FYI: CMSF is $4.99 for the week on Gamersgate

[hammelman]

It comes bundled with Lost Empire Immortals. I assume this is a download version of the game.

[Patrocles]

Wow! $5 and bundled with another game! good deal!!

Tell anyone who may have been thinking of buying this game about this deal.

[Spooner]

Hmm, I see it at 4.99 EUR which is still a very good deal! I'm in the UK, but I imagine that is good for anyone on this side of the pond.

[MikeyD]

Well, the sale may mean only 5 cents into BFC's pockets for each purchase, if that. But perhaps it will increase Marine/Brit/NATO module sales. I recall BFC was pleasantly surprised by the Marine module's initial sales figures - I suspect a large source of those undexpected sales was from 'bargain big' buyers who were willing to pay full price to expand the game.

[Patrocles]

I recall BFC was pleasantly surprised by the Marine module's initial sales figures - I suspect a large source of those undexpected sales was from 'bargain big' buyers who were willing to pay full price to expand the game.

Great! Where can I find more information on the sale figures of these games?

[hammelman]

You can't!

[Pvt. Ryan]

Well, the sale may mean only 5 cents into BFC's pockets for each purchase, if that.

I think BFC makes the same amount off each game whether you pay $5.00 or $50.00. It's the retailer that is losing out on revenues.

[Moon]

I think BFC makes the same amount off each game whether you pay $5.00 or $50.00. It's the retailer that is losing out on revenues.

You're dead wrong.

[Pvt. Ryan]

You're dead wrong.

Don't you sell it to them for a certain price no matter what they sell it for?

[Apocal]

This is a great time to spread the gospel.

[MikeyD]

Don't you sell it to them for a certain price no matter what they sell it for?

I wonder if retail game sales practices are like books. You print and ship out a certain number of books, the bookstores pay you your cut when each book gets sold. Sometimes a book can sit on a shelf unsold for years, and you pretty much take a bath on the 'remainders' that are unsold and yanked from display (all those unsold Ann Coulter books at Barnes & Noble for example).

I recall when I was a kid (early 1960s) the local convenience store owner unscrupulously sold us comic books with the top half of the covers ripped off. Mailing the publisher partial covers was supposed to be proof the issue had gone unsold. The guy was keeping all the profits on the comics he sold us kids. :eek:

[Pvt. Ryan]

That would suck. BFC should stick to direct sales if the retailers are going to screw them over like that. I hope the number of physical copies shipped is a relatively small percentage of overall sales.

[Moon]

That would suck. BFC should stick to direct sales if the retailers are going to screw them over like that. I hope the number of physical copies shipped is a relatively small percentage of overall sales.

We will in the future (even more so than in the past), and it is.

[helm123]

Well, the sale may mean only 5 cents into BFC's pockets for each purchase, if that. But perhaps it will increase Marine/Brit/NATO module sales. I recall BFC was pleasantly surprised by the Marine module's initial sales figures - I suspect a large source of those undexpected sales was from 'bargain big' buyers who were willing to pay full price to expand the game.

I'm not completely sure about the sales figures, but Steve has a reply in another post that says the opposite of that.

http://www.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?t=86541&page=3

[Canada Guy]

Will BF follow the same path that they used for CM:SF?

Create the main game and release it through retailers and market the modules only through BF? Or will the entire game family now only be available through BF?

Yes, CM:SF is now selling for $5 at the local Giant Tiger but it could possibly generate greater sales of the modules which is probably where the money for this game is at the moment. A game that is 2 years old probably does not sell as well as a brand new game but having fresh content will continue to generate sales that will go directly to BF. Is this not how many stores work (including many grocery stores). Give the first product away at little to no mark up and then sell them add-ons which generate greater profit.

I am not denegratig the practice I am just curious. I guess it would all boil down to how great the uptake is for add-ons. At 1:1 it might make sense. At 10:1 it might not.

[Battlefront.com]

helm123,

I'm not completely sure about the sales figures, but Steve has a reply in another post that says the opposite of that.

