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Attractive price for a mobile game

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1 comment, last by rogerdv 7 years, 7 months ago

Im working in a remake of an old MS-DOS game I played when I was a boy. My first target is Android, but I also plan to cover other platforms, like Windows, Linux and iOS. I really dislike the monetization schemes based on buying more time, lives, or whatever, so, my game is old school: pay only once. If you lost, start over again. I want to ask some attractive price, not very expensive, but Im not sure what are the lowest limit allowed by Google Play, GOG or similars. Also, my only experience was selling my novel in Amazon: I set the price to $0.99 USD, asked my cousin to buy it and he put some excuses about taxes or whatever and "maybe in pounds it is not 99 cents, but more", and never bought it.

So, my question is, what price would be attractive enough for players in this age of free games, and at same time, would give me and the rest of team some profit (for a beer or two, or maybe solving or hardware problems)? 99 cents? 1.99? What elements should I consider (taxes paid by buyer, taxes applied to our profit after Google's cut, etc)?

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I grew up in the 80's playing quite a few games of the time. I don't know if I look at purchasing games the same way as other groups or even people my own age range.

  • If I don't know if a game will be worth the time and money to play, I'm much less likely to even try it.

  • Sometimes I will buy a game on impulse depending on the particular mood that I'm in a given moment. You can't really plan for that but lower prices (say between $0.99 & 4.99) make it easier to give in to the impulse.

  • If I think a game will be worth the price, I will pay more for it.

  • If I saw a game for sale < $0.99 but not free, I think I'd actually be suspicious of it. I would have to have heard great things about it to even try it.

  • I am not likely to buy things in game to complete or enhance the game though I may go from a free version to a paid version if I liked the game.

My best advice... Give me a reason to think that your game will be worth what you charge for it.

I plan to release a demo with 5-6 levels (thats like 10 minutes) before the full version. Guess that will help to find if you really like the game.

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