Has anyone heard if the Pro-Packs will be a part of the Steam sale?

[Termbro]

Excuse me, do you think it is Farsights decision or not?
I have seen an image of the document and it doesn't say that the developer/publisher have to participate.

Right. They don't have to, that's pretty obvious. Never said they do.

Farsight either didn't want to participate in the sale or they didn't manage to apply for the sale in time. I'd say the latter is less likely since some of the games that appeared on Steam days before the sale got a discount anyhow. But it's not impossible, their communication with Valve is horrible, they had problems with appearing on Steam store properly. I'm pretty sure we won't see TPA taking part in the winter sale.

 

[Biff]

I guess Farsight doesn't want a discount at the moment. The game was just released.

 

[Lalocage]

Farsight is not competitive on Steam...

Come on, Black Friday and Cyber Monday, great sales on Steam and in all the external sellers. People spending a lot of money on these sales, games that are not so popular doing a great profit, other AAA's increasing their sellings by A LOT...

Games that participate on these massive sales appear on the main page of steam, on the main page of the resellers websites, on the highlights... and where is The Pinball Arcade? Hidden into the oblivion, with 2 DLC packs with 0% discount.


My case:

I have purchased many table packs for PS3 (until it got Yellow Light of Dead), for Steam I purchased Season 1 pack the first day (27€, fine).

Im interested on buying Season Pack 2, but not for 37€ (in my opinion, not worth that much compared to Season 1).

Let me tell you what I bought today for cyber monday in places like amazon.com and game.co.uk :

- Skyrim (Legendary Edition) 12€.
- Final Fantasy VII (2,50€).
- Max Payne Pack (1, 2 and 3) 5€.
- Farcry 3 (5€).

Total 24.50€ for 6 AWESOME games. I would like to add PA Season 2 to my library, but not without a discount...

This is PC, and Steam, fixed prices is not the way to the success.

P.D. : I forget to mention that the principal "competitor" on the Digital Pinball market, Pinball FX, was on a humble bundle for 1$ min one week ago and for these sales have most of their table packs at 50% discount.

P.D.2 : And the excuse of: "It was released recently" doesnt work when Call of Duty Ghost (AAAAAAAAAAAA+ that sells millions of copies and very strangely does discounts) got released the same day that PA and has had a 17% discount.

 

[Sean DonCarlos]

Merged above post into existing thread.

Also, it looks like it's time for my standard response to anyone complaining that TPA is too expensive: What Greed Won't Get You

 

[Jeff Strong]

They just launched on Steam a few weeks ago. I don't think they need a sale quite yet. Maybe after Season 3 gets in full swing.

 

[Lalocage]

Merged above post into existing thread.

Also, it looks like it's time for my standard response to anyone complaining that TPA is too expensive: What Greed Won't Get You

Im not debating if PA is expensive or cheap in the short or in the long run, Im arguing about the current state on Steam.

My point of view is not a old fanatic for pinball tables, I have played some when I was younger, but just a few (I was more addicted to Arcade game). Played only tables like Cue Ball Wizard, Street Fighter 2, Demolition Man and Wheel of Fortune (tables I remember).

But when I tried the demo of PA on PS3, I loved it, thats why I have purchased the tables there and season Pack 1 on Steam the day 1. I want the success of Farsight (thats the target of my post), I think they could do much better on this platform than now. I want to see Season pack 3, 4, 5 , 6.... The Dx11 patch, better resolution of playfields....
But for this, PC must be a profitable platform for FS, and Steam can be lovely but you need to play its game, and one of its main features are the massive season sales.

 

[Lalocage]

They just launched on Steam a few weeks ago. I don't think they need a sale quite yet. Maybe after Season 3 gets in full swing.

Jeff, look what sales vs no sales policies do:

I want to see PA on pair or better that Pinball FX (I own it and like PA much much more), with a lot of people connected for head to head matches and tournaments. Steam massive Christmas sales are around the corner, its time to make a move Farsight.

 

[JPelter]

Jeff, look what sales vs no sales policies do:

I want to see PA on pair or better that Pinball FX (I own it and like PA much much more), with a lot of people connected for head to head matches and tournaments. Steam massive Christmas sales are around the corner, its time to make a move Farsight.

PFX2 came out 6 months before TPA did, and that average gain just means they had a humble bundle sale where they probably didn't make a whole lot of money but gained users. So if TPA was a part of humble bundle where you could get everything for $1 yeah they'd probably skyrocket their user counts. And make like no money for Farsight at all. I'm not saying it wouldn't be good to potentially get a slight discount into the winter sale, but that screenshot is indicative of nothing except that a bunch of people bought PFX2 for practically pennies very recently.

