Limited Run Games (producing physical copies of digital games)

[mailman187666]

I think we will see higher print runs from this company eventually. Limiting the first release to 1500 copies is a basic example of a good business strategy. Obviously the interest is there with Breach & Clear selling out so quickly. They could make 5000 copies of a game and that's still a pretty limited run. I certainly hope for success for this company as they are doing a great thing for modern gaming.

[Satoshi_Matrix]

I also hope they'll do reprints. Sure, I do get the whole "limited" appeal, but doing several limited runs of something won't hurt anything.

[Tanooki]

You know one thing one could do for the collectard/flipper types who buy and don't play, do like they did with old NES manuals, put a -1 or a period after the serial code on the label or back ink however it's done on Vita, etc (I forget.) Identical otherwise 100%. Let the fools fight for the scraps and let the game players not suffer for it. No need to do asinine numbered panic releases or differing stickers to troll people, just do a print revision # like old NES games with the -1, the (Star), or REV-A on the back of the cart. Same game all around and if someone wants to get anal over back of the disc/game card letter codes, let them get into a fit over it in a corner where they can be ignored.

It's best to do measured releases being new, but to keep pumping the stuff out as long as the demand is there. Leaving money on the table is stupid, only second in stupidity to overprinting and sitting on stock to lose a heap on.

[Bojay1997]

I also hope they'll do reprints. Sure, I do get the whole "limited" appeal, but doing several limited runs of something won't hurt anything.

That's not their business model though. Without some sense that reprints won't be made, you probably would lose a massive amount of the audience for buying these releases. Personally, I don't care about the limited nature or the rarity, but many other people do and I understand that for this business model to work, the limited nature of the releases has to be maintained.

[Aussie2B]

Yeah, there were even people losing their shit when they heard about the 300-some Breach & Clear restock, assuming that it was additional copies on top of the 1500 run (which they weren't, just cancelled bulk orders).

Personally, I don't have a problem with the one-time printing. I just hope that they can gauge demand enough so that future games have enough copies to at least last for a day, preferably longer yet. Just so long as it isn't too much of a mad dash to buy. As far as I'm concerned, they give pretty ample time to learn about what's on the horizon and when it'll go on sale (I mean, the Vita and PS4 versions of Saturday Morning RPG and Cosmic Star Heroine will probably take us through January at least, I'm guessing? And the sales date for PS4 Saturday Morning RPG was listed on the site a month in advance), so it's just a matter of checking in once in a while and keeping tabs on the sales dates of whatever you want. It only sucks for people who won't learn about Limited Run Games until after titles they want are already sold out, but that can happen with countless games.

[Spartacus]

Personally, I don't have a problem with the one-time printing. I just hope that they can gauge demand enough so that future games have enough copies to at least last for a day, preferably longer yet.

That's about the way I feel about. I'm not sure why they don't choose to use pre-orders to gauge demand.

I see Breach & Clear on Amazon for $475.00. It's kinda sad, but not unexpected. I guess people have every right to make as much profit as they possibly can. But I wonder what the developers and publishers think when they see it.
I'll be curious what the used price will be a year or two from now.

Fortunately, it's a bit better on Ebay. $75.00 shipped seems pretty reasonable to me.

[Bojay1997]

That's about the way I feel about. I'm not sure why they don't choose to use pre-orders to gauge demand.

I think they've already explained why they aren't doing preorders to gauge demand. It's pretty clear that a good chunk of the demand comes from people knowing there are only "x" number of copies being produced. If you take that away, a significant part of the audience and the urgency of people ordering goes away. Just look at how much Vic at Gaijinworks has struggled to get enough people to just commit through a non-binding registration system and then an actual purchase system to hit just a few thousand copies of his games. Sometimes the preorders have had to drag on a month and even then he barely made the minimum to make it financially viable. Gamersedition has similarly struggled and I believe only one (Hotline Miami) of their three projects has reached the preorder goal and moved forward to publishing. IndieBox figured out almost immediately that a subscription model was the only way to make things work for their business as people deciding to buy each individual game or not was too variable and uncertain. Personally, I like what Limited Run is doing and hopefully this will open the door to other small publishers doing physical releases as it seems to be a more viable model than hoping gamers come along with an interest in preordering a particular game.

[Tanooki]

Spartacus hopefully it infuriates and encourages those game publishers seeing people flipping their work at such high dollar amounts to make more copies available IF they see suckers paying 2, 5, 10, 20x the value of what they're pricing the game at. They'd know people were interested if they were dim enough to over pay that badly on a game. Some would do it thinking it's a collectors item which is incredibly foolish and others because for some reason or another they really want it that badly to use. You have to pity the system adopters who come in a few months/years after such a small run having to eat it or leave it for such games or those who just have a financial crunch during that window (or just miss it if it's really faster than a day) as it's not their fault as much as the sponges who want to attempt to grease someone else. Retro City Rampage PS4 got like 2000 copies made, and a bunch of them went right up on ebay before they even arrived in their hands well over the $100 mark and I think it still is over $100 at this rate if it's sealed.