Does anyone retail shrapnel games in Raleigh?

[Brad2]

Hi all, Just realized that shrapnel games is located next door in Cary. Does anyone retail shrapnel products locally or is it only Online? Thanks, Brad2

[Fyron]

I think that board game is carried in hobby shops. All computer game sales are Online only IIRC. There might be a few exceptions in random used computer game stores and such though. You could order it Online, but tell them you would rather pick up a game from them directly to save time if you want. I think they allow that...

[Brad2]

Thanks!

[Atrocities]

It would be great if Shrapnel Games could contract with a few national stores to carry their games in small supply on their selves.

Retailers like Walmart (Wallyworld), or a few of the smaller computer game stores like EB or even Amazon.

[Richard]

Yep it would be nice, for the retailers.

Like we have always said, retailer make money - for themselves.

[David E. Gervais]

When I was a manager in a computer store, the standard formula for pricing software was this..

Cost*2+10% Rounded up to the nearest $*9.95 (So If the store paid $23.50 the retail price was $59.95) My store had one of the highest volumes of software sales in Quebec. My secret? I rounded down instead of up. (the same game sold for $49.95) People would ask me how I managed to always get lower prices, I would just tell them that I was 'less' of a thief than the 'other' stores. They liked my honesty and always came back.

Neat eh? LOL

Cheers!

[StormcloudCreations]

Yes traditional retail is a real rip-off, unless you're a huge company like Blizzard or MS.

Before signing with Shrapnel, I was offered several insultingly low retail deals with a couple of companies. Literally laugh-out-loud type deals. If I wanted to actually sell my soul to the devil, i'd like to at least have a few dollars in my pocket in the process!

[David E. Gervais]

I know exactly what you mean, if I take that $59.95 and backtrack it to the developer it would look something like this..

Retail: $59.95
Distributor: $23.50
Publisher: $18.50
Developer: $8.50

The dev/pub price difference can vary by $2-$4 depending on which covers the cost of duplication and packaging. (In the above list it means the dev could get as little as $6.00/game)

And, if you consider the dev costs, in salaries alone (say 3 people at $35,000/year and the project takes 1 year to complete) the developer will need to sell from 12,500 - 17,500 units (games) just to break even.

Even if the three employee's above were the best of friends and accepeted to work for say $15,000 to help lower the dev costs, the company would still have to sell 5300 units to break even. Then consider that they probably burn 10,000 copies in their first run, alot of 'spare' copies of the game will be sitting in the back room of the office. It's no secret that this 'overstock' is the source for the abundance of 'Bargain-bin' stuffers. (which the developers end up selling at cut-rate prices just to keep alive til the next product get finished. So you can imagine just how hard it is to sell 5000 copies let alone 10, 12 or 15,000.

Anyway, I digress, Have a great day, Cheers!

P.S. Thank you Shrapnel for proving that your business model works, and that Online publishing is helping developers get their fair share. 'Doing the right thing' always did seem like a good business strategy to me.

Nuf said.

[Richard]

Actually the developer price can dip down to a buck a copy if the accountants gets creative enough. That might be okay for a game that sells a million units, but...