DW selling techniques a joke ?
 

from my perspective as a good saleman the following is not good

advertisement and promotion: not much known about this game in the outer world i knew nothing about dangerous waters untill i came to subsim and many of my other friends who play sub command and SH3 have never heard of DW

how to counter: easy advertise more in magasines on the net and in shops

in store sales: total joke beyond belief i bough sub command in a store from sonalasyst it done ok so a better version would go down more so i bough sub command when it was kinda in the middle (about 2003)

how to counter: create a demand que like playstation does put a few not alot of copys on the shelf in major stores and when sold out have it on order that way you dont have to over produce and make a loss

my opinion: im glad DW is out im glad its a good game and with the patches it will be better but it will probly be a flunk i doubt many more people than these people on subsim are going to buy it so it becomes junk and that means no copies sold its failed,
not many people know about DW so they dont investigate it and dont dig deep its what puts people off.

personaly i think sonalasyst is going to have to rethink this whole idea of selling DW otherwise its going to be one hell of a great waste.

oh p.s can i see the sales figures if its possible please or something showing number of copys sold

cheers dont mean to be negative just advice and one opinion

Here we go again...

First off, I'm pretty sure Sonalysts has far more experienced marketing people than yourself.

The truth is not many people care to know about DW. It is a great naval simulation, no doubt. But it is a simulation. A naval simulation too. That means you have to think and be patient. And that's not what the gaming market wants.

Even if five times as many people knew about DW through a great advertising campaign i doubt many more people would have bought it.

We are lucky to have what we do now.

probly do have more marketing experiance (me its just buy things sell things thats it)

and i rekon more people would by the game if it was advertised a bit more im fact im quite sure of it

I am foremost a Combat Mission player with Band of Brothers. www.webandofbrothers.de :up:

Combat Mission is Battlefront (BFC)'s sugar baby.

Around 1999, CM Beyond Overlord came out, went "huge", nearly cornering the 3-d non-RTS tactical market. Then came CM Barbarossa to Berlin. These game were sold via a combination of store and website.

The CM Afrika Corps came out. This was sold entirely on the website. This product did exceptionally well. After CMAK, BFC started getting a lot more third party developers to publish with them, solely on the website.

This is a fantastic job of marketting themselves by BFC, leading developers into thinking that their success with CMAK could be general success.

However, the CM series is special. It is CLEARLY an unrivaled product in its niche, with no bugs and virtually 100% community support. This leads me to think that almost everyone who plays CM bought CMAK.

However, DW is different because the SC community is not committed to DW, and it does not enjoy the same "1000lbs gorrilla" status in it's niche. Thus, because SCS missed the SC community as a whole and failed to market to people outside the community, who may not have bought it anyway, sales are dissappointing.

How was SCS to know that the SC community wouldn't want much to do with DW? At least, that's the feeling I get, coming to it rather late...

Huh, the SC community not interested in DW?

Very odd. There is the interest but because in some ways the leap isn't like from 688i to SC then it might not seem so great.

I think the whole forum is slowing down but mainly due to people busy with real life. It is an inconvenient thing.

I am still holding out for DWX but again real life.

I am referring to the chilly reception that DW seemed to get from the hardcore simmers, probably the target audience for DW that SCS had intended. I am strictly talking about my impressions, but I have never seen negativity from a gaming community directed towards a developer for introducing a new product as I have seen here.

if DW came out in the shops id say it go off like rocket ok ok it wont sell like FS2004 ect but it will sell i know it will not many people like buying off the internet

[quote]
How was SCS to know that the SC community wouldn't want much to do with DW? At least, that's the feeling I get, coming to it rather late...
[quote]

Taking up the last point the SC community are sub-divers with a high proportion of semi and full hardcore.

Fleet players now have some extra 'fun' diversions in DW to keep them going but I suspect generaly most ex SCX2
players are adopting a wait and see policy. The game is not very attractive to them given its faults/bugs/ exploding cms etc...
The patch and DWX are vital.

Personaly as a sub only player, in this waiting period I have returned to SCX for my diving
and use DW to learn scenario design in the hope that..............

I am sure that this is not the "Forlorn Hope' who, as you know, were the band of 'volunteers' sent to
breach the walls. (First over the top) None usually survived.

But I am an optimist. :up:
[quote]

i too am waiting for this patch because i lent my sub command to a friend i can not play SCX id rather play that at this moment than DW untill of course DWX comes out

What negativity? Any examples?

