Yes, another cash shop thread. The prices are way too expensive, and that is making most people pass up stuff they want. MOST people cannot spend $10-$20 every couple days when something new comes in the shop. If 343 made items cheaper, such as a color bundle for $1, accessory bundle for $2 or an armor bundle for $3, they would easily sell 100x as many of each, earning them more money in the end. Are they seriously too greedy to realize that they will make more money selling things at a cheaper price? If you set the price low enough, people will buy things on whim a lot more or “in case they want to use it later.”
Set the prices equivalent to deciding to buy a quick snack from a vending machine or buying a morning coffee instead of setting it to cost a day’s+ worth of food or the cost of eating out at a restaurant. Think of those two examples. Which of the two happens more often? Which do people collectively spend more on? It’s the small purchases over time instead of single larger purchases.
I am not angry at the cash shop’s existence. I 100% support pay-to-accessorize. What I hate is how 343 decided to set the prices so high that only kids with rich parents or adults with detrimentally loose wallets can buy stuff but those who struggle financially or have to budget have little choice but to pass up what they want.
I fear that the longer it takes for 343 to address the pricing issue, the less likely and harder it will be, because if they wait too long to drop the prices, those idiots who bought things at price-gouging rates will riot and demand refunds. The sooner 343 acts, the better. They honestly should have made things cheap from the start… Whoever made the decision to set the prices so high should be fired.
Why not both the big purchase and the small purchase. Whales will buy the big stuff, and likely the small stuff too. And everyone else can buy small stuff they like. As is you’re right, they’re only catering to a specific audience.
There are more than two camps. I’m still in the camp that I’ll buy if the prices are right and I want the item. I check the shop everyday when it updates for that exact reason. I’ve just not seen a single thing in the shop that I felt was reasonable for what I wanted. Some of the bundles I’ve actually thought were reasonably priced, but not if you only want one item in the bundle.
No need for that. What would that solve? 343 needs to earn money. There is absolutely nothing wrong with an accessory cash shop. The biggest issues is the price. Making the price so high means far fewer people are buying anything.
Optimization usually isn’t that simple, in the example you post neither is likely the maximum. Consider selling 80 at a price of $2. That’d be significant more than the example you mentioned.
Now, obviously maximization takes a bit of work and I don’t have all the details, but I think we can take as an axiom that if we made a profit function based on price that it would be increasing for prices near zero, and decreasing for very high prices. Let’s say prices are decreasing for all values at or greater than equal to X. Then as money is discrete there are finite values between 0 and X, and the maximum is achieved. And it won’t be at X, because prices are decreasing at that point. In short, the maximum isn’t likely at either extreme you mentioned.
Well do we know prices in other games are optimized? If you put prices to very high levels of course most your profits will be off of whales. They’re almost the only ones buying. If most games start chasing them, then all your data is obtained with high prices. Extrapolation is poor far outside of the range you’re testing, so I’d argue that the data obtained off high prices is insufficient to obtain a global maximum, only a local maximum.
Now, another thing to consider is even if whales are always going to contribute the most to your profits, that doesn’t mean they’re the only people you can make money on. If you could keep your profits from whales the same but increase your profits from small fish, then you’d increase total profits. If we assume whales will buy everything, then selling some little items along with the expensive bundles would likely just increase profits.
I’d have probably purchased $100 worth of -Yoink!- in this game if stuff was cheaper and was separated out of bundles. Most bundles only have 1 or 2 things I’d ever use. As of now I’ve spent $10. Sucks 2 suck I guess Microsoft
This always comes up with every new release which has an overpriced dress shop.
Yet games still come out with these overpriced dress shops. (Usually over time, the dresses become a little cheaper, a few bones are thrown to the players.)
Maybe, just maybe, all the data shows that these overpriced dress shops won’t make more with cheaper prices, at least in the short term. Hmmm.
Regardless, the time to whine and moan about this was 15+ years ago, as some of us have been doing. That someone would buy dresses, if they were cheaper, is part of the problem.
If they keep the prices high at launch, then the data they are collecting is only from high prices. And you run into the issue I mentioned during my previous post. The data can only show you a local max, not a global max. And that’s assuming it’s even applicable to the Halo audience.
I don’t get what you’re saying here about 15 years ago. If you recall, 15 years ago the newest Halo was 2. Which only had Species and colors as customization, and those were all bundled with the game at launch. Unless you’re telling about a different franchise.
I do know 15 years ago Horse armor can’t out for Oblivion, but that wasn’t basic player customization. And everyone did complain. Bethesda kind of acknowledged the complaints too, with their April Fool’s day price hike for Horse Armor. So I wouldn’t say people weren’t complaining then. And also, this Oblivion was an action RPG, not an online FPS. Different crowds.
