Pricing The Product

Pricing my product is an interesting task. When it comes to games, mobile app games in particular, there is such a variation in the ways you can generate profit. A flat fee for buying the game, a subscription based charge, in-app purchasing, etc. But for my game in particular I've settled on going for free-to-play, with the option of in-app purchases. This might seem like a poor business model on the surface, but from my personal experience it has been the most effective revenue structure for mobile games. To this day I have not downloaded a game that wasn't free to play, and I find subscriptions particularly bothersome. Because my attention span for mobile games, or most games in general, is typically short; I tend not to invest much initially. The only money I've personally ever spent on mobile games in fact was through in-app purchases after I had found myself particularly invested in the games actual player community. Worldwide Mobile Game revenue surpassed both PC and console gaming revenues in 2016, and is projected by some to reach $65 billion by 2020. So my plan is simple, make the game free to download, and offer a variety of different in-app purchase options for the different kinds of players. Even players that don't purchase directly are likely to generate revenue by sharing the game with friends and family. The secret to keeping a free to play game popular is to devise purchase options in such a way that they aren't required to win, and don't provided benefits that would be impossible to compete against without spending money yourself. I intend to do this by creating purchasable packages that focus purely on aesthetics, as well as in-game items that would be equivalent to a certain amount of daily invested time. For example, in my Virtual Pet game, I could sell a product that automatically feeds your pet on a timer. This product would allow the customer to spend some time away from the game without having to worry about losing all of the progress they had made, therefore encouraging them to come back to play at a later date rather than falling so far behind they lose interest. Possible price points for this purchase might be as low as .99 cents a week, or $2.99 a month to encourage buyers. I've personally found it easier to spend money on games i'm already financially invested in, so I would want to create a number of small purchases to break the ice on that first sale. Other low priced items would be custom skins/backgrounds perhaps, equally priced between .99 cents an $4.99. Then I would include a few event based higher cost packages for the hardcore players, selling mixed boxes of special character boosts and items ranging in price anywhere from $4.99 to $99.99. I'd make it a point to encourage community based play by creating clans or teams, and providing bonuses to the entire clan for a players purchase. These prices are all obviously speculative, but I believe the idea is promising enough to create the optimal revenue stream.

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