GURPS Mars Attacks Supplements

[maximara]

Originally Posted by Refplace

The licensing for physical books is for print runs. Once you made them your not typically forced to destroy the unsold ones. So they can hang around the store till sold out.
In any case each liscence is its own thing and not conclusive as to the details on other properties.

Also the key word there is "physical". For a time contracts overlooked digital books or didn't look as digital versions of physical books.

[ravenfish]

Originally Posted by ericbsmith

They can still have an expectation of how well it should do based on how else they can spend their money. If investing $100,000 into a GURPS Box Set gets back less money over more time than investing $100,000 in a Munchkin set, then why bother investing in the poorer performing GURPS Box Set?

By that logic, no one would ever produce anything except the single most profitable product in the world. [Discuss: what is the single most profitable product in the world?]


Presumably, the number of people who are going to buy Munchkin sets is limited, and each one is only willing to spend a certain portion of income on games, so there is only a certain amount of money that can be profitably invested at once into printing more Munckin sets. Since presumably many of the people who would buy a GURPS book (or Car Wars, or Zombie Dice, or whatever) are not interested in Munchkin, targeting them can be profitable. At any rate, the GURPS kickstarter suggests that its fans are indeed willing to hand over money for a product, even if poor decisions vis-a-vis pricing and print runs rendered it unprofitable in that particular instance.

[ericbsmith]

Originally Posted by ravenfish

By that logic, no one would ever produce anything except the single most profitable product in the world.

Well, no, because 1) Not everybody is capable of manufacturing that single product and 2) if they were the price would drop and the profit would vanish. So companies tend to concentrate on the most profitable products or services that they are capable of offering or on making that product or service more profitable. They also don't want to get caught when that product market dies, so often times diversify their product lineups. Historically SJGames concentrated on GURPS when GURPS was that single profitable product, but also made a large variety of other games. Now SJGames concentrates on Munchkin since Munchkin is the most profitable, but also makes a large variety of other games. What seems to burn a lot of old school RPG fans is that GURPS moved into that second category and they somehow think that it's SJGames fault instead of market shifting, and if only they would pour a bunch of money into GURPS it could regain its proper place as the cash cow of the company.

Originally Posted by ravenfish

At any rate, the GURPS kickstarter suggests that its fans are indeed willing to hand over money for a product, even if poor decisions vis-a-vis pricing and print runs rendered it unprofitable in that particular instance.

Just because people are willing to fork over money doesn't automatically make it profitable, even forgoing any arguments over bad business decisions, and it certainly doesn't make it more profitable than other product lines they could pursue.

[maximara]

Originally Posted by ericbsmith

it cost more and took longer to produce than they expected and the physical copies have sold slower on the tail than they needed for it to be financially viable to do another box set or to reprint. Basically, most of the people who wanted it jumped on the kickstarter, which reduced its sales in the retail chain.

And this effected the availably of the PDF versions, how? Never mind this wasn't a demand issue but 'the potential buyers got tired of a our management/distribution/printing screw ups and found another way to get the product they wanted...which resulted in someone else getting money that should have been ours if we had been on the ball'.

Originally Posted by ericbsmith

iWe don't. But we know that the people at SJGames know what the sales are. And we know that the people at SJGames have said that the sales didn't meet expectations.

I already addressed this. If the expectations don't take into account or adjust for factors like possible delays in production, possible cost over runs, possible distribution issues, possible problems with supply chains, limits in the distribution market then those expectations are not realistic.

Besides, you hear 'didn't meet expectations' all the time regarding companies on the NY stock exchange in an effort to explain "poor performance"...even if they made good profit. It has effectively become Orwellian Doublespeak for 'we royally screwed up and made less money then we could have but don't want to admit it...because then we would have to explain how and why we screwed up.'

There is a lot of other factors then 'people don't wan't the product' or 'there isn't a demand' that go into sales. Poor or limited distribution chains, screwing up the making and distribution to the point people go through alternate channels which puts more money in somebody else's pocket, and many others.

Originally Posted by ericbsmith

What seems to burn a lot of old school RPG fans is that GURPS moved into that second category and they somehow think that it's SJGames fault instead of market shifting, and if only they would pour a bunch of money into GURPS it could regain its proper place as the cash cow of the company.

Well GURPS 4e has had a larger share of problems then the older versions did. I ordered the first run of the Basic set...which was so badly done in terms of binding that SJGames had to send another copy of the books. That screw up had to cost SJGames money yet we see a similar screw up with Dungeon Fantasy...almost like no one remembered/everyone forgot the 2004 mess with was exaggerated by the fact they also came out with the 6th printing of the Basic Set 3e edition rules that year after the 4e rules came out.

Originally Posted by ericbsmith

Just because people are willing to fork over money doesn't automatically make it profitable, even forgoing any arguments over bad business decisions, and it certainly doesn't make it more profitable than other product lines they could pursue.

Radio Shack had that exact same mentality regarding cell phones...and look how well that turned out. Blockbuster had an option to buy Netflix but turned it down because back then they made more money with their physical stores....and look how well that turned out.

There are many other examples.

Heck we are not even sure the pen and paper RPG market is shrinking because people are going online for their games and through amazon to get their books. Brick and mortar stores of all types are hurting.