More nonsense from me.
Jasede
Digital game version cost nearly nothing besides the fees for Steam, GOG or Kickstarter (that are deduced on sale) and some management costs for the developer. The physical goods management is much more complicated as you have indicated, but we are talking about the Kickstarter, where a company knows how many they will sell. Therefore the not sold goods are not a problem, more the necessary overhead for damaged goods and not delivered goods and etc. And your statement that a physical editions are much more risky is true. But a smart developer knows this things, and also how to calculate the necessary amounts. And this is not a school for ants.
Cost evaluation for everything should be made before the Kickstarter, this knows every smart man. And a enterprise, company or a project has to make money. Charity is something that comes after the profit and not before. The previous data had to be chosen for the contribution tiers at the Kickstarter of Wasteland 2. Because of the simple form of a Kickstarter it can be very well evaluated, while Torment is much more complicated but also more interesting it is not possible in that manner. And in the future the next Kickstarter from inXile will be even more like Torment, and much more free for the choice of digital and physical goods more modular like torment in its end phase. (At least i hope so.)
As the time changes like the people, the overall desires and willingness for a digital tier / goods will be much higher than the for the physical goods. There is the logic of the high numbers, indicate a preference between backers towards a specific buying custom. Lets take a look at other Kickstarters, like Project Eternity:
Code:
Digital:
$20 25,004 (all gone) $500,080
$25 20,922 $523,050
$35 8,394 $293,790
$50 5,728 $286,400
$80 769 $61,520
$110 792 $87,120 (2xPoE)
$165 972 $160,380 (2xPoE, W2 and PoE:Exp 1)
------------------------------------------------------------------
Backers: Mean in $: Sum in dollar:
62131 $30,78 $1,912,340
Physical:
$65 3818 $248,170 ($15 * 3818 = $57,270)
$100 1041 $104,100 ($20 * 1041 = $20,820) (T-Shirt)
$140 3496 $489,440 (CE) ($20 * 3496 = $69,920) (T-Shirt)
$250 1746 $436,500 ($30 * 1746 = $52,380) (T-Shirt)
$350 30 (all gone) $10,500 (-) (Bag)
$500 367 $183,500 () (T-Shirt)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Backers: Mean in $: Sum in dollar: Shipping cost:
10498 $140,23 $1,472,210 $200,390
Slightly crazy backers:
$750 29 (all gone) $21,750
$1000 114 $114,000
$1000 49 (all gone) $49,000
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Backers: Mean in $: Sum in dollar:
192 $863,28 $165,750
Mega crazy backers:
$3000 7 $21,000
$5000 3 $15,000
$5000 5 $25,000
$10000 5 $50,000
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Backers: Mean in $: Sum in dollar:
20 $5500 $110,000
All physical backers:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Backers: Mean in $: Sum in dollar:
10710 $163.21 $1,747,960
Project Eternity now called Pillars of Eternity shows a clear distinction between digital only tiers and physical tears backers:
Digital tiers beckers have the tendency to buy the games on kickstarter, because they can get it cheap there. Around the 54390 backers were digital tier backer ranging between $20 and $35 tiers
and made up 73.51% (the A digital group) of all backers contributing $1,316,840, which is $24.21 per person and around 33.03% of the Kickstarter money. (Here is the analogy to Wasteland 2 Kickstarter.)
While Wasteland 2 was still very simple form, the PoE had already much more to offer and different tiers, therefore there are 7,741 digital tier backers more which contributed additional $595,500.
The digital tier backers made up around 83.98% (A and B digital group) of the backers they paid around 47.96% of the Kickstarter money.
Physical tiers backers want to have mostly more then just the game and are therefore willing to pay more. Over half of the physical tier backer did choose the Collectors edition.
Obsidian had from the average digital tier backer $27.65 and from a average physical tiers (without the crazy) backer $126.21 (shipment cost not included) and
if we substract the cost for the 6650 T-Shirts ($100 physical tiers and higher), we can state surly that $93 (average digital tier payment and t-shirt price substracted) per (10498)
person should be more then sufficient to produce 4859 normal and 5639 Collectors Edition boxs, and still make a profit on this boxes.
The 10,710 (crazies inclusive) physical tier backers made up around 14.48% of all backers and contributed for around 48.87% of the PoE Kickstarter.
This constitutes in such way: $1,747,960 + $200,390 for shipping an additional $126k has been made in digital and physical Add-Ons.
It is to be expected that Obsidian made a win on all the physical goods that they did offer.
There is a steady decline (trend) in the physical tier backers for this projects W2 had 17k physical backers, PoE had 10,710 and T:ToN has only 8,423.
In DOS it reached its till now deepest value of 1360 physical backers or 6.97% but still made up to 24.01% of all the Kickstarter revenues.
The future is looking not very good for the boxes, it will be certainly more a series production for the boxes of around 5k-10k pieces which are more expensive for the collectors,
and the rest will be digital. And a remaining small rest that was not sold on Kickstarter, will be offered on amazon or sold through the developers own shop.
Perhaps Deep Silver will jump in, if the Kickstarter indicates that people want to buy a boxed version, to further lower the costs of the production for the boxed versions.
So yes i do not contradict your statement, that this is a slowly regressing market, but i believe that collectors editions and small amount of normal edition will still remain.
And in my case will behave like always and buy collector's editions for certain products, and digital edition in the rest of the cases.
