Software prices

[RCBH928]

I have been browsing through the App store on my iPad, and was looking at the prices...then came back online and browsed a bit on steam and others and look at the prices.

Why does software has to be so expensive?

I will be honest, I dont think I ever bought a pc software. its just so darn expensive!
Microsoft Office for mac = $150!
VMware fusion = $80
Rapidweaver = $80
Transmit(ftp) = $34
Quicken= $34
Toast 10 Titanium = $77

You can see where I am going with this. I really can't justify the price of $400-500 for photoshop, when I use it like 10 times a year usually for silly stuff.

When I got my iPad, all the app store software is price like between $1 up to $10 , and then you have the rare stuff that costs more. Now thats more like it!

I know that the iPad software is not as sophisticated as the PC's , but it can do a lot of neat stuff like the app Pages and keynote and the games are amazing. It has a lot of value for a reasonable price.

This reflected positively on me, as I decided for these fair prices I would buy instead of pirate, and I did.
Believe me I do believe in paying the developers, but for prices I can afford not prices that is going to make me starve for few days.

I think developers are pricing their software the wrong way. I understand higher prices in a store, because you are in a restricted location and only so many customers can reach you, and you have to deal with the brick and mortar store, the employees, storage, and shipping . But online when the software is download able, there are millions of people that can reach you and power is in the numbers.

lets imagine you price your software at $5, and 100, 000 people bought it. Youe (The developer) will make half a million dollars! isn't that satisfying enough?
If you think that 100,000 is a huge number to reach, I believe Angry Birds reached 7 millions sales at $5 a pop! And its a pretty simple game nothing too complicated.

but at $80 for sometimes simple software like cd burning software and $30 for ftp software, how many people can buy software at these prices?


I do understand the higher prices for office software and high end software like photoshop and Final Cut Pro, but for business, for people that will buy the software at $500 and will use it to generate $50,000 in profit, but for us the mere mortals, we can't afford such high prices!

I can relate the same thing for console games, some games are simply not worth $60 for 7-9 hours of gameplay!

What do you think of software prices? is it fair enough?

[emwearz]

lets imagine you price your software at $5, and 100, 000 people bought it. Youe (The developer) will make half a million dollars! isn't that satisfying enough?
If you think that 100,000 is a huge number to reach, I believe Angry Birds reached 7 millions sales at $5 a pop! And its a pretty simple game nothing too complicated.

Sure a small game made by a small team of people (sometimes one) that is only being released digitaly can be sold for $5

However when you have large teams, all being paid a salary, constantly updating software with patches, customer support for the software, advertising, packaging, etc, etc. You can understand how the price starts to sky rocket.

If you can't justify buying a piece of professional software....don't buy it! You don't have a need for it. If you are just wanting to do a piece of random editing from time to time, there are freeware options out there anyway.

If you buy something like the ipad, expect to overpay for everything (including the device itself).

[benderx]

Linux is the answer to some free stuff

[REPO Man]

Also, when buying games, digital vs physical is usually monetarily irrelevant, since in theory the digital version costs less to produce (there's no buying the medium to put it on, no mass-producing the medium with the software, no packaging or inserts/manuals) and yet...

THERE IS LITTLE TO NO DIFFERENCE IN PRICE!!

When Persona 3 was released for the PSP, both the UMD and downloadable versions cost about the same. The UMD came with a case (with paper inserts), the actual UMD, and the instructions... and sells on Amazon.com for $38.99, a buck off its list price. And on the marketplace, it goes for a bit more after shipping... even if it's USED!

The digital version that can be purchased from PSN costs... $39.99!!!!

So apparently, the money saved in not having to procure the parts and labor to manufacture an individual UMD, case, case insert and manual is not low enough to justify a lower FUCKING PRICE!!! And it also seems that it also doesn't matter that physical copies are finite and their numbers can only be replenished by manufacturing more UMDs, cases, case inserts, and manuals. And the end product is at most 8-10% paper, at most 1% metal (staples for manuals) and 90% plastic!

So... physical copies should cost way more than their digital counterparts. So, by that logic, the above example of Persona 3 should be $40 for the UMD at at most $30-35 for the digital download, even if they don't have digital manuals like the PSone games.

Another thing is when the price is HIGHER for a digital copy than a physical one.

