Today it is #8 http://appshopper.com/bestsellers/grossing/?sort=price&dir=asc Who knows where it will be next month but for now the price is right.
Not a lot of people buying energy? Eliminate is currently at no. 8 on top grossing. The majority of people on this site are teenagers, who don't have the money to dish out for energy. You have to realize that the traditional business model on the app store is simply not sustainable any more, especially for multiplayer games. Multiplayer games revolve around having a large userbase. In making eliminate free, ngmoco resolved this issue. We, the hardcore market, will pay 10$ for a game like Eliminate. However, the vast majority will not, thus leading to low sales and a small userbase. This has happened before. So the company panics, drops the price and ends up alienating the fans who got it at full price, also the low price ends up being too little to cover server maintenance and still make a good profit. Ngmoco however, chose not to go down this path. They decided to do something similar to Zynga's strategy, a pay-to-play model which has proven to be very successful for them. On the app store, the top paid app garners ~15,000 downloads a day. The top free app gets a whopping ~100,000 downloads a day. It makes much, much, much more sense to make it free than have it at a low price, but only if DLC is involved. Ngmoco now have a huge userbase, and make a very good profit through DLC. A very smart business move on their part.
What chart are you looking at? On Appshopper's "Top 100 (Grossing) In All Categories," Eliminate is listed as the 57th highest grossing app--it's been on the chart for 3 days ("#days") and the highest position it ever held was 8 ("peak".) If you are looking at "Top 100 (Grossing) In Games," Eliminate is the 29th highest grossing game--it's been on the chart for 4 days, and the highest position it has ever held was 5. I am not sure where you guys are getting the "number 8 on top grossing" statistic, as that's not what the chart says... (Unless it dropped way down since you posted your comments a few hours ago...)
That's subjective. The game is still in its honeymoon period, whereas it's hard to predict how gamers will regard it in a week or two weeks, let alone a month. It could well be that it's the more hardcore gamers that will be spending anything beyond their first purchase (when others see how little bang you get for your buck), and so sales will spiral. And all I'm arguing is that there has GOT to be a better middle ground for them that is both profitable in the long run, and resulting in a satisfied feeling for the customer. Without that lasting satisfaction, people won't continue purchasing anything, as they realise how quickly their purchase is consumed, and the foregone opportunity cost of doing so in light of all the other worthier/newer apps on offer.
As Hodapp already said.. the chart changes throughout the day. Point is so far the pay to play is working for Ngmoco.
The people who are going to buy DLC will have done so by now, no doubt. So, the people who aren't going to download it, or at least not download it at the offending state it's in at the minute, won't. If Ngmoco want to increase sales and proffit, they need to listen to the people who play the game. Sure, they've made money off some people so far, but they'll make more money off the people who haven't downloaded any DLC, yet. Look at it this way- I'm not going to download any DLC at the ridiculous pricing that it's at now. What I will do, is consider dowloading DLC in the future, if the pricing, or the recharge time is changed. Say the recharge time is 90 minutes for 1 Energy match, i'd download DLC to support Ngmoco's change. They really need to change Eliminate. People have deleted the game due to the ridiculous recharge time- bye bye customer. It's not just one customer though is it? It's thousands of customers they've lost. I want Ngmoco to be a successful company, so they can release more games that can be what Eliminate could be. Ngmoco- give us more for our money or change the recharge time. Anyway, here's my positive. A lot of people may disagree with me on this, but oh well. I think having the recharge time at 90 minutes would be a good idea. It'd stop people becoming overly obsessed with it, and still keep the DLC an option. I'd hate for people to be playing Eliminate instead of studying, revising or whatever for college/ school. 90 minutes recharge time- fair 240 minutes recharge time- ridiculous
I just play with what I have. I really don't care. I'm not happy with it, but there isn't anything we can do about it so I just flow like wata
