Misleading statements made by a computer games publisher

[Jarhead0331]

How did we miss such an obvious question?

i guess we were too busy buying and playing their games...

[hurryover]

Matrix was independent at one point in time. Matrix owned wargamer.com  Slithering purchased Matrix including wargamer.

Not quite.  Matrix did not own Wargamer.  David Heath owned WGer.  David was also a partner in Matrix.  Same guy w/ feet on 2 sides of a fence, but a fence was there.  A decent analogy would be that Paul Allen at one point owned the Portland Trailblazers, and he owned part of Microsoft.  But Microsoft didn't own the Trailblazers.

Slitherine's purchase of Matrix did include taking ownership of WGer, though.

What happened to David Heath? Is he still publishing?

[Nefaro]

How did we miss such an obvious question?

i guess we were too busy buying and playing their games...

The majority of my Matrix/Slitherine purchases, in the past three years, have been from recent acquisitions of external game companies.  Those definitely weren't as "premium priced" as the other in-house titles, either.  The standalones were half the cost of their premium priced ones. The Scourge of War add-ons, BOR and AJE. 

The only solely home-published ones I grabbed were a couple of the Distant Worlds add-ons .. during the sale and that partly because I was sent a gift code for them.   I've made far fewer purchases of their own titles in the past few years than I ever have in the past.  Probably because most of it is still the same 'ole WW2 stuff and now iPad titles. 

This should've definitely made me question whether their overall sales increases was indeed due to the success of their premium-priced titles.  Perhaps they were only referring to their iPad stuff??  I dunno.. but I have doubts as to whether their Panther Games, WitE, WitP-AE eighty dollar line-ups are sole contributors to a 480% increase in their sales. 

I like the game company, but their pricing on some titles scare all but the die-hards away and judging by past forum feedback on their priciest ones, they can't be responsible for such a large sales increase if using these premium PC titles as the cause.

[hurryover]

I've made far fewer purchases of their own titles in the past few years than I ever have in the past. Probably because most of it is still the same 'ole WW2 stuff and now iPad titles. 

Bingo. Bango. Bongo.

I just passed on purchasing Germany at War because it looked like just another WW2 game we've already seen before. And by judging from the lack of feedback I got from my thread about it, I think others did the same.

[Capn Darwin]

I guess having to actually good to work today I missed the evolution of this brew-ha-ha, but I'll throw a few bullet items on the fire here having 1). been at the event where the quoted information was given and 2) being a developer working on a title to be published by Matrix/Slitherine (M/S).

• I don't know if it matter what kind of number get floated out by folks during presentations. I believe the official universal axiom is "there are lies, damn, lies, and statistics". I believe the points being made at Historicon were on various topics of growth. They have gone from no mobile titles 3 year ago to several now. Those titles are selling well (mainly in Europe right now). Hence large growth in that area. That growth factors into the M/S bottom line.


• As a result of this growth in other areas, M/S is looking to make more push into the mobile market with real strategy games. No candy crush temple run of angry birds. Real strategy titles that work on the mobile interface and resources. As an aside, I'm not going to squabble cost models. When you pay 99 cents for a hundred lines or even 10,000 line of code maybe its worth it. What do you pay at 500,000 to a cool million lines? Just askin'.


• Also with this growth Slitherine joined forces with AGEOD and at Historicon stated they had a deal with Lordz Studio. That's it. Everyone else is an independent developer using them as a publisher. That's what we are doing.

So as far as I can tell the M/S/A/L group is doing fine. They have a good number of titles in the works for both the PC and mobile (ios platforms). And they have a wide offering of strategy titles that most Grogs will find something to like.

Maybe I missed the whole point of the OP. If I did sorry. It was a long day.

Thanks. I got to get back to Red Storm now...

[LongBlade]

I think you nailed it, Cap'n.

[jomni]

Perhaps they were only referring to their iPad stuff?? 

Bingo! This is it. Looking only at iPad, and the article is about iPad, it all makes sense.
Their first iPad game was an uninspired Egypt Engineering.  An Empire, Civ Lite game which I bet did not sell well.
It was followed by hugely successful Battle Academy.  Surely comparing the sales of those two would be 480% increase in sales.

Now if only someone from Slitherine comes out and explains where this exactly 480% figure came from. 
But they are not obliged to do so.

[bayonetbrant]

You don't really think you're going to get someone over here from S&M, do you?   :-\

[Nefaro]

You don't really think you're going to get someone over here from S&M, do you?   :-\

S&M ?!!! 



We hope not.

[hurryover]

You don't really think you're going to get someone over here from S&M, do you?   :-\

S&M wont come over here. It's in there best interests to keep people believing they had a 480% increase in sales, not including acquisitions. It supports their product price points.

[Herman Hum]

It supports their product price points.

I think that this was the entire goal of their declaration for "480% increase", a justification.

[Bison]

BS.  Maybe we should all rather they shrunk by 480% and went out of business dragging down a wealth of fine wargames with them.

[Steelgrave]

Frankly, I could care less what their numbers are so long as they are in a position to keep feeding my habit. I'm not buying stock, I'm buying wargames. I'm far more concerned about misleading numbers coming out of the mouths of Congressmen, the President, Wall Street types and bankers than I am from a gaming company. 4%, 48%, 480% up or down....who gives a rodent's anatomical exit anyway? As long as they are doing well enough to stay in business it means that someone is buying their product. I'm good with that.

[Herman Hum]

Maybe we should all rather they shrunk by 480% and went out of business dragging down a wealth of fine wargames with them.

This presumes that Slitherine is the only publisher in the world.  Developers can always move to other publishers such as Battlefront, Paradox, Storm Eagle Studios, Naval Warfare Simulations, etc. or do it themselves.  The demise of one publisher is not the end of an industry.  The retail product will certainly be different, though.

[Mad Russian]

I buy what I like.

Just like I make what I like.

I'm currently working on my second game that Matrix will publish. My only take on it is, if they are selling lots of games they are more stable and they have a large client base for us to sell our games to.

I could care less what their numbers are. I've been a financial advisor before was well. We had a saying too, "Figures don't lie, but Liars can figure."

Are they still open for business? That's my one and only concern.

I hope you like our next game from them. Flash Point Campaigns: Red Storm. If not, maybe something else they sell will be for you.

Good Hunting.