Morrus said:
The argument essentially said that the companies in question could actually increase their profits by increasing the prices of their books, and that the price at which people would desert in droves was considerably higher than we might think. Even some loss of units sold would be more than compensated for by the higher retail cost.
I know, i know Morrus, i did read the entire tread (i really need to get a live ;-) But that's not all that was said and argued, what you mention is the theoretic part of upping the prices. A 10%-20% price raise could mean a doubling of profit for the publisher.
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What i don't understand is tht if someone like me understands this theory, why doesn't a 'big' company like WW do this? They produce a multitude of products in a very specific niche in the RPG business. They don't really have any competition, so why not raise the prices just below the max? Are they allready at the 'max'? Or does the WW pricing have a different reason?
I think we have a couple of extremes:
1.) The game company that's in it for the money (can anyone say GW ;-) and raise prices to the Max.
2.) The game company that's in it for creating quality products for a low price.
IMHO a lot of the D20 companies fall under header #2, trying to supply quality material for a low price (take
Beyond All Reason for example, 72 pages for $10.95). WotC is just above 'average' in it's pricing, but if i understand Ryan correctly that might change (if he can think of it, so can the sales people at WotC).
A problem with using the GW marketing scheme is that when you misjudge your pricing ceiling and price your products to high (even GW has made this mistake), people are going to walk. That's all and well when your GW and your next batch of players walks in when the next edition comes along (each edition has a two year live expectancy). But in the RPG business, it doesn't work that way, if customers are gone, they stay gone...
For example, if WotC priced their PHB at $35.00 some sales would be lost, but would probably be compensated by the increase in profit from each book. If they would price it at $40.00 i would see a lot more troubles, people would decide that they could do with a copy of a friends, and the loss of sales would probably outweigh the increase in profit (although a 33% increase in price would result in a huge increase of profit for each book).
Raising the prices would result in a streamlining in the D20 market (which is a good thing, to much crap around). With higher prices people would buy less and would demand more from a product (someone used an example that involved three Sea books, if in the past people would buy three, they would now buy only two). Probably resulting in the disappearance of some companies, only the best would keep their customers. The companies that are left would have to try their utmost to keep quality high and improving.
Take for example the classbooks, i wouldn't pay $25.00 for Mongooses Quentestial Fighter (although the book has some interesting ideas, it failed to implement them effectively, i personally found S&F more usefull). On the other hand, i would pay a 20% price increase for the class books FFG is planning (based on the quality of Dragonstar, the only product i could get my hands on). This is of course a personal preference. IMHO 20% price increase would weed out the boys from the men, a 33% price increase would result in people buying products they 'need', anything higher would (i think) result in the end of a company.
A side 'benefit' would be an increase in the supply of pdf products, to many starter D20 companies wouldn't risk publishing in such a competative market.
I kind of got off track, but i stillwant to know why WW would keep the price of their RPG products so low, what kind of marketing strategy are they following?
. This is an indicator that many people do not think the price is justified. Usually it's much more convenient to have a real copy of a product at hand. But the combination of "moderately interesting" and "relatively high price" is a sales killer in this regard. Btw, don't get me wrong: I've bought those books 
