Quote:
Originally Posted by mrkai
Video Games: Video Games seem to be the yardstick of price/cost/value that they use to measure. A "Triple A" software title (ok, this is confusing; they mean A++, not Minor League. I know. I KNOW.) on the Most Powerful Hardware Evar!!! costs $40-$60Million USD to make and sells for $40-$60.
By their reasoning, nothing that costs less than this to make should cost more than the price of a game. I've seen, read and heard this MANY MANY times.
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They have not considered simple economies of scale.
If you spend $10m developing a video game, and you sell 1 million copies of it, you'll break even selling it for $10 a copy (ignoring distribution costs, etc).
If you spend $10m developing a CAD package, and you know that you're only going to sell 1000 copies of it, you need to sell it for $10k a copy to break even. You couldn't sell it for $10, because there aren't a million people in the world who'd want it. It's doubtful that selling it for $1k rather than $10k would get you 10x more sales.
The point is that software aimed at professionals - CAD packages, video editing suites, PhotoShop-type applications, etc - are generally bought for their functionality rather than their price. If I'm a graphic designer charging clients $1000 a day, it's irrelevent to me whether PhotoShop costs $100 or $1000 - it's a tool I need to do my job and I'll buy it whatever it costs.