Why are cosmetics SO expensive?

Quick backstory: LOOOOOONG time ARPG-lover and overall gamer here with tens of thousands of hours across several games of the genre(among many others). I'm very involved with the video game industry, a business major and an entrepreneur with several startups.

I've tried out PoE several times since it became playable some years ago, but never really got into it. I just wasn't a fan of the combat system and it felt very outdated and clunky. However, since I'm such a huge ARPG fan, I continued to pick up the game over the years to see if it had improved. I recently did so again and fell in love with it, finally.

Although I have my issues with the game, only one of them is so glaring that I felt the need to speak up about it: the "micro"transactions. Perhaps I'm missing something, but what on Earth inspired GGG to provide such grossly-overpriced cosmetics? Surely someone on that team has studied the most successful microtransaction business models?

I don't want to go into a long explanation but, as a provider of products and services, your goal is to offer said products or services at a price point in which a significant portion of the consumer base would feel foolish NOT to purchase. In other words, the value is supposed to intuitively feel too good to pass up. This is a well-established model among the most successful companies who profit in this way. A microtransaction-type product should never have an investment-like price point. That is just absurd.

Just to use myself as an example: I open up the in-game store because I'm thinking, "some of these cosmetics I'm seeing look pretty cool". So I figure maybe I'll spend some money and pick up a few cool ones for myself. What I come to realize is that everything is so insanely expensive that I quickly decide that none of these items are worth even close to what is being asked for them. In the end, I decide not to buy anything at all.

So here's the problem. You could have had a customer like me who wants to support your game and spend something like $20-$30 for a few cool things, but since ONE item I wanted was as much or more than my entire budget, I just decided against buying anything at all. Not only that but, had your prices been reasonable, I would have most certainly been a repeat customer. I've spent hundreds of dollars in other games I enjoyed simply because they continued to offer in-game stuff at a price that I considered to be of great value.

Now the REAL problem is that I can guarantee that there are thousands of other players just like me; players who wanted to buy something cool, saw the price, and were immediately dissuaded, probably never to return to the in-game store. What kind of business model is this?

If you sell 1,000 cosmetic items for $30 each then you're looking at a nice profit of $30,000 right? Well how many people would buy that same product if it was only $6? Considering the PoE playerbase, my guess is quite a few. I know I would have, and I would have bought other things as well. Hell, the 5 friends I know who play this game have NEVER purchased a cosmetic item with their own money. Your business model just isn't good. Go take a look at some of the most successful microtransaction models out there and, PLEASE, rethink this approach. I would love to support your company with purchases but I just cannot justify it at these prices.

I agree the microtransaction model here is weird, especially when considering discounts. The items here are going to be eventually discounted by half or so, reducing the price from "grossly overpriced" to just "very expensive". What does it achieve: I never ever want to buy items that are not discounted. Whenever I feel like buying something, I decide to wait for discount (1 week? 3 weeks? 2 months?) and my interrest vanish over time, so in the end I almost never buy anything.

Why discourage me from buying your stuff this way?

MTX are not expensive...

PoE is free to play, where other similar games charge you maybe $20 per month. However, GGG has running expenses on the same relative scale as other similar games, so they have to make money somehow. That is where MTX comes in.

Consider buying $20 worth of MTX every month as being your subscription fee for the game, or do as I do, buy the $50 pack every league you play. That way, you're not paying $20 for MTX, but just have 200 points to spend every month as an extra on top of playing the game... and as a bonus PoE keeps ticking as GGG has money to run and develop it.

"

Gosukusan a écrit :

Your business model just isn't good.

No, you don't know that.
Are you at the head of a successful and growing video game devlopping company that started as a very niche thing couple of years ago ?
I will go ahead and guess that you are not.

But Charan explained well enough.

And it also makes daily/week end discounts very attractive.

"

Gosukusan a écrit :

So here's the problem. You could have had a customer like me who wants to support your game and spend something like $20-$30

who want's a customer who only pays for 1 month but causes costs because he plays for a year?

you ever played subscription based games where you have to buy the base game? tehTruth will be hard for you but ggg had the same costs creating their game like those guys charging you.

"

Turbodevil a écrit :

I agree the microtransaction model here is weird, especially when considering discounts. The items here are going to be eventually discounted by half or so, reducing the price from "grossly overpriced" to just "very expensive". What does it achieve: I never ever want to buy items that are not discounted. Whenever I feel like buying something, I decide to wait for discount (1 week? 3 weeks? 2 months?) and my interrest vanish over time, so in the end I almost never buy anything.

Why discourage me from buying your stuff this way?

So they make the discounts the normal price and remove doing discounts, you'll be here moaning about why they never do special

Games fucking FREE, you avoid so much freemium bullshit that other "free" games dump on you, Like character slots, want to do what most recent free games do and have 2 slots...off you get twenty fucking four for nothing
Like to moan about the stash...other "free" games give you less space forcing you to purchase tabs
No boosts to damage, exp gain, IIR/IIQ

The could have easily went the freemium route and made the MTX's over all cheaper but much much more required and the game would have died.

there is nothing "micro" about "micro transactions" on POE.

Simply don't buy cosmetics, buy utility: tabs, char slots & skin transfers. Get effects from participating in leagues, buying supporter packs or an odd gambling box here and there.

The high price of effects compared to utility, prevents me to ever buy cosmetics. Buy some flashy clutter effect or 6 premium stash tabs? A no brainer.

They're expensive because F2P games generally live off of whales. Have you ever seen the prices of MTX on shitty mobile games? You pay 20 bucks for a gacha multipull and usually get nothing worthwhile.

So that people with too much money can spend it. Notice that there are different tiers of MTX prices. Some are quite cheap, others not so much. If someone throws a little unreasonable amount of money at the game, they better get something that only they have. You know, this primitive drive to own things others do not. :P