Hmmm... the only comment I saw on that link from me was about the relative sales of WW2 theaters. That was in response to someone saying that people would want Eastern Front, when the sales facts indicate Western Europe. A point I've made many times for many years

Sales of Marines was, indeed, much better than we predicted prior to the release of CM:SF. In fact, we're running about 4 times ahead of what we expected, 2 times ahead of "best case". Definitely the retail exposure helped out with those sales, though it's impossible to know how much.

The reason we keep trying out retail is because we do get a a big boost up front and it widens our customer base way beyond what we could possibly get on our own. CMx1 units sold through retail dwarfs what we sold directly. In terms or revenue direct yielded better total $$ by far. So it's a balance between exposure and erosion of long term direct sales. We knew that before we got into it and that's why the Modules were not intended for retailers

What exactly will we do for future CM releases? We'll just have to see. It always comes down to the details of a particular deal.

Steve

[MikeyD]

In fact, we're running about 4 times ahead of what we expected

I said all along there's a LOT of sentimental ex Marines out there. That's a demographic not to be underestimated.

[Thomm]

Good to read that the module concept is a winner! It is, indeed, for both sides, because I appreciate that the base engine is developed further constantly, and all users benefit from the features of the new modules. So even those who only bought the base game get years (literally) of extra development time. Nice.

Best regards,

Thomm

[cabal23]

You're dead wrong.

Ok so maybe I am wrong here, but as an ex-manager for the world largest game retailer, I can assure you that retailers buy enough games to cover their "guesstimate" of how many copies they think they will sell. It is someones job to make sure they buy enough to fill demand and sometimes they get it wrong and retailers get stuck with too many copies of a game. Also hype and pre-orders play a huge part as well. So unless BF did something outside the scope of all other PC and console games, retailers bought x number of copies of CMSF and are stuck with them unless they have a deal worked out with a distributor which rarely happens. For example we were able to ship thousands of copies of Lineage II back to NCsoft when Lineage II didn't sell what was expected, but that rarely happens. I think this happened because it was an MMO and had keys associated with each copy so they could put those into circulation elsewhere, like Korea.

For those copies of CMSF sold BF got their cut and the retailer will make theirs. That is why you find $4.99 pc games, because the retailer took a chance on a product and it didn't sell. Last time I checked games aren't on consignment to the retailer. Now they have to decide to drop the price to make way for product that will actually sell or keep it at the same price and hope it sells, cutting their effective real estate for their products that might sell better. Most stores choose the first. I actually bought my first copy of CM(the very first one) for $1.99 in a bin at Gamestop. So BF made their money off that game regardless if I payed $1.99 or $199.

Now as to what BF made of all the various versions of this game floating around I can't claim to know, and I assume the direct to drive version produced more profit since less material was used in the making of the product. So could you please clarify the NO your dead wrong comment so that we may all understand how this works.

I am just going off my experience and things could have changed in the past few years since I worked for GS.

[Battlefront.com]

cabal23,

Well, actually it's far more complicated than your understanding of things, although you are not incorrect. It's just that what you described is only one scenario. No doubt there are some instances of retailers getting rid of a backlog of product that they purchased. It's what the Bargain Bin was designed for. However, there are other things to consider.

The first is that although we get a percentage of each sale, that percentage is based on the price that a publishing partner gets from the distributor, who in turn bases its price on what it thinks it can sell the thing for to the retailer. As a product ages those prices all go down, so too does the amount we get per sale.

The problem with this model is that the developer has no say in the pricing. If a publishing partner makes a deal to sell the game to the distributor for $1 per unit, that's allowable. The distributor probably marks it up to $2 and the retailer marks it up to $5. The developer's cut is based on the $1 amount, not the $5 amount. In this scenario it would be typical for a developer to get around $0.10 - $0.20 per copy, sometimes less. We get more, but we are unusual for a few reasons that aren't relevant to this discussion.

