Amazon's Game Store Undercutting Indie Prices?
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Now any of the 88 million yearly Amazon customers can purchase and download casual games for just $9.99 each.As we reported on the day the service launched, Winter Wolves' Magic Stones is only $6.99 and Basilisk Games' Eschalon: Book I is only $9.99 - a discount of 50% or more from the prices listed on the developers' websites. Based on the above article, those prices are apparently cutting too much into the bottom line.
But at the Casual Connect conference in Hamburg, long-brewing pricing tensions are coming to a head. Developers are not happy, because they see Amazon's price-point as an attack on the industry.
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PopCap Games has dropped Amazon, declining to participate in the new service, says Dennis Ryan, an executive vice president of the company behind Bejeweled.
During a panel discussion, iWin.com's production director Andy Hieke said, (We pulled all our games down from Amazon when we found out what they were doing.) Speaking of the new price-point he adds, (We find that completely unacceptable.)
Hieke added that, while he supports the $9.99 price point, it shouldn't be done at launch and that games should be given the best possible chance of making higher sales - $19.99, for example.
