Stardock's new game -- Elemental: War of Magic

[Martok]

@Louis de la Ferte Ste Colombe: Welcome back! Long time no see.

Other companies manage to make it worthwhile. Bizarre.

I know. And like I said, I have my doubts about Stardock's decision, regardless of how justified they feel they might be (or even actually *are*, for that matter). I realize that as a PC-only game shop -- and still a relatively small one, at that -- they probably simply lack the necessary clout that larger publishers enjoy, but I still wonder about the wisdom of writing off almost an entire continent.

Ideally, I'd love to see Stardock expand to have its own, full-blown operations in Europe as well as NA so that they don't have to deal with third-party distributors in the first place. Of course, that would almost certainly require a significant investment/expenditure in both capital and time....and I'm guessing Brad would be (understandably) reluctant to take such a huge risk.

Still not happy about their decision, though. I understand it, but I don't have to like it.

$50 = £33 roughly. Fractionally cheaper than the RRP (£34.99 - £39.99) for most new PC games in today's inflated times but with the key difference that very, very few of those PC games ever sell for anything like their RRP. You have to be something massive like Starcraft 2 to avoid the instant mark down.

Interesting. Over here, AAA PC titles -- regardless of pedigree -- usually don't get marked down until they either get an expansion pack and/or it's been at least a year or two since it was released. (Games can also be marked down if they're truly awful, although that's somewhat less common.) Hopefully the expanding digital-download market will eventually change that, but for now the American computer gamer is stuck with relatively high prices at retail.

The download only version of Elemental costs the same as the download+boxed copy option. How does that make sense? Make the download only version cheaper, leave the box+download version as it is, and there we go.

As a matter of fact, it *doesn't* make sense. This is another case of where Stardock suffers from being a smaller publisher.

They're essentially bullied forced into charging the same price for both versions by the major chains (Gamestop, Wal Mart, Best Buy, etc.). If Stardock were to charge less for their DD-only version, the major chains would refuse to carry their games. Valve/Vivendi gets away with it on Steam because they're a lot bigger and have a lot more influence in the industry. I dearly wish matters were otherwise, but there it is.

At least the game will have been heavily patched if/when I do pick it up. If it's anything like GalCiv2 lots of features and tweaks will be added, as well as the usual fixes.

Almost certainly. GalCiv2, while a good game, was greatly improved over the first year it was out, and I've no doubt it will be the same with Elemental.

Draginol is also Brad? I did not know that. Granted I have only really lurked the Demigod forums.

Heh; don't feel too bad. I didn't realize that at first either, and I was hanging around the original GalCiv1 forums way back in the day. (Heck, at one point I was under the misconception that Brad and Cari Beagle ("CariElf" on the forums) were married!)

The "instant mark down" is a big part of it, I think. Here in the states, retail games have generally sold at the RRP for quite a while unless they really suck. DD may be affecting this now though, with the sales and discounts they offer.

I still think it's going to be a few more years before the digital download market really starts having a major impact on retail prices/sales. I *do* believe it'll happen, though.