Notum Wars

[Highorbit]

You can say what you like about Notum Wars availability on the front page of the client.

But you guys made the decision to make it available as a hard copy only.

So yeah... I'm annoyed that while I can download the entire game if I choose I can't actually download the booster.

So we have land control and about half of the players still don't have Notum Wars.

Got a lovely e-mail from Digital River today saying they were out of stock.

Notum Wars is a hell of a lot of fun, but the towers aren't just there because they look nice.

So can you tell me why we can't download this?

[__________DeathMetal]

I have to think its all down to money. They have a contract with whatever company they have. Some **** rule or something.

But i totaly agree. Its strange that u cant just download it and have your creadit card account auto pay for it...

[Lilyflie]

Posted in the right forum, in a sticky thread by April, Funcoms PR Manager

"I can't really explain all the different ways that retail is vitally important in this business...for the health of the company and the image of AO. A short explanation though: I think we were the first to offer the entire game as a download...which we thought was a pretty cool thing to offer. But it did hurt us with retail because it directly cuts into their potential sales, or at least they think it does even though we explain that most people use it when they can't get it anywhere else. Anyway, if a product doesn't sell a minimum number every week, they kick the product off the shelves. If you don't sell in retail stores, you can't get on any PC Data lists which are vital for industry analysts, investors, ect. They use PC Data because it's a third party resource for sales numbers instead of just having to trust what we say. And if retailers view a product as a "non-seller" they certainly won't take re-orders when they run out."

As well as

"So, we have agreed with our retail partners that we will hold off on a download option...for now. We have to. We don't want to, but again for the overall picture, we have to."

The link to her posts and the whole thread is http://forums.anarchy-online.com/sho...0&pagenumber=3

[_Bonk_]

Well I doubt AO would even be around today if Funcom didnt make it available for download because they screwed up the original launch so much. It really didnt matter what they or critics said many people like myself needed to see for themselves whether the game was stable and fun.

Now I doubt the download thing costs them money, I bet it saved their and their investors arses.

The whole marketing of this booster was HORRIBLE and the person who did the job should get a stern talking to and be given his walking papers.

[locomdenom]

It's down to money. They have a contract that says "You will not make this downloadable for X amount of time."

There are parallels in the PC hardware world. The reason ATI is stopping production on ATI branded cards is because they're moving to CHIP production over board production. They're doing this to gain market share; yeah, they make a little more money per board than per chip, but if they make boards, many board makers won't make boards using their chips. They figure they'll make more money by selling many more chips to many boardmakers than they would by selling their own boards; Nvidia certainly does okay as a chip-only maker.

Similarly, why do you think AMD doesn't make motherboards?

Funcom knows they stand to make more money by letting retailers retail. If they compete with this, retailers will retaliate by not selling the product, and FC won't make as much money. Yes, money is the reason why they won't let us download it... at first. Later on, when retailers are mostly not stocking it anyway, they'll go ahead and add the option, for customers just getting the game, for whom the download option is great.

There are good reasons behind it.

edit: Oh, and the MARKETING was horrible? What are you on? The marketing was fine. Lots of press, even a couple ads, and lots of screenshots and videos. That's marketing.

The distribution was... screwy. Their primary distributor, Digital River, is pretty obviously incapable of handling a pet dog, much less distribution of an MMORPG expansion. They probably should have used better distribution channels, but they don't have access to the distribution muscle of a Sony. Small publishers have a hard time distributing. In the music industry, you have independent distributors like Caroline, who can help indie labels get their music out to stores across the country by aggregating their business to the point where they are big enough to push a record.

I know of no analog in the software industry. Funcom seems to have done the best they could.