What a lot of you who are offended by the business model ngmoco has decided on don't realize is even you people who refuse to pay a cent are part of the bigger picture of why this is working. Ngmoco doesn't need everyone who plays the game to give them money, they only need a few people to. The massive free player base are the ones who are creating the vibrant online community that encourages those who are more serious about the game to buy energy-- So even though you haven't given ngmoco any money, and never plan to, you're still indirectly making the game a success for them. The top tier players who are willing to flip out a couple bucks here and there for energy are what's keeping the game on the top grossing list. There was even a point today where Eliminate was making more money than Skeeball, which is currently the #1 paid app at 99¢. I don't see how Eliminate couldn't be sustainable, all ngmoco has to do is keep a somewhat regular update schedule with new weapons, armor, skins, and other items to buy and the players who don't mind buying energy will keep buying it until something better comes along. There will likely always be a player base for those people to play against because the game is free, similar to how you can still download Words with Friends or Chess with Friends and find several active players to play games against immediately. There are games that are much older, much more simple, and frankly quite boring that are using this same business model which are still making money. Epic Pet Wars came out in April and the community is still as vibrant as ever. In fact, one could argue that the Eliminate and TouchPets communities could grow even larger because neither game has the cumbersome and confusing registration process and gameplay as games like Epic Pet Wars, Mafia Wars, etc. Eliminate is immediately accessible to anyone who is at all familiar with any kind of console first person shooter, and the controls/gameplay of TouchPets couldn't possibly be more intuitive. Because of this, the barrier of entry to sustain users will be much lower than something like Epic Pet Wars since most people who download the games will instantly know how to play them. Compare that to Epic Pet Wars where you launch the game, are met with a confusing choice of a few different pets and you have no idea what their different abilities do or which one is the best choice. You're then thrown in to this wacky disaster of a UI that looks like someone decided to eat the iPhone SDK UI builder and a web page and vomit the contents in to an application. Their bounce rate has to be astronomical compared to "Oh hey I downloaded this game now I'm shooting dudes online." or "Oh hey I downloaded this game now I'm petting my dog." ...And they're still making money hand over fist.
I agree with Hodapp's last comments about Ngmoco's likelihood of making profit. I'm certainly going to trust their no-doubt thorough market research rather than the opinions of a few people on this forum. I guess the concern as a consumer has been this 'have to wait for four hours to earn more credits' thing. Which is ridiculous, because you don't have to wait at all, you can simply keep playing. Anyone played Halo on xbox live? It's essentially the same game without the ability to upgrade/buy new equipment. So while you're out of credits, even if you only have one gun and one armor suit, you are basically playing a stripped back version of a (once upon a time) $60 console shooter - without even paying the xbox live subscription fee. So in my opinion, even if your energy never recharged, and you never got the chance to buy new equipment, the game is still ridiculous value compared to anything else available in the video game market. The fact that over time you can still get to the standard of the top players without paying a cent means that ngmoco is in no way 'nickel and diming' anyone. A lot of people on TA seem to be suggesting they would rather pay a one-time fee to ensure either faster recharge or permanent full energy. I guess that my answer to this is that in games with traditional pricing structures (ie Zenonia) I might like to be able to get the app for free, and then progress through it slowly, but with the option to speed things up through microtransactions (buy better weapons, unlock new areas for example). I can't do this however, because it is not the way it's designed. So I fork out $10 and get a game I may only play for a couple of hours and never look at again. It certainly seems obvious to me which structure the consumer should prefer
I was gonna wright a post about strategy here but i think hoddap sums it up quite nicely so i'll just say this to all you nonbelievers. Dont you think that this company have thought about the major of all what ifs already? You constantly underestimate these guys! I guarantee you that there is some serious research behind this, these things are financially planned aswell as carfully studied. Numbers going heywire on appstore doesnt mean shit right now. =) This is not a new fenomena, it old - its the flavour thats new!
OK, I bought a $1 pack a few days ago just to support them. I've never liked the whole idea of a game that never ends, probably why I didn't like World of Warcraft. In WoW, you're pretty much just paying a fee over and over again for a game you'll never finish and spending money when you could be getting other games and having more variety. So in essence, it's really just a pointless game. Personally, I'd rather play a huge variety of games than keep playing Eliminate and at the end of the whole ordeal (when you get bored because it's never going to end) having spent 100's of dollars on a single game. Oh and one last thing, what's the point of playing a game if you're not leveling up or can't buy anything?
