The Millennium Semiconductor Survival Guide.

Chapter 17 Price
When your nerves have been tense and high-intensity work for three or four months, the work has achieved a staged result, and you can finally take a breather in the future. This kind of psychological relaxation is unparalleled.

Because of this, people who don't need to work have no comparison, and they don't feel happy because they don't have to go to work every day.

Only those who are in high-intensity work every day will be happy because of the rare respite.

Except for Louis, the three shareholders of Riot Games all work at Microsoft at the same time, which means that they go to work during the day and continue to work in the garage at night.

"Congratulations, let's do one!"

They gathered in the garage as usual, only today was not work, but celebration.

Everyone bought some ingredients and beer, and barbecued in the yard outside the garage.

"We need to think about pricing now. We will put the price on the official website tomorrow. How appropriate is the price?" Zhou Xin proposed while eating.

“Nintendo’s game cartridges sell for around $70 on average.

Since our game does not have a physical cartridge, there is only a normal download link.

Our selling price should be less than $70. "

1998 is an unusual year in the history of video games, and later generations are hailed as the best year in the history of video games.

It has been almost a year since 1998, and Zhou Xin's brain has become more and more useful. He found that the memory 20 years later is like a book in his brain, waiting for him to dig it out at any time.

And it is written in the memory: In 1998, a large number of successful video games such as "The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time", "Pokemon: Pikachu", "Resident Evil 2", and "Half-Life" came out.

Oh, and StarCraft I.

"The Legend of Zelda: Wheel of Time" will be released in November. In the face of this outstanding work that has been rated as the best game in history until 11, the best way is to release it before it launches.

No one wants to compete with players for The Legend of Zelda.

"Angry Birds" has a natural disadvantage in terms of game positioning.

"How about $50?" Ashley offered.

After much thought, Zhou Xin said, "19.9 dollars, our pricing."

Louis showed an expression of disbelief.

And the family conditions are superior, Stephen, who has been playing video games since the red and white machine era, quickly shook his head: "The price is too cheap.

Even in 1986, the year when the Famicom was just released.

The minimum price for a Nintendo game is also $29.99.

Expensive ones can go as high as $49.99.

Taking inflation into account, $29.99 is equivalent to $49.99 today.

Angry Birds is definitely better than Nintendo's cheapest game.

In all fairness, our games should be in the $49.99 range.

It's just because we don't have game cartridges, only download links, so the price should be reasonably cheap.

But this does not mean that our costs will be reduced.

It's just that the cost has changed from making game cassettes to the cost of renting servers and network bandwidth.

Newman, this price is really too low. "

Seeing that everyone disagreed, Zhou Xin explained:
"I know it's low pricing, but it's a tactic.

Bank transfer and then download via SMS verification code, this is an unprecedented novelty.

In order for players to adapt to all this, we need to make a certain degree of concession.

This is called customer acquisition cost on the Internet.

The price we lowered is actually the cost of acquiring users.

And do you think the game distributors will be willing to see us make this way?

If we go through this path, it means that they will reduce their income by hundreds of millions, and this income needs to be measured in billions.

What measures will game channel operators take? "

Louis quickly realized: "They will put the pirated download link on the Internet?"

"That's right, after they realize that the problem is not good, they will put the pirated link on the Internet as soon as possible.

Even let the Angry Birds pirated download link be placed in front of Yahoo search.

When players search for angry bird through Yahoo, they will be attracted by pirated free download links before entering our official website.

We can only watch as a large number of users who should belong to us play our games without paying.

So we need to set the price low enough so that game channel operators can complete the initial accumulation of original users before they realize it.

Then, after a large number of pirated links were posted on the Internet, through paper media and electronic media, a war of public opinion was set off with the distributors.

In this war, we let players realize that with such a low price, I would rather buy the genuine version than download the pirated version.

If it's $50, they might hesitate.

But at a price of $19.99, their willingness to pay will increase significantly. "

"Okay, you convinced me, and I agree with those **** game channel merchants to do this.

There are too many places where the supervision of the Internet is not in place.

Just the spam that fills the entire Internet can waste half an hour of my time every day. "

"Actually, we can send mass emails to let more people know about our game!"

In the future, after the mail system has a spam blocking function, if you want to send your mail to many people, you need to pay for it.

Now, as long as you have an email address, no one can limit you as much as you want to send.

"We need to go both offline and online.

Not only send advertisements by SMS, but also send advertisements by email. "

"good idea.

We need to spread this little red bird to the entire American area in the shortest possible time! "

"No, no, it's the world.

Our distribution method will not be restricted by region.

Even players in the Europa region can feel the charm of this little bird for the first time! "

"There is also Hua Guo." Louis added.

"This price is still a bit high for Huaguo." Zhou Xin is well aware of Huaguo's economic situation.

$20 is equivalent to 160rmb, and there are very few people willing to pay 160rmb to download video games in this era.

The most satisfying thing for Zhou Xin in California is the weather. Even in the hottest August, the highest temperature will not exceed 32 degrees, and the average is around 28 degrees.

In this kind of slightly hot summer, it's not too refreshing to have a barbecue outside, while still being with your team members.

After about half a year of cooperation, he got along very well with Ashley and Stephen. The most frequent sentence on Stephen’s lips was: Newman, you are the best product manager.

The first game of Riot Games is about to be released in this unprecedented way, and the answer will soon be revealed whether his design can be recognized by the market.

(End of this chapter)