Rebate for PTW owners?

[WillJ]

Originally posted by h4ppy
For one thing you would probably have to send in your PTW disc and then you would lose access to all you saved games and the fan-made scenarios(not included in CIV3C).

Actually, the save files and scenarios are not connected to the disk in any way. They're put in the hard drive. Go ahead and throw the disk into a dumpster and set it on fire; you'll still have the save files and scenarios.

Of course, you might need the CD to play the save files, but I doubt it, considering you can play vanilla Civ3 save files with the PTW disk (and it changes them to the PTW version).

 

[Colonel Kraken]

Originally posted by Padma
Re-read the title of my post: "Just to play Devil's Advocate ...."

Oops. Missed that one.

I personally think it would be an excellent Marketing/Customer Relations ploy.

Fair enough.

Or does the goodwill earned enough to offset the monetary loss?

I don't know how much goodwill there's been, but ok. I didn't realize these profit margins were so low. Nonetheless, I think a limited approach rebate would draw many people in who would either not consider the purchase or wait until the price has significantly dropped. (what happens to the profit margin then? ) $19.95, baby! That's my price, not a penny more! Ok, OK, maybe $24.95, but no more! See? a $5 rebate would work perfectly.

 

[alpha wolf 64]

I'm hoping for a sale the first weekend its out, otherwise i may have to wait til it hits the bargain bin next year I had much higher hopes from PTW and felt it was a waste of money since I don't play multi player. As the saying goes: fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, what am I, a total moron?

I may have slightly misquoted that

 

[sealman]

Originally posted by Padma
Consider that you will have owned and played PTW for up to a full year before Conquests comes out. Is not ~$30 a reasonable price to have paid to have the enjoyment of the game for that long?

I have had it that long but have been unable to play due to
system specs.

 

[warpstorm]

What part of your system is below spec?

 

[sealman]

processor., by a few mghtz

game would not load for me and Firaxis/Infrogrames pointed that my process was "below the required specs".

 

[ChrTh]

Wow, I'm surprised this thread is still around! Anyhoo...

I used the example of Axis and Allies in my initial post...does anyone know of any other Publisher-oriented rebate in the PC Industry? Just curious, 'tis all.

BTW, as for the contention that I'll get the game as soon as it comes out anyway, yes, that may be true, but I am the one who waited until PTW dropped in price, and as a general rule, I do not purchase just-released games (Enter the Matrix for X-Box and NWN & its Expansion are the only exceptions in the last several years--even Civ III I waited for Christmas for).
The point is:
Will I buy C3C upon release without a rebate? Probably. Will I buy it upon release with a rebate? Definitely. Whether that matters or not, I don't know.

 

[DaviddesJ]

Originally posted by ChrTh
Will I buy C3C upon release without a rebate? Probably. Will I buy it upon release with a rebate? Definitely. Whether that matters or not, I don't know.

If you're one of the few who actually send in the rebate and get the check, then Atari will lose money on you (the cost of the rebate is more than they can make up by selling the game). The only value of the rebate to them is if it gets people to buy the game who then don't get around to sending in the rebate.

 

[ChrTh]

Originally posted by DaviddesJ


If you're one of the few who actually send in the rebate and get the check, then Atari will lose money on you (the cost of the rebate is more than they can make up by selling the game). The only value of the rebate to them is if it gets people to buy the game who then don't get around to sending in the rebate.

So are you saying I shouldn't have purchased an X-Box because Microsoft loses money for every X-Box sold?

 

[DaviddesJ]

Originally posted by ChrTh
So are you saying I shouldn't have purchased an X-Box because Microsoft loses money for every X-Box sold?

I'm saying that if you buy an X-Box but don't buy any X-Box games (because you hack it to run linux and don't play X-Box games), then Microsoft is losing money on you as a customer, and so that's bad for them, unless they make up for it by selling more machines to people who do buy lots of games on which they make money.

 

[ChrTh]

Originally posted by DaviddesJ


I'm saying that if you buy an X-Box but don't buy any X-Box games (because you hack it to run linux and don't play X-Box games), then Microsoft is losing money on you as a customer, and so that's bad for them, unless they make up for it by selling more machines to people who do buy lots of games on which they make money.

I'm going to cut to the chase to keep the thread from going out of control.

Let's say they make $7 on the game. Are they better off offering a $5 rebate at $30, or me buying the game at $20? Obviously the first option, because they're making $2 (plus getting my marketing info, a different issue) as opposed to losing $3.