The reality is that the developer almost certainly sees $0.00 from each of these sales. Why? Because developers get advances against royalties. Smart developers (and we do consider ourselves smart ) don't sign any retail deals without significant advances. The advances are likely to be high enough that no further royalty payments will ever be made. In other words, the royalty thing is defacto irrelevant. In reality it's really a one time purchase for the rights to distribute the game. That's because retail partners and distributors have a horrible history of cooking the books and not acting in the best interests of the developer.

This is true for the movie and book industries as well. The best example I can think of is the movie Forrest Gump, where on paper the movie lost money so the writer didn't get a penny in royalties while Tom Hanks had a "box office receipts" contract and got paid handsomely. The write was naive and lost out, Hanks was an industry veteran and got what he wanted out of the deal. We're more like Tom Hanks

OK, so why on Earth would a retail partner want to sell a game for $1 to a distributor when the product probably cost $3 to manufacture? Because economy of scale means you print more units than you think you can sell in order to get the best price on the materials. For example, we still have CMBO manuals which were printed in 2001, even though we've probably thrown out a few thousand. Yup, it was cheaper to purchase vastly more manuals than we needed than it was to print a smaller number that we thought we could sell. So why not buy the higher quantity if it doesn't really cost any more? It's one of the most stupid things I have ever experienced in business, but the printing houses want it to be that way so it is.

Now, picture yourself as the retail publisher. You have 10,000 units sitting in your warehouse gathering dust. You don't give a crap about selling the thing a day longer because the marketplace generally only cares about games which are 3-6 months old, not a day older. Although you've already made your profit and you expected to write the 10,000 units off, some distributor offers to purchase 5,000 of them for $1 each. Well, why the Hell not sell them 5,000 units for $1? It's "found money", they don't have to pay the developer a penny, and it doesn't do the retail publisher any harm.

There's another thing too. Theoretically the retailer owns the stuff they bought from the distributor. Theoretically the distributor owns the stuff they bought from the retail publisher. Theoretically the retail publisher owes the developer for those sales. Reality is that all product is on consignment. If a retailer sends back product to the distributor, the distributor tries to resell it. If it can't, or won't, then it just credits itself for that amount and doesn't pay the retail publisher, who in turn puts a credit against royalties to the developer. If any party doesn't like this arrangement they can, of course, fight it, however it's the way things work so that rarely happens from what I understand. It's an example of the difference between theory and practice. Why it works this way is complicated and I don't have the time to get into it, so you'll just have to accept it as fact because even the billion Dollar game companies (and I used to work for one) had to play by the unwritten rules.

So there you guys go. Probably way more information than you wanted to know, but there it is anyway It's a really messed up, dysfunctional, and often counter productive arrangement. Unfortunately, I think it is pretty much standard for all retail products in all sectors. Which is why we took a HUGE risk by selling our products on the Internet in 1998/99. The retail thing is so bad that it was worth risking going out of business avoiding it. Since then we've figured out how to maximize the benefits of retail and minimize the negatives. It's worked out well for us, but the market is constantly changing so what worked yesterday won't necessarily work tomorrow. Hence me not committing to a retail strategy for CM: Normandy

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

cabal23,

retailers bought x number of copies of CMSF and are stuck with them unless they have a deal worked out with a distributor which rarely happens. For example we were able to ship thousands of copies of Lineage II back to NCsoft when Lineage II didn't sell what was expected, but that rarely happens. I think this happened because it was an MMO and had keys associated with each copy so they could put those into circulation elsewhere, like Korea.

I meant to comment on this specifically. What you described might have happened for the reasons you stated, but I know of examples where this wasn't the case at all. What I've seen happen is the Retailer says to Distributor X, "we don't want this stuff, so we're sending it back". Distributor X says, "hey, you bought the stuff, you have to keep it". Retailer says, "we're not happy about that so we're just going to deduct the units off of the money we owe you for the other games you sold us. Sue us if you don't like it".

