Author: Steve Lopez
Date: 13:35:10 03/29/99
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On March 29, 1999 at 13:29:20, John Merlino wrote: >The main reason that you won't find Fritz/Junior/etc. on your local software >store's shelf has nothing to do with the price. It's all about "shelf space" >and >"brand name/company name knowledge". Mindscape has a HUGE ability to put their >software on the shelves; Fritz has zero. Even though the people who frequent >THIS board know both Chessmaster and Fritz equally well, the retailers do not. >All they know is that Chessmaster has been the #1 selling retail product for >many years, and that's all they need to know. Fritz could lower their price to >$10 and you wouldn't see it at your local store. Believe me, it has *everything* to do with the price. By your logic, you'd never see chess software by any "unknown" company on the shelves. How about Chess Wars by ART Interactive? I've been involved with ChessBase for almost seven years (off and on) and we'd *love* to have the distribution deals we're discussing. The problem is that it's not profitable for a small company to sell a piece of software for $7.50 a unit to a vendor when you can sell it for full retail directly to the customer via Internet and direct mail. > >As for "nobody is becoming wealthy in the chess software business", it is >currently estimated that the entire Chessmaster line could make as much as $8 >million REVENUE this year (my own personal estimation from PC Data's numbers). >As for PROFIT, I'm not sure, but I AM sure that Mindscape wouldn't spend all of >their development/advertising/etc. dollars on a product that was losing money. And how many slices is that $8M pie cut into? Remember, only about $5-$6 per $35 unit sold through vendors goes back to Mindscape. So you're really talking about approx. $1.25M. Take into account that they spend *much* more on advertising than ChessBase/Rebel/MChess etc. and that they're a much larger company (in terms of employees) than the typical chess software producer, and then tell me who at Mindscape gets the yacht. -- Steve Lopez
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