Pricing by location?

[funked]

I've noticed that the amount of people in the arena goes down drastically after everybody in the US goes to sleep.

I wonder if HTC could keep the arena buzzing 24 hours a day by offering a different price for different countries?

[bike killa]

lol give me a call if it happeneds  


[This message has been edited by bike killa (edited 05-26-2000).]

[Badger]

Intriguing thought funked.....

I have noticed the same pattern.

One of the things that spawned the entire Russian WB's "FreeHost" fiasco, was indeed a claimed reaction to high consumer pricing based upon a U.S. standards of living, which of course, have yet to be achieved there or in many other countries.

In Canada here for example, it costs us $43/month (Cdn) for Aces High and almost $2.90/hour for WB (MA/HA).  I think HTC should reduce it to $20/month (U.S.) for us Canucks.  

That statement should fuel the fires of wraith.  

Creative thinking and certainly worth considering some variant upon the model. <salute>

Regards,
Badger

[bike killa]

btw 30$ is about 1/6 of my monthly income  

[Badger]

 

Originally posted by bike killa:
btw 30$ is about 1/6 of my monthly income    

Hmmm...you earn about $180 U.S. per month and spend $30 U.S. per month on HTC's Aces High?

I certainly admire your passion for and commitment to the product.  <salute>

What do you pay for Internet access?

If gives one pause to wonder just how much market share is available outside the U.S., in certain geographic regions, for this kind of service.  It also explains some of the market forces that created the WB "Freehost" phenomenon I mentioned earlier.



[This message has been edited by Badger (edited 05-26-2000).]

[Replicant]

Yeah, wish there was an easy solution to keeping the MA full with enough people.  I'm in the UK and I mostly fly between 9pm and 3am purely so there are more North American people on as it's much more busy.  We need more far east, Aussie/Kiwi, Japanese people..  

Regards

'Nexx'

 

[sourkraut]

Yeah right. Hey I know - let's get charged a percentage of our income!!

LOL

Sour

[Badger]

 

Originally posted by sourkraut:
Yeah right. Hey I know - let's get charged a percentage of our income!!

"Market Share" isn't about pricing.  The observation, albeit badly worded, was drawing the conclusion that it's surprising that there's anyone outside of the U.S. at all (ie: Poland), who would even consider paying to play this game at any flate rate, even $10 U.S. per month, given the huge fiscal disparity of incomes.

It wasn't meant to convey the idea of charging a percentage of someone's income as a marketing philosophy, although I did hear a rumor that the senior executives at iEN have been debating about implementing this concept for WB 3.0.  They feel it may help to boost their continuously declining pay for play revenues.  

Sorry for the confusion.

[funked]

All I know is that the arena is an underutilized resource during off-peak hours.

I only suggest the pricing-by-locale as a way to put this resource to work making some more $ for HTC.

I guess one could also approach it like a power utility or a phone company - have a lower rate during off peak hours.

Let's say HTC charges $15 per month for an account that can only be used between 4am and 4pm Eastern Time.  And this new lower price suddenly makes it feasible for 100 guys in Outer Mongolia to sign up.

The arena is never full between 4am and 4pm Eastern, so the 100 Mongolians will not be overcrowding the system and keeping $30 players from logging in.  There will be no need for HTC to invest in a more powerful server or additional bandwidth.

And I doubt that handling 100 extra Mongolian accounts will cost HTC much at all.

So the net gain is $1500 per month for HTC, minus whatever it costs to handle the billing for 100 extra accounts.

Obviously you have to choose carefully the price level and time period (or country or currency) for which you offer the price.  Or else might end up over capacity - more people trying to play than your server can handle.

But because HTC is currently operating so far under capacity during off-peak hours, I think there is a lot of room for experimentation.

[This message has been edited by funked (edited 05-26-2000).]

[StSanta]

<NOTE:> As with 99% of my posts, whatever insulting stuff you find here should be taken as a joke. Lately I've been hunted down by Net Nazi's using private anonymous emails ("xxx@hotmail.com"), so it's all for a laugh)
</note>

Eeek, that would mean that in countries like Denmark where prices already are 30% higher than in the US; and where we spend 9 months out of 12 working for the government, we'll pay even more (potentially).

Seriously, I think it's an excellent suggestion and wouldn't be jealous of those paying less, because after all, they have less  .

Poor us though. It's the Christians fault; we were doing fine with our plundering and pillaging til they came with their weenie god (well, the god of the new testament, the old testament god is more to my liking) and made us all civilized in a most uncivil way.