Now, at this point it comes down to who has more leverage. If Distributor X doesn't have something big in the pipeline, that can only be purchased through them, the Retailer is in the better bargaining position. If Distributor X does have something huge they can say to the Retailer, "well, if you do that we're not going to ship you Mega Huge Hype IX from Super Cool Radical Games. You know they put $10 million into advertising and your customers will all go to your competition if you don't have it on launch date, right?".

Regardless, it all comes down to negotiations. The stronger party gets its way no matter what pieces of paper signed by both parties says.

True story... years and years ago (long before Battlefront) my retail publisher got back a bunch of cases of product from a distributor. Some of the stuff had been in their warehouse for more than a year. They purposefully mixed the SKUs into different boxes so as to frustrate the person counting on the other end so they wouldn't notice missing product (apparently that was a typical tactic). I then had tons of games which were completely useless to me AND they shorted me hundreds of Dollars worth of product. My partner had a purchase and sale agreement with the distributor, not a consignment arrangement, so what the distributor did was completely illegal. Especially since they didn't pay for the product that they kept, which obviously they had sold and didn't bother to tell us about. When my partner called them up they said "so sue us". That was the end of that. Within a year both my partner and the Distributor were out of business.

It's a horrible way to do business.

Steve

[Scipio]

... Sales of Marines was, indeed, much better than we predicted prior to the release of CM:SF. In fact, we're running about 4 times ahead of what we expected, 2 times ahead of "best case". Definitely the retail exposure helped out with those sales, though it's impossible to know how much. ...

Steve

I love this vague statement . What were your sales expectations? 1000 copies? 10000? I assume you have your reasons to keep sales numbers secret, and I also assume I don't need to understand the reasons ...

[Battlefront.com]

Correct We have never, and will never, divulge actual unit sales for two reasons:

1. You guys don't have the context to determine if our sales are good or bad. For that you would have to know our costs and then be able to compare the return on investment to similar types of games. For that you'd need access to all our corporate accounting and that of our competition. Even we don't have the latter Therefore, the number of units sold is a meaningless number since it lacks context.

2. We are a business and our competition doesn't divulge numbers either.

In the end the only thing that matters is our interpretation of how good/bad a game sells. Comparing our sales to other companies doesn't mean a damned thing because there are too many variables. For example, if you added up all of our sales of all Battlefront.com products for the last 10 years a company like EA would still yawn, while some of our competition would likely be in awe. Another example, a game like CMBO was far more profitable for us than CMBB on a unit by unit basis AND we sold a ton more CMBO than we did CMBB.

So what does a number like 1000 or 10000 mean to you guys without the context? Nothing Like I said, what matters is how we interpret it. This matters to you guys because if we're happy then we keep making wargames instead of doing something else with our time. We're very happy with how things are going, especially with the Module concept, so we're going to keep on making wargames.

Steve

[Pvt. Ryan]

Steve, we want the sales numbers so we know how many others are out there like us. The higher the sales the more comfortable we feel about not being the geeks we know we really are.

[Battlefront.com]

Even we don't know how many people have picked up a copy of CM since we have probably 2 dozen retail deals on top of our direct sales over a period of about 9 years. We also have no way of telling how many people purchased more than one particular game (i.e. CMBB and CMAK, but not CMBO or CM:SF). Also, there are tons of CMs sold to people that give it a whirl for a little bit and then move on to something else, so they would fail the geek test

As for number of CM gamers out there... I'd say it is safe to assume that the latest whiz-bang game sells more in 2-3 hours of its release than we've sold of all CMs combined over 9 years from all price points in all countries through all venues. So yeah, our audience it tiny compared to the larger market out there. And we're fine with that because we like being in a niche

As I said, as long as we're selling enough to make it worth our while that's the thing that matters. We do so everything is A-OK.

One more estimate is that the hardcore wargame who posts here to this Forum probably represents about 1% of our total historic audience. That's a guess, of course, but it's probably fairly accurate. Since there's nobody out there who has better information than we do, not to mention the experience to interpret it, it's the best guess available.

Steve