In terms of submarines there is no difference between DW and SC...except there have been tweaks with the environment.

The big thing was the new playables which have made a big difference.

The only big goof was the sound vs speed bug but SCS fixed that very quickly.

If you are talking about Boomerang and his posts, then you have to ignore him as he speaks rubbish.

Generally I think most people are happy with the sim.

Thank you. :up:

I'm still looking for these "unplayable" bugs... :zzz:

erm the akula in sc went to 660 meters and with SCX2C it went to 700 meters

im not talking about boomerang he is not mentioned till now its just other peoples points of view

If it was an shops they would probably sell a few more units, but they wouldn't make as much money. Using the battlefront model nearly all the money goes to SCS. And that means better community support and a better chance of addons. Was Jamie or his SC counterpart posting here when EA managed things? Was there a patch suggestion thread that we KNOW Sonalysts monitors? Did Sonalysts answer to the customers or to EA then? Those are the kinds of things that make battlefront AWESOME IMO.

Agreed, but somehow they need to spread the word and raise the games profile in the market place.
Many people post that they did'nt know the game existed until they stumble upon it on the internet.

But the margins are pretty horendous in the general retail game market area !!

I am sure SSs main profit thrust is in the professional military war sim area. Other houses have gone in this
direction - egs. Harpoon Pro and Steel Beasts Pro (?)

I feel the communitys input in field refining DW and DWX content will be very constructive in product development
for the Pro markets. Given that perspective the future of DW may well lie in the hands of its existing user community.

I think its import to be nice to Jamie and the people at SCS.

I think that's pretty simple.

I don't know why they would want to work with people who give them hell and only buy the game once, as opposed to their industry/government clients who treat them like professionals and keep paying them big money every time they answer the phone or an email. ;)

Maybe BF should package DW and T-72 in one pack, like “The Red Storm Rising Battle Pack� or some such.

Just my wackjob idea... :roll:

My situation with purchasing DW is:

(1) I am primarily interested in subs at the moment. So, as far as I can tell DW does not add much there (except a kilo with real battery considerations) and there are a number of items that have moved DW backwards in terms of the sub game.

(2) One could argue that SCXIIC/SCU is a better sub game than stock DW is even with some fixes from Sonalysts.

(3) There are a wealth of scenarios for SC and SCXIIC/SCU ... most of which I have yet to play. It's going to take me a long time to get through all of them.

(4) I don't find enough time to play the few excellent games I already have. So, it's hard to think of adding another one.

(5) It's not clear what DW's future is (patches and mods). If I wait and it never gets beyond the current stage then it was best not to buy and hope. If the patches improve the game and DWX takes it to a new level, then I can pick it up later. If the publisher wasn't Battlefront, then I could probably get it new in a year for 25% the original price.

---

So, at the moment, the only reason I can see to get DW is to explore modern naval warfare beyond PD. However, at this point in time, at PD, I am already in over my head. :)

---

I am not knocking DW or Sonalysts, but simply sharing my own motivations for purchasing or not at the present time. If DW had represented a major advance in sub simulation over SC, then I might have considered purchasing it and skipping investing my time with SC. But that does not seem to be the case.

One thing I can say is that I may well buy DW in the future. This is as opposed to SHIII which no matter how good it might be with or without mods; it has Starforce insidiously buried within it. (I would much rather continue to play AOD, SH1, and SH2/PA - then risk the health of my PC or compromise my principles for a game.)

The feeling I get
 

The impression I get in regards to further support from SCS towards DW in the form of patchs additional marketing is that the game has decended the list of priorities for the company. Resources get allocated to new contracts or to contracts nearing crunch time. When you realise that to spend anything less than a fortune on extra promotion will be effectivelly flogging a dead horse then you just move to other areas that would benefit you more with comparable effort/expenditure.

I'm not being critical of SCS here, infact I think they are quite good and achieved a good personal connection via posts by company people on the forums.

I myself am a projects manager for an engineering company that also has a fair number of subsideries that fall within my influence. So although engineering and software development and marketing are very different from each other, there are principles in both that are common. If i started persuing a project that turned out to be an underperformer and giving it higher priority than other more viable projects, I would most likely be marched up to the CEO's office and told to explain myself. When millions of dollars are at stake people tend to lose all standards of politeness for some reason.

at heart i can be a nice person or a down right arse hole at the moment im in the middle im annoyed that DWX hasnt come out but im also glad that the new patch is already here but im also glad that its all being worked on so all round its more posative than negative on my part