Case in point: Battle Fantasia for the Xbox 360. Amazon has it for $13.99, citing the list price as $49.99 (HAH!!). EBgames.com has it for $14.99. Walmart.com has it for $12.96 marked down from $15.96 (interesting side-note: the preowned copy goes for the same price as the new copy). The Video Game Price Charts... are fucking dead to me now that they're actually CHARGING for their services, so fuck them and I hope they die and get assraped in hell.

But on the Xbox Live Marketplace, it goes for... $19.99!!

Similarly, when I got my copy of Shadowrun for the 360, it was $20, and XBL Marketplace had it for $30!

So... where's the fucking logic?

[ZeroAX]

because developing that software costs a LOT of money. Can you imagine how hard it must have been to develop the graphical algorithms for photoshop, so they can reproduce the look of a pencil?

BTW there IS a lot of free software out there. no need for MS office when OpenOffice exists.

Also, Angry Birds might have sold so many copies, but how many copies does a game which isn't featured in any of the top categories sell? Now can you imagine one of those games actually having a budget? The guys making it would have lost a lot of money, if they sold it for the stupidly low prices the AppStore market has forced on developers.

[AmishSamurai]

I have been browsing through the App store on my iPad, and was looking at the prices...then came back online and browsed a bit on steam and others and look at the prices.

Why does software has to be so expensive?

I will be honest, I dont think I ever bought a pc software. its just so darn expensive!
Microsoft Office for mac = $150!
VMware fusion = $80
Rapidweaver = $80
Transmit(ftp) = $34
Quicken= $34
Toast 10 Titanium = $77

OpenOffice (which I'm certain has a Mac version)- Free
VMWare Fusion- pretty sure there are free virtual machine emulators out there
RapidWeaver- SeaMonkey is free and cross-platform
Transmit- FileZilla is free
Quicken- okay, don't know a free alternative to this, but it's also one of the cheapest
Toast 10 Titanium- Burn is a free alternative for OSX. There's a squidillion alternatives if you were running PC or Linux

See, your problem is that most OSX software is first-party.

[gtmtnbiker]

You'll probably see more SaaS (Software as a Service) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_as_a_service in the future. This is where the company hosts the servers and the software and let you use it for a service fee. This could be a monthly/yearly cost or per-use. But I don't know if Photoshop would ever come down enough to the $1/$10 level.

[irixith]

Also, when buying games, digital vs physical is usually monetarily irrelevant, since in theory the digital version costs less to produce (there's no buying the medium to put it on, no mass-producing the medium with the software, no packaging or inserts/manuals) and yet...

THERE IS LITTLE TO NO DIFFERENCE IN PRICE!!

So... where's the fucking logic?

Just because they aren't producing the game on a physical medium does not mean that there are no costs associated with distributing something digitally. A server infrastructure with multiple levels of redundancy needs to be put into place, storage, backup storage, bandwidth costs .. the list goes on and on and on. If you were able to see the massive undertaking that goes on behind the scenes to keep digital stores of this scale online, you'd probably have a completely different view. The fact that the game can be offered for the same price on both mediums is fascinating.

The game and associated materials (manual, etc) still cost xx amount of $$ to produce, and by being able to offer the game on two totally separate methods of distribution allows them double the chance at recouping their cost, turning a profit, and making more games. Everybody wins!

There is so much more involved than what you think you see as Joe Consumer.

[irixith]

Why does software has to be so expensive?

..because of the cost involved in making it.

How would you feel if people devalued what you do for work, expecting whatever it is YOU do for free or next to nothing? I'm sure you wouldn't like it. Apple is ruining the market with these 0.99c price points on full pieces of software -- and eventually developers are going to shy away from it as a model. It devalues the software to the point where people are going to expect such a low price, and will feel there is no inherent value to anything priced more realistically. Quality will eventually fall by the wayside because as a business model, it's not sustainable. It doesn't make you enough money to keep the lights on and pay your developers, your marketing, along with generating enough to finance a new project. Software developers deserve to make money as much as anyone else, whether they work as a retail sales clerk, lawyer, what have you.

When it comes to professional software (like Adobe Creative Suite), you have to remember that the people forking out money for these products are using them to GENERATE money. A couple of completed jobs, and the money is a drop in the bucket. As a hobbyist, it's the not the right tool for you unless you've got money to burn.

/shrug

Don't use Apple and their ridiculously bottom-of-the-barrel pricing model affect your views on what major pieces of software actually cost to create and maintain.

[jeffro11]

Software on the iPod and iPad etc are shovelware. They take next to no time to make, they send it out of the door bug ridden. Those $5 games that are GOOD people complain about. Because they are $5. It's sad.