I say we all convert to Asatru! Maybe it won't work, but it SURE would be cool!  

It would also fix the pricing problem. Odin has ways, you know.

<NOTE: this post contains material that certain religious groups will find offensive. While the post wasn't meant to be offensive, if some tight ar$ed religious nutters find it so, all the better>

;D

Gotta live up to my nick guys, it's a huge responsibility.


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StSanta
II/JG2

[easymo]

 I agree that we have an attendence problem. If, like me, your looking for a dogfight in the wee hours. You subtract the tanks and bombers, and there are very few people to play with.

 I dont think that price has much to do with it. There are alot of people in WB paying much more than 30 bucks a month.

 For a guy picking AH as there first flightsim, This has got to be a nightmare. You hear wam, wam. and you are back in the tower, shaking your head, wondering what happened.

 Guys that were hotsh*& pilots, in another sim, find out quickly, that gitting a kill, and landing one. Are very different things here.

 We have big guns here. So IMHO the only people that are going to be attracted to this like the rush of knowing one little mistake and your dead. Big guns, married to a good flight model, will never please evryone. The guys that want to get away with being sprayed over and over will go back to WB. And the guys that want an easyier FM will stick with AW, and FA.

[Dinger]

Nahh, it's a good idea, but how the heck are you gonna implement it?
Billing address? Location/currency of C/C bank?
Heck, I still have an iEN account, but I use different C/Cs for each, which bill to different currencies on different continents.  I´ll just set meself up a discount here.
email address?
Heck, I´m reachable in 5 TLDs, 3 of 'em non-US.  What´s to stop me from getting a .ru email addy if it helps me?
postal system? Take this example: I lived in Italy for a while.  Anybody got an idea just how long it takes for a letter -- even one mailed from 2 houses down -- to reach your home around the holidays?
That said, it´d be nice to give a break to non-yankees, especially where you have to pay per minute dialup charges.

what we need is to make AH a religion, HTC becomes tax-exempt, and we tithe.

[214thCavalier]

I think what some of you may forget is in the USA most of you get free net access and think nothing of it. However for most of the planet they have to pay for access and in the UK although there are some ISP,s now supplying free access its generally crap for gaming.
In my case my average monthly ISP 56k access costs are £100 per month at an approx exchange of $1.5 to the £1 and this is billed by the minute not a set access fee.
I think many of you can probably understand why you are lacking in players from the UK, and if the rest of the planet has anything similar to contend with then no pricing plan is gonna help much.
Average USA players costs $30
Average UK players costs $30 plus ISP fees, again in my case that could easily come to $180 + a month, so how many of you are committed enough to pay that sort of fee ?
For me thats a major problem for main arena play and currently i will frequent the free server games.

Just to complete the picture in UK gaming, ISDN (ridiculous pricing structure)
ADSL (Being trialled in a few cities, no mention of costs but its BT so will be expensive and long overdue)
Cable, well even though i am on a cable fibre optic telephony network I CANNOT have a cable modem !  
Jeez how ridiculous can you get !
The cable company C&W which is nationwide will not invest in the necessary equipment at the server end to enable us to use cable modems for net access.
The worst of it is the digital TV cable viewing set top boxes are complete with an internal cable modem, and that fact burns at my soul that its here and i cannot use the damn thing !!

Oops sorry was wandering from thread in my frustration.

[Minotaur]

214thCavalier;

Indeed, we USA North Americans pay an ISP fee.  I pay $40 per month for the use of a cable modem.  This brings my total on-line gaming bill to $70 per month.  I would imagine this to be a fairly median price.  

I use my ISP for other things besides on-line gaming and could get by with a cheaper ISP should I not desire a higher rate of connection.  The price of ISP services for dial-up modems, in my area, is $15 to $25 per month.

As you stated, $180 per month might change my opinion about how much the entertainment value that I get from AH, is worth to myself.  Probably would not be worth it, so I would not play.  At least not during the warmer months of the year.  

While it would be "very nice" of HTC to lower the rates to foreign players, what does that imply to the non-foreign players?

I think your turn is coming in the not to distant future...  

Good Luck to You!  

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Mino
The Wrecking Crew

[Westy]

"I pay $40 per month for the use of a cable modem. This brings my total on-line gaming bill to $70 per month."

Same here Minotaur. But my wife and her phone bill STILL beat that.

-Westy