Eidos Trying "Pay What You Want" Model for Soccer Game

Keane Ng

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Eidos Trying "Pay What You Want" Model for Soccer Game



Eidos is trying out a new pricing model for Championship Manager 2010, a soccer management sim that you'll be able to get for as little as a penny, if that's what you want to pay.

Dubbed by some as The Radiohead Model [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Rainbows#Release] after the popular British band's innovative approach for the release of their In Rainbows album, "pay what you want" forms of pricing have been relatively bold new ventures in the troubled music industry, but have been yet unheard of in the games business, where everything basically sticks to the same prices.

That'll change with the release of Championship Manager 2010, a soccer management sim being published by Eidos, which will be available for any price that you name (from a penny up) and digitally distributed. I hope I do no offense to the fans of this franchise when I say that Eidos' pricing scheme for the game is the only thing genuinely notable about it for someone like me, who doesn't know his strikers from his red cards.

"This is the best Championship Manager the studio has ever made and we want as many people as possible to try the full new game," general manager Roy Meredith. Unfortunately Eidos isn't quite ballsy enough to let this last for too long, which makes sense. The set-your-own-price feature will only last until midnight on September 10. That's not the only limitation: you'll also have to pay a transaction fee of 2.50 pounds regardless of what price you choose.

The pay what you want model has been successful for some - Radiohead, especially - but arguably doesn't work for everybody. Will it work out for Championship Manager 2010? I'd like to see Eidos release the results of this experiment at some point so we can all see for ourselves.

[Via CVG [http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=221401]]

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Simalacrum

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well, errrrmmmm... it might stop people illegally downloading the game? :p

edit: honestly though, their going to lose a lot of money from this... people will just pay very very little for it, and they won't make much of a profit while the deal lasts.
 

plastic_window

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Egad... This may go badly. I can't speak for the entire CM fanbase, but everyone I know who plays this game will not pay over a penny for this game.

Personally, I won't be picking this game up at all because even though this country is utterly consumed by football, I am not.
 

Sparrow

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The penny version I'm assuming will give you only two teams or something, right?
 

scnj

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Crazy. Absolutely insane. I'll be interested to see the results of what people pay though.
 

Chipperz

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I'm fairly certain this worked for Radiohead because they're a damn good band who have songs which will stand up to the test of time better than some monuments. If they were a games developer who released the same game yearly and expected people to pay full price? Not so much...

Meh, I have the same basic feelins about Championship Manager that I have about all sports games - they should have been the pioneers of DLC, updating teams and adding new leagues in every season, not coming out with a whole new game every twelve months. Offering the whole game for £2.50 is a start, but it could have been so much better than that...
 

TheBluesader

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I suppose this could be called a bold move, but at the same time the game we're talking about here is a soccer sim, which has VERY limited appeal no matter what it's price.

Let's see Epic try this with something like Gears of War 3, and then we can call it a revolution.

Edit: Post 1000. I have officially gone gonzo. A proud day.
 

sneakypenguin

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dekkarax said:
sneakypenguin said:
Ha I bet most all DLs total 2.51$
£2.51 actually :p
OT: it's good that developers are starting to have trust in their customers.
Lol don't have that key :p

I honestly don't see the purpose to this though I mean why would you pay more than the min?
 

nova18

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This could work. I find football games boring but football manager games are worse. Yet theres something alluring about downloading a full, new game for less money than a pack of 10 Lucky Strike.
 

Ralackk

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sneakypenguin said:
I honestly don't see the purpose to this though I mean why would you pay more than the min?
I can't say anything for this game as I have no intrest in football, but if Doublefine took this model upon themselfs for Brutal Legend I would fork over the £30 for it so I could see the company make another game in the future.
 

seule

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Dudeakoff said:
Football Manager is the superior sim.
He speaks truth, which may be why Eidos are trying this with CM, in a vague attempt to recapture some market share.

As for the comment about games like this should be the pioneers of DLC, that is correct, but for the most part, the soccer management games don't need to, for the most part the fans do the updating as required, leaving the programmers to worry about the fun stuff like making it a better game, as opposed to the mundanity of "omg XXX moved to XXX now i have to go change that in the database..."
 

sneakypenguin

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Ralackk said:
sneakypenguin said:
I honestly don't see the purpose to this though I mean why would you pay more than the min?
I can't say anything for this game as I have no intrest in football, but if Doublefine took this model upon themselfs for Brutal Legend I would fork over the £30 for it so I could see the company make another game in the future.
You might pay but most doubtfully would. When radiohead did this the average paid was 2.28 per DL and6/10 didn't pay a dime for it, those that did averaged 6 bucks.

"according to ABCNEWS.com calculations, for a grand total of $2.736 million in sales. That's not bad, but it's a far cry from the nearly $12 million in sales the band may have seen from selling its album at the regular album price on iTunes."