Oh it has a lot to do... It is called buisness. If you put money in advertising,printing cd's...etc it looks more ok to ask for 25-30$ .... but for a an indie game that is developed by some dudes in a garage for a digital copy is a bit too much.

And you as a guy who buys mostly on sales - 25$ looks normal? Damn if they release it for this money... expect Black Ops 2 - DRM-free for 80$ :D

One more point that everybody is forgetting... ok GOG puts it here for 25$ ... 2 months later the game ends up on HIB or Indie Gala for 1$....cause the dev wants more sales and the best way to get more sales is bundle the game... (remember Botanicula) . So at the end GOG gets an angry mob here for selling an Indie for 25$ ... and the devs don't care at all....

Btw for me personally an AAA title pricing must not overcome the 40$ mark for normal edition and 70$ for Collectors.


Hello there mr.England.
You say Frozen Synapse sold 300.000 copies - yes it does,but ask the devs how many of those are actual 25$ sales...

Frozen Synapse was promoted on Humble Bundle with 2 games more + the Frozenbyte Bundle if you beat the average(5$).
On top of that they had quite good promos on Steam - 3.74$ price is not 25$ ;)

And btw the spare key they gave now makes the pricing - 12.50$ per game.

Don't get me wrong... Indie devs need to eat....but be reasonable ;)

Hello Chris,
thank you very much for chiming in. It was not my intention to create a backlash against GOG nor you for that matter (regarding price or "men soldiers only").
I just wanted to raise the topic as I think Xenonauts is a perfect match for GOG (and vice versa), just like Grimrock - a revival and improvement of a loved old-school genre.

It would be great if you could try to come to an agreement anyway, but if it won't work out, that won't stop me from buying Xenonauts elsewhere where it's DRM-free (Desura might come out of this as a winner).

Good luck with the crunch of the second 90%.*

* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninety-ninety_rule

EDIT: Dang ningjas.

Spinefarm, you're obviously entitled to your opinions, but I think they're a little misguided. I can see your point that $25 is expensive for an indie game, but we're also a slightly niche game in many ways so we don't fit in the existing model that well.

The amount of content in the game is vast - making large 2D tilsets where every single tile is hand painted needs an undamaged, damaged and destroyed version is incredibly time consuming and expensive. Most people don't maike 2D isometric games any more because of this. If you're not interested in that sorta thing, then you'll attribute zero value to it, but if you like it then it makes Xenonauts unique and you'll be willing to pay the extra for it.

We're unlikely ever to make the most popular indie game ever using the model, but charging a premium price allows us good margins that we can spend on developing a game that is more expensive and larger in content terns than many other indie games. I can see why you might not want to buy it at that price, but it's aimed at hardcore strategy gamers and they demand a lot of complexity but are willing to pay for it when done well.

I'm friends with the Frozen Synapse guys too, and I suspect they've sold more games at full price than you might think. But I take the point made by GOG that our core audience may already have been snapped up bythe pre-orders and the Kickstarter, so they may not be that much left over post-release.
@Revisor - no worries :)

The Frozen Synapse guys sold Humble bundles worth over 1mil $... with basic price of the bundle 5$ = 200.000 copies.

It was part of The Great Gift Pile on Steam with a price 3.74 $... so let's say 50-60-70.000 copies more...

That leaves 30.000 more copies to full price sales and other promos....

Do you see my point now?

I don't mind your game ... maybe even I will give it a try someday,but yet you need to understand that the market is already too big and with 25$ price tag you will loose potential sales.

The demo is awesome, i'm instantly hooked. Don't look down on indie game, but still i haven't decided whether to get it full price or wait for promo.

B-b-but it looks like a Facebook game!

That's just your opinion. If a game is a good game, it can easily be worth the money. And I don't think advertising, printing, cd's etc calculates in at all when we're talking about a game from 2004 (RCT3) being put on a digital platform long after it's main sales period. The game here however is a brand new game. For new games? Yeah I don't see the problem. Personally, since I've kind of run out of older games to buy on sales lately (due to previous sales) I've been buying more and more games when they come out, and plenty of them are worth it in my opinion. And if it's not, then you wait for a pricedrop, which is perfectly reasonable for a new game in my opinion, so a high starting price isn't a bad thing I'd say. But you do have to realize that games for new prices tend to come down after a while, and the same should happen on GOG after adopting their new strategy. This is A) assuming they do that. and B) not exactly GOG's business (unless they do it too soon like with Botanicula) C) By that reasoning GOG shouldn't release any indie games since none of the prices they have now on Indie games come anywhere close to the price you can get it in those bundles for. Fair enough, but other people might think differently.

Rayman Origins starting price: 25$ ... so yes it is too much ;)

It's not necessarily losing the sale. If the price is too high, that person might still simply buy it when the price comes down. *That* is business too.

I guess that revolution will happen over at the Humble Store, then...

Hey Chris, welcome to the GOG forums.

Glass full of irony.

Any chance that includes Steam? (stares full of hope)

Although I think they don't easily commit to indie games that aren't done yet.

I think the point is that nowadays 25$ for any (digital distributed) game is counter productive. The fact that the current game is an indie game has nothing to do with it. (Eg, after playing the demo of Sniper 2 I won't pay more than 10$ for it).

The only games that actually profit from higher prices are niche products with a small potential buyer base (eg, hardcore flight sims). To actually make higher pricepoint work for a large potential playerbase, you need -a lot- of marketing. Think ME, CoD, etc.

And this game isn't a real niche product. It certainly isn't another tower defense or FPS game, but it looks like the first decent X-Com clone and that alone will get them some attention. If this game will be heralded as the new X-Com, it will cause a lot of waves. Attracting a younger crowd to the sqaud based strategy. The timing is also not that bad, it can benefit from the publicity of the Firaxis game, without really competing with it (TBS and other small but signifacant changes). But with a 25$ the question will rather be either Firaxis or Xenonauts. A lower price might get people to buy both.

I haven't played the demo yet, but tactic games are usually easy to get into and hard to master. That will broaden the spectrum significantly for new players in this genre.

All this should be an indication to market the game at a lower full price point, to attract impulse buys. 25$ is somewhat the worse to got with. You won't get the "no more than twenty crowd" and those who pay 25$ will usually also pay 30$. Going with 19.99$ and doing a sale for 10$ after 2 - 3 month would have been financialy more viable, imo.

The math is easy, selling three 10$ copies better than one 25$.