True, I just play as a stress reliever actually. But back on point though, the game is still crippled either way. If you don't pay you don't get the feature of leveling up (well, you do but it's only for a few minutes every 300 minutes is it?) and if you do pay you only get to level up for a certain time. Just my thoughts on the whole situation.
I dont know exactly how their payingsystem work nor what the rates are but judging from the fuzz people seem to think its to high at current state. My guess is that mgongo will study all this under a period. If money keeps on coming in regardless of what people think about it, they have nailed it on first try. Should time show a substancial drop on cashflow then you will probobly adjust their rates a tad. Dont expect any revolutionary changes though - there is a reason why they have set the levels where they are! From their point of view, the optimum pricerange should be just below the pain-threshold of the players. People may whine about it til they go nuts but as long as it is on a affordeble level so moneyflow are steady then its optimal. If cashflow rising to fast, well then they are to cheap. Expect higher prices masked behind some technical BS about increasing costs for servers etc. If their income falls over time you should probobly expect a pricedrop, or more likley, more "credits" or whatever the currency is for the same price. This will go on until sweetspot has been found. It must work this way to be effective in the long run. Its really just fundamentional economy from a marketing/product type of view. Nothing strange about it.
I'm not sure the question of how effective this pricing strategy is will really be resolved right away. I think it's going to be very effective for them in the short term, as it's a hot title, and has a good community going for it now. The problem in my mind is that iDevice gamers are a very transient group. We're always looking for the "next big thing". So while I don't doubt that the devs are making a decent amount on DLC now, it's because this game is so high profile for the time being. The question to me is will they make enough before the next big game comes out and hits their market share, because I still contend that by the winter holidays this game will have lost much of its community, and it will have been replaced by bigger, better online games. Will the devs have recouped enough by that point to make this a successful endeavor for them? Only time will tell perhaps, but actions will speak louder than words. If we don't see more games coming out with this pricing strategy, then we will know that it's probably not the best business model. If we see a bunch of copy-cats, then we know that ngmoco were trendsetters, and they had the right idea.
Oh I might forget to mention that all of this rely on that there is a stable and popular game behind it. If it isnt then all of this wont really matter cos no one will play it anyway.
Regarding this its not certinly that is has to be a overgoing thing. Remember CS and WoW. They are both games that somehow has survived the hype and stays alive. Why? In CS case its probobly due to the fact that is a solid game to begin with. Its simple but appealing to people. Its a perfect pick n play multiplayer game. The game has a large community etc. Its pretty much the same with WoW although another type of game. In the rpg cases i think the devs play a bigger role as function as the games renewer for the players. As long as new content is added regurlary theres really no point in stopping playing for the players appealed of this type of games. The future of Eliminate highly depends on the devs. The biggest individual part is probobly the game itself. It must be good enough to begin with. A rock solid game is the foundation of the success. Take that and add a large community, new content added regurlary to give the players more value and give them reason to play on. Eliminate is in a sweet spot right now as i see it. It has a high probobility of becoming the iphoneversion of CS and if the devs play their cards right i dont really see why it shouldn't.
To be frank, I don't understand how Eliminate is really 'that good' .. I've pickup this game, played it for free for a little while .. bought a crate of Energy Pack .. and now I'm bored (and full of regret) .. Thus there's come my bad review .. Regarding the pricing scheme, I think that if more dev following this steps, it's going to kill Ipod/Iphone potential as gaming platform ... me for example, will be getting PSP if that will be the case .. at least I get something that is really worth my money .. and that's the reason why I don't agree with this pricing scheme .. why can't they just apply monthly subs. for example? I really dont want to go deep to think what NGMOCO are thinking .. on the surface, I just think that they are greedy, and that is just bad .. I know they have a business to run, but being too greedy will not make you rich on long term .. we have a lot of fables that proves this ..
