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Valve: Left 4 Dead Half-price Sale Saw 3000% Increase, Beat Launch Numbers
by Nick Breckon, Feb 19, 2009 3:07am PSTValve co-founder Gabe Newell announced during a DICE keynote today that last weekend's half-price sale of Left 4 Dead resulted in a 3000% increase in sales of the game, posting overall sales that beat the title's original launch performance.
Newell also mentioned that new Steam customers jumped 1600% over the same weekend, according to G4TV. Retail sales remained constant.
Sales of Team Fortress 2 went up 106% following a free update to the game. Retail wasn't left out in this case, with sales jumping 28%.
The massive Steam holiday sale was also a big win for Valve and its partners. The following holiday sales data was released, showing the sales breakdown organized by price reduction:
- 10% sale = 35% increase in sales (real dollars, not units shipped)
- 25% sale = 245% increase in sales
- 50% sale = 320% increase in sales
- 75% sale = 1470% increase in sales
Furthermore, Valve has hired an experimental psychologist to maximize the excitement of Steam sales and other marketing opportunities. According to Newell, one suggestion by the psychologist was to provide one free copy of a Valve game to every 25th buyer of Left 4 Dead.
Comments
If Steam would allow you to receive a box in the mail, I might purchase more titles. Just the box, no cd or anything, a printed manual would be nice.
If Steam is going to charge FULL retail price for a game they aren't having to box up, ship, distribute, pay to get on shelves, etc etc.... why is it the same price as a game that DOES have to go through all that?
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http://www.shacknews.com/laryn.x?id=18864362#itemanchor_18864362
http://www.shacknews.com/laryn.x?id=18865012#itemanchor_18865012
Now everyone tell me how awesome I am, and how I should be Supreme Dictator of Earth.
then why on earth did they raise prices so dramatically for it's European users?
sometimes 50-70% more than retail?
hello?
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low game price + free content = sold
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I like to buy games when they become cheap, digital distribution kills the clearance deals you can land places... Steam just encourages a game stay at its higher price for longer than it would be on shelves. :(
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I was waiting for a super deal on UT3 but a guy at work is willing to give me his copy or either sell it to me cheap (we haven't determined that yet).
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fiance was in town and I forgot!
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the market has spoken, and apparently it agrees with me. left 4 dead is a $25 game, not a $50 one.
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i'm sure they won't be releasing any numbers as to how many of those vast new sales didn't bother playing the game for more than a day or two and haven't returned since....
great marketing perhaps, but still an overhyped dated looking game. the only good thing about it is that it feeds the MP jukies with their crack.
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The games industry is one in which something like 90% of titles lose money and then the remaining 10% make it all back. This is completely ass backwards but not a single publisher has the balls to publish good (but not great) games at a lower price (or are restricted from doing so by platform EG MS and X360). Now its clear that just starting at a lower price isn't going to pull in 15x the money like steam did above (obviously steam's sales have a dual component nature of both "hey its on sale" and "hey its cheap"), but anyone with half a brain can see that fucking Tomb Raider Underworld IS NOT WORTH $60. But I can tell you that I would have gladly picked it up for $30. Alot of people would. Meanwhile Fallout 3 could have been $60 or even $70 and still sold very well. The media costs even without digital distribution are really low, so it is not as if there is a problem there.
The problem here I think is an industry stuck in its ways.
tl;dr publishers are ignoring the potential benefits of lower prices, and shooting themselves in the foot by making 90% of games lose money
feel free to call me out about how wrong i am
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The very digestible price of 24.99 has something to do with it, but it's more about the marketplaces predictable behavior with something like a 50% price drop on anything.
I am still not that interested in playing the game, but even I went and bought it during the sale because hey! half price!
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Let's do the math here ...
a $60 game ... x 1 copy ... $60.
a $15 game ... x 14 copies ... $210.
This breaks down if the game actually costs more than $11.54 to physically make or digitally distribute/support each copy. With the price of CD's and digital downloads, in my mind this is unlikely.
... Why are games still $50-$60?
I can understand launching them at a higher price point, and many AAA+ games are definitely worth the $50-$60 ... but we still see most games priced at this level regardless of quality or value.
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Their psychologist has just won one free kick to the nuts.
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Its the same experience I've had before - great if you're an american with a visa, but any kind of outlier gets an inferior experience (whether weird limits or bad pricing)
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With digital downloads you could theoretically lower the price by 95% if it resulted in a 5000% sales increase or whatever.
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Seriously, they must be raking in the cash. Well done Valve!
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I think we should all appreciate that a private company is willing to share its researched trends and sales data with the masses. Yes I know they don't give actual numbers, but they show the result of their crunching those numbers. This can defintiely help other developers, programmers, etc to find a somewhat good baseline to adopt their own personal trends and expectations to delivering content to this gaming community.
Yea they have their own agenda, but they are also sharing stuff they really don't have to.
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Right.
Add another developer who isn't sitting there whining asking the government to enact new draconian laws to protect a dying business model.
Its awesome when business people "get it".
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