saw a figure from slitherine a couple of years back that there income for that year was around 13 million dollars. Now that didnt seem to bad for what is a cottage industry - even across their entire range. This has been their best year ever according to reports so presumably its up on that.

In any event - in 30 years time when we are all either dead or too blind to see the screen, and when pretty much all those who even know the second world war happened arent playing - wargames will likely not exist in the way they do now. I belie the majority of the base of customers are of a particular age and that aint going to last forever.

The fact is - the number of people under twenty five who could tell you the dates of even the best known war is achingly small.

[LongBlade]

I saw a figure from slitherine a couple of years back that there income for that year was around 13 million dollars. Now that didnt seem to bad for what is a cottage industry - even across their entire range. This has been their best year ever according to reports so presumably its up on that.

Slitherine produces some console games, which is probably where that number comes from.

[Bison]

I think the one area that Slitherine is exploring that is good for all concerned is what they did with Battle Academy.  They were able to make the same game play on PC, Mac, and iPads.  You can play multiplayer against anyone who owns the game regardless of platform and the game was not further scaled back to develop the iPad version.  I think it's the trend whether we like it or not.  And frankly many of the finest wargames of the past would play well on an iPad. 

[Steelgrave]

Matrix is free to price their games as they wish, and I've certainly purchased my share. But there are a number of older titles from 2008, 2009 that I would buy today if they were in the $25-30 range instead of $60. I'm happy to pay full freight for the shiny new game I've been waiting for, but the older stuff....I buy at a bargain or I don't buy.