 

[AshleyAshes]

How does TPA even have a real 30 day average? It's been on Steam for like... 33 days. What on earth is that 30 day average being measured against?

 

[Biff]

P.D.2 : And the excuse of: "It was released recently" doesnt work when Call of Duty Ghost (AAAAAAAAAAAA+ that sells millions of copies and very strangely does discounts) got released the same day that PA and has had a 17% discount.

CoD is sold everywhere. Publisher Activision is HUGE and they have multiple income streams.
Don't compare Activision, or devs who work for them, with tiny Farsight.

 

[AshleyAshes]

I'd also like to add that if you go back farther, before the Humble Bundle, TPA has many more players than Pinball FX2 does. It's player count only goes up once the Humble Bundle was released. While that obviously increased SALES and the number of people PLAYING, it was also a bargain basement price for charity. I doubt it was profitable and instead more an act of good will. I'm not arguing against sales in the future, I totally see S1 and S2 coming down in price as S3 comes out and so on and so on, but I don't think that means putting the whole thing on sale for a DOLLAR.

 

[Deltaechoe]

Because paying less than 10 dollars for unlimited plays on 2 tables is a bad deal. Have fun shelling out 5k+ for tables in conditions as good as the tables in TPA. This is a niche market with little to no competition so farsight has teh ability to price these tables to whatever they wanted, but they chose to keep it reasonable. They could have easily set the price at double what it is currently but they didn't do that. Just remember that TPA is very likely an overhead heavy project due to all the licensing and Farsight need food and board too.

Also,

How does TPA even have a real 30 day average? It's been on Steam for like... 33 days. What on earth is that 30 day average being measured against?

This is the average number of users over the last 30 days, not some average that's taken in blocks of 30 days

 

[jkonami]

I love TPA, but it's true - $6 dollar humble bundle and I switched over to PBFX2 for a little while. Slowing down on it now, but previously I had given it no thought whatsoever because the tables weren't real and the designs didn't jump out at me. Now, I have some appreciation for what they did and will probably buy a few more tables in the future. I think the TPA pricing scheme is fair except for the pro thing, which should just be included gratis IMO. But a sale could do them good, I think maybe they were holding out for the Xmas sale on Steam. In any case I'll probably fill out the rest of my PBFX2 tables I wanted, I hope I can get some TPA action as well! Don't underestimate the legions of cheapasses on Steam, Farsight!

 

[JPelter]

I love TPA, but it's true - $6 dollar humble bundle and I switched over to PBFX2 for a little while. Slowing down on it now, but previously I had given it no thought whatsoever because the tables weren't real and the designs didn't jump out at me. Now, I have some appreciation for what they did and will probably buy a few more tables in the future. I think the TPA pricing scheme is fair except for the pro thing, which should just be included gratis IMO. But a sale could do them good, I think maybe they were holding out for the Xmas sale on Steam. In any case I'll probably fill out the rest of my PBFX2 tables I wanted, I hope I can get some TPA action as well! Don't underestimate the legions of cheapasses on Steam, Farsight!

The legions of cheapasses will still be there for summer sale though. Tanking your price very soon after release is something only (very few) massive companies and really badly failed games tend to do.

Also, if what was discussed in the thread in general forums was true and the licensed tables require amount X per table sold there's a very definite limit on how low they can even push table prices before they make no profit off the packs.

 

[Jeff Strong]

CoD is sold everywhere. Publisher Activision is HUGE and they have multiple income streams.
Don't compare Activision, or devs who work for them, with tiny Farsight.

Plus COD Ghosts was extremely buggy upon release so they had to put it on sale to try to get more people playing it. I was playing it on day 1 and there were 30k people online. By day 2 there were only 5k online because it was a buggy mess.

 

[_gl]

Also jumped on the FX2 Humble Bundle. Like others those tables never grabbed me when I demo'ed them before. In fairness now that I've played them a bit, I find that they're quite a bit deeper than they appear on the surface (more features etc). But they just don't know how to tell a story, a lot of events happen without speech or sound to explain it to you when you don't have time to watch the DMD, the pacing is no good and the table designs (ramps etc) are weak. And I don't have time for tables with non-real stuff like CGI characters jumping around. Pinball is a physical game, that's the whole point.

Many of the real CPU tables are works of art in their game design (maybe non-CPU too, but I don't enjoy those), most virtual pin games can't touch them.

So yeah, TPA mostly rules, love to see at least a minor discount in the winter sale though.