Author: KarinsDad
Date: 14:13:37 03/30/99
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On March 30, 1999 at 14:10:24, Dann Corbit wrote: [snip] >> >>I think the same could be said with the chess program manufacturers. They are >>priced at what the market will bear and if a significantly lower priced set of >>software is rated by the industry as "just as good" or "better", then it should >>start taking a larger market share (and the other products will either have to >>lower prices, improve their products, or take a market share hit). >Which is what we are seeing. Chess software prices are tumbling, and yet they >are tiny in volume of sales for most manufacturers. If you only sell a few >thousand copies, and you must cover the salaries of all your employees, how much >can you plow back into R&D? A valid question. I now see where you are coming from. However, I think your position is a bit of an overreaction. With the dropping of Fritz/Junior/Nimzo to $49, the sales have increased dramatically. Although the profit margin is down, the sales are way up. The impact on R&D should be negligible as long as sales are continuing. However, the entire point is that sales may drop once a competitive product is at the top of the SSDF lists and costs the same as the "discounted" direct sales products (and considerably less than the newer products). > >>Finally, I have purchased a few chess programs and databases over the years and >>have been EXTREMELY disappointed with the feature set. And this has been with >>the current model of high price for the "strong engines". Although the engines >>analyze fine, the concept of a high margin to improve research and development >>has applied mostly to the engines and only marginally to the rest of the >>product. So, maybe what the computer chess community really needs is some true >>competition to make the commercial manufacturers hungry again. >The competition that is purely price based drives features down. If I cannot >make you see that, then I don't know what else to say. This is probably true. But very few markets are merely price driven unless you are in a recession. However, I doubt that "purely price driven" is what we have. For several years, the prices have been over $100 per package. For a non-business nitch market, that is a fairly high price (even if it is direct sales as opposed to mass market). However, we may get to more of a price driven market if Mindscape comes up with some advertising gimmick or something which dramatically increases it's market share. But unless they actively pursue it, it will be difficult to drive down the market share of the direct sales market without convincing the chess community of the major benefits of their product (even in this forum, there are still a lot of opinions on the benefits of various programs). As a gut feel, I think this will be more of a hiccough than an industry shakeup. KarinsDad :)
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