CompuServe Messages

Thanks for your comments, Jeff. As for your first point, you assume that lowering the price will increase volume. (This ignores the issue of copy protection, but I'll address it anyway