But I could also spin that further.

Let's say they make only $4 on the game. If they offer the rebate and I buy it at $30 and get the rebate, they lose $1 (and gain my marketing info). If they don't offer the rebate, and I wait until it drops to $20, they lose $6. Again, they're better off offering the rebate.

I'm not saying that we deserve a rebate. I'm just saying that Ataraxis might want to consider it for some of the reasons given above. It wouldn't be the first time a publisher has done it, and it would salve some people who are inexplicably angry over the whole thing (I am not one of those).

 

[DaviddesJ]

Originally posted by ChrTh
Let's say they make $7 on the game. Are they better off offering a $5 rebate at $30, or me buying the game at $20? Obviously the first option, because they're making $2 (plus getting my marketing info, a different issue) as opposed to losing $3.

They don't make as much as $7 by selling you an extra copy of the game, and a $5 rebate costs them more like $7 if you submit it (including fulfillment costs), so they are losing money selling to you, if you submit the rebate. They are better off selling it at $30, and maybe you'll wait until it gets marked down, and buy it then. They still make something that way (they make less than on a full-price sale, but residual sales have some value to them too).

Let's say they make only $4 on the game. If they offer the rebate and I buy it at $30 and get the rebate, they lose $1 (and gain my marketing info). If they don't offer the rebate, and I wait until it drops to $20, they lose $6. Again, they're better off offering the rebate.

This is wrong. If they make $4 profit on a $30 retail sale, then they might make $2 profit on a $20 retail sale. They certainly don't lose money on the $20 sale. They are better off if you buy the game marked down to $20, than if you buy it at $30 but get a $5 rebate.

 

[EddyG17]

i think they make less than a dollar, because they aren't talking about a few thousand instead about millions here in the US, a millions others on the on the rest of the world.

 

[Ozymandous]

Do I really care how much profit Atari makes off each copy of the game?

No.

Do I care that I spent $30 on a game that will now be wholly included in another game for another $30?

YES!

I look at it this way, since Conquests includes all the PTW stuff we're essentially paying 50% more for the second expansion than people who didn't buy PTW at all. It's not relevant if I "got my moneys worth" or not because the simple fact is that if you bought PTW for $30 and now buy Conquests for $30 you'll have spent $60, when others will have spent $30 for both.

With this in mind I don't think a $10 or even $15 discount on Conquests would be out of line for those who bought PTW earlier because without those fans the game wouldn't have sold enough to make the second expansion in the first place. Not to mention how screwed up PTW was when it was first released.

Two examples of games where if you bought expansions you got discounts were:

Zoo Tycoon, where the second x-pack had all the stuff from the first and the publisher offered a discount ($10) for people who bought the first expansion.

Rollercoaster Tycoon, where the publisher did the same thing as happened with Zoo Tycoon.

 

[Bamspeedy]

Originally posted by Mallipeep
Dont you feel ripped off when you bought your new computer for 1000€ but your neighbour gets the same computer next year for 500€ ???

Excellent point!!

NO! What they do is give out "Loyalty Coupons" and such. Compared to the price of a new car, it's nothing, but it keeps 'em coming back.

A $5 rebate is 16.67% of the price for a $30 game. (25% if you pick the game up for $20 a few months after it is released)

Do car manufacturers offer a $3,333 rebate for a $20,000 car? (or $5,000 if you take the 25% example). No, instead you see $500 or $1000, maybe $1500.

Zoo Tycoon, where the second x-pack had all the stuff from the first and the publisher offered a discount ($10) for people who bought the first expansion.

Rollercoaster Tycoon, where the publisher did the same thing as happened with Zoo Tycoon.

But in one (or maybe both?) of those cases, the second x-pack was released only 2 weeks after the first one, right? That makes more sense to give a rebate then. Conquests is coming a full YEAR later than PTW.

 

[Ozymandous]

Originally posted by Bamspeedy


A $5 rebate is 16.67% of the price for a $30 game. (25% if you pick the game up for $20 a few months after it is released)

Do car manufacturers offer a $3,333 rebate for a $20,000 car? (or $5,000 if you take the 25% example). No, instead you see $500 or $1000, maybe $1500.

Umm, yes they do offer rebates that large if they are trying to sell a lot of cars.

You can also trade in a used car to make up the difference in price to equal the rebate. Does this mean Atari will take our USED PTW discs for a discount off Conquests???

But in one (or maybe both?) of those cases, the second x-pack was released only 2 weeks after the first one, right? That makes more sense to give a rebate then. Conquests is coming a full YEAR later than PTW.

Umm, nope. The expansions were released at least 3 months (more like 6) after the release of the first expansion.

The time frame for the expansions is irrelevant because the discount was offered becasue the second expansion had ALL of the content of the first, which is exactly the case here.

 

[El Tee]

Okay, here's what I think.

There are points to be made in the pro/con rebate-discount for owners of PTW. If C3C were completely new material, I wouldn't mind shelling out 30, 40 bucks for it. Perhaps the problem is that PTW was a separate game from C3; either you played vanilla civ or PTW, but PTW was not an add-on to vanilla civ.

An analagous game would be the popular SIMS franchise; each expansion was an add-on to the previous game or expansion. You didn't have to play Sims or Sims Livin' Large; the Livin Large expansion was added into the framework of the original game.

If C3 was given expansions in a similar manner (i.e. PTW just added to the framework of C3, and modded graphics, added units, etc.) there wouldn't be this problem. We'd all happily buy the C3C expansion and complain about what civ didn't make it in, or something else.

However, since C3C (AFAIK) has all the PTW material built into it, I am a bit upset as a customer that I'll be re-buying PTW. This is tempered by the idea that I'll be getting a lot of brand-new civ stuff...things where a $5 or $10 rebate wouldn't change my purchasing decision. I might wait a couple of months until the price drops, and consider that my rebate...but I don't know that I would demand a purchase credit for PTW.

 

[Bamspeedy]

Originally posted by Ozymandous


Umm, nope. The expansions were released at least 3 months (more like 6) after the release of the first expansion.

The time frame for the expansions is irrelevant because the discount was offered becasue the second expansion had ALL of the content of the first, which is exactly the case here.

Ok, sorry, I mis-remembered what you said on another forum. It was Blizzard that did the 2-week thing.

Still, 3-6 months is a different story, than 1 full year.

I could understand someone's complaints if they buy PTW tomorrow, or a month before conquests comes out. But for people who bought the game last year, or early this year, they shouldn't get any rebates, IMO.
What are you trying to say? That you should only have to pay $10 or something to have been able to play PTW for the last year?
Any other $30 game lasts me about a week or month, then it gets boring and forgotten.

 

[Ozymandous]

Originally posted by Bamspeedy


Ok, sorry, I mis-remembered what you said on another forum. It was Blizzard that did the 2-week thing.

Still, 3-6 months is a different story, than 1 full year.

It was Blizzard that sold their expansion pack for $40 and then turned around less than a month later and bundled the X-pack, plus the original game for less than the price of the expansion and original game bought seperately.

I could understand someone's complaints if they buy PTW tomorrow, or a month before conquests comes out. But for people who bought the game last year, or early this year, they shouldn't get any rebates, IMO.
What are you trying to say? That you should only have to pay $10 or something to have been able to play PTW for the last year?
Any other $30 game lasts me about a week or month, then it gets boring and forgotten.

You're stuck on the time issue when that's irrelevant. The issue is paying twice for the same product, or in this case part of a product.

Let's say you bought a specialized PC for graphics editing. A year later you decide to buy another new PC for the same price as the original. You find out that the "new" PC has 50 percent of the same parts as your old PC including video card, CPU and motherboard. The only thing 'new' on the PC is the power supply, the hard drive and the CD-ROM, yet you're going to pay the same price as the old PC, and let's assume you CANNOT swap any of the parts out for anything else, like with the game code.

My analogy above probably has large flaws but hopefully you get the point. Would you be upset?

People who buy Conquests without a rebate are paying double the price of someone who didn't, hence my issue. There is no "opportunity cost" for getting the game early because if you had bought PTW when it first came out but left it sealed on your desk you'd get exactly the same product if you bought it today or bought the C3 instead since the code is the same, the game is the same and there is no real depreciation on the code/game.

Would I have ANY issue if the PTW stuff was left out of C3? Nope, because then people who wanted all of it would buy all of it, but since they are including ALL of PTW in C3, why shouldn't those who bought PTW get a modest rebate of $10-$15 off the price of C3?

Even with a $15 rebate for the PTW customers buying C3, Atari would have still had those people pay $45 for both product when people could buy C3 for only $30 total and get both anyway. They are still getting money for the same product twice, just not being quite as greedy about it.

 

[EddyG17]

You know what, they wont give you the rebete because 1)there are many other custumers 2) I'll bet you will buy it with or out a rebete!

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