What it comes down to is that if you're confident of your product appealing to thousands, you really only need to sell it for $20 or less to make a tidy profit. Sure you can sell 10,000 copies at $60, but 100,000 at $15 is better.

The reality is that mass of sales making up for a lower price point works digitally. Physically there's too much other costs. Digitally you only have to worry about a couple things that are mere pennies compared to the dollars of physical.

I'm confused.

So your argument for not devaluing the games 'sentiment' by having them on sale for low prices... is to devalue the entire game itself from the getgo?

So instead of feeling you bought a high value item for a low price, now you have a relatively reasonable/cheap priced game, of which you can generally buy more simply because they are already lower priced. Thus you'll end up with more games anyway, which still could easily lead to 'devaluing' the game in gamers minds, for those that are inclined to do so if they accumulate too many games.

Isn't money the thing that limits the amount of games people buy anyway? You just seem to be listing two different ways of getting the same result to me. If games cost less, people will still spend the same amount, but on more games. Except now they are not 'on sale', they're simply sold.

The end result is the same, except you strip some of the common marketing/advertising mechanics, like paying premium price for something giving it 'added value' to some people (Day 1 purchases of high priced games), having successful sales that excite people (which let's face it, is not going away, unless competition goes away).

Right... Mass-produced dime-a-dozen clones build on stock engines with sprinkles of cliche plots by second rate writers and levels designed by cinema industry rejects. That is and was the main bulk of games from 70s until today (OK, there were less rejects and more utter laymen before). Crappy ports date back as far at the 80s at least.
Lower price is an insurance against that (like buying Battle Isle Platinum here on sale, knowing that Incubation is unpatched ^_^).
Other form of insurance would be reviews. Would be, were the user reviews not written by asshats with 5 months of gaming experience or drooling fanboys. Would be, were the "professional" reviewers not ordinary users (see above), bound by advertising contracts, freebies, deadlines and whispers from the publishers office "Could you, please, not mention these 101 bugs?".

How does this square with GOG advertising their games as being "dirt cheap"?

I'm going to chime in with what others have said: That's not a pricing issue, that's a market saturation issue. Games used to be far more unique from each other because they were a small market and you got them in a physical store, so even if lots came out, the store could only show you so many at once. Now you get the online and each store offers you hundreds of games to pick from.

If the seller makes a sale simply because the person wants to buy it right now because it's on sale, then the seller is better off having sales like that. Since people like the idea of sales, and many of them are perfectly happy to wait for sales, then sellers are better off setting higher prices to begin with and then having "steep" sales that bring the price from an inflated point to a comfortable point.

Because of the sale-crazy culture that has been created by Steam, many people won't buy a thing unless it's on sale. It doesn't matter what price you charge them, they absolutely refuse to buy a thing for any value unless it has "-50%" or "-75%" next to it. Except, once it has that magic sticker next to it, they don't even much care about what the final price is. The starting price could have been $10, $15, or $25; as long as it say "On sale -75%!" next to the buy button, they'll get it. It's an addiction that grows into customers, and it's not really one that the seller is able to combat. Claiming that you can set a low price to start to get as many purchases is ignoring the entire psychology of the situation. Low prices will pull in more people, but it won't pull in as many people.

Actually, Pheace just put it perfectly right above me: When a game is $20 and 75% off you feel like you got a good deal on a high value game. When a game is $5 you feel like you got a cheap game. If you want people to value their games, then high prices and big sales do it better than having games that are lower price with small sales.

I have to agree with Guillame .

Gog is selling out, and they are trying to justify it with bullshit logic. Sorry, but you can get plenty of classics novels from the library for free, it does not reduce their quality. Some of you poster on this board are the biggest sheep I've ever seen. Also, enjoy the "thank you" that any self respecting GOG user already owned.

And they don't have a big enough userbase/catalogue to run on a "daily deal basis" like Steam can.

Because GOG can't compete in that way, they try to devaluate the competition. Not the classy behaviour I would expect from GOG...

Big Fish Games has a bigger catalogue than Steam but they are only selling casual ( and some indie ) games . :p

75% discounts may not suit GoG. From economical point of view it is always easier to do 75% off a $60 game instead of 75% off a $6 game if we assume download, marketing, support costs are same. That logic would work for me. But telling me that smaller discounts are "for my own good" and that Steam is "training" me to do bad decisions - this is wrong on so many levels.

You folks at GiG are doing a really great job but stop with the "lets mock Steam" fixation. If you were really on a crusade agains companies 'hurting the industry' and doing things 'bad for gamers' you would give Ubisoft's DRMs or EA's Origin as first examples. But you won't because you sell their games. And that's where your interviews start getting too close to hypocrisy and douchebaggery.

And nobody is puting a gun to your head to buy games at GOG... go buy them at Steam for 1-2$ and stop complaining already.

You should stop thinking every game is worth it's full price. Because it obviosuly isn't. Also, big games sell well on full prices on ssteam, despite huge sales few months later. You either don't know what you're talking about, or you don't want to admit the facts.

People don't refuse to pay full price because they are familiar with huge sales. They do that, because there are to many games and game stores to buy them all. It's reasonable to wait until they go cheaper instead of buying it for full price. I would say people who buy games day one after release, they are the true impulsive buyers.

I'm a self respecting GOG user and didn't own Fallout on GOG... I have my original Fallout CD ..and was going to buy it. So yes I'm happy for their thank you gift.
I'm sheep why? Cause for 4 months here I didn't had a single issue with GOG. Cause the community here is better than on Steam? Cause Valve are trying to take the whole market for themselfs with disscounts like that?

The easiest way to bring someone out of buisness is like that. You sell for some time on amazing disscounts... and voala... either he sells like you(but he can't afford it cause he is small...or he's out)

Ah and btw you are a steam-sheep than :) Cause you believe that Gabe care about Steam...he only cares about the cash and their support shows it perfectly ;)

Why are you coming in to the thread if you're just going to tell people to stop complaining and go away? Are you saying people can't disagree with something GOG said and should just shut up?

I do agree some of the people come off as a bit harsh here, and I'm not trying to deny you from responding to that. But telling people to 'get lost' doesn't do anything to help. Rather just dispute whatever they are saying, or prove them wrong, or give them your point of view.

I'm a normal user that is anoyeed with winning people around here. Nobody is keeping you here.You are here on your free will.

And that is why you have shits like Wallmart & BestBuy there.... Steam is same shit as mentioned...
They can dissagree. But with normal tone not attacking GOG/TET like that. Why don't they go complain to Valve for shitty support? Or for shitty regional pricing... cause Valve comes out and says: FU we don't care :)