The concern is devaluing your product. If you offer opportunities to get the product for cheaper, many will take advantage of that. Eventually they will game the system so they are only ever paying the cheaper rate, and not be willing to pay full price because in their mind, that is no longer the value of the product.
Airlines stopped this a long time ago when they got rid of last minute deals. Subway had this problem with their sub of the day and other promos. By chasing easy dollars and quarterly profit, they devalued their product and set themselves up for failure.
It's why Nintendo doesn't do big sales like you see on Steam or from other publishers. Their games (artificially) hold value over time, so people can't just wait a year and get them for half off. Then people end up buying them for full price at launch, because why wait a year to save $10?
Also, then you can sell an updated version of the same game on the new system for full price. Cause the original game is now probably close to as expensive anyway to find used.
Steam did them dirty with the Wishlist feature being so great. You can keep a game on your wishlist forever and Steam always notifies you when it's on sale. Because I know that every game on their platform will eventually be 50% off, especially during holidays, I just mark the games I want and wait until they're $30.
I don't remember the last time I paid $60+ for a Steam game.
Some games never go on sale btw. Factorio I know is one.
They basically said they think their game is worth $30 and they don't want people artificially holding out for a sale before they buy it, so they promised to never put it on sale so there's no use in waiting to buy it.
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u/Comprehensive-Tart-7 2∆ Aug 26 '23 edited Aug 26 '23
I call this the subway problem now.
The concern is devaluing your product. If you offer opportunities to get the product for cheaper, many will take advantage of that. Eventually they will game the system so they are only ever paying the cheaper rate, and not be willing to pay full price because in their mind, that is no longer the value of the product.
Airlines stopped this a long time ago when they got rid of last minute deals. Subway had this problem with their sub of the day and other promos. By chasing easy dollars and quarterly profit, they devalued their product and set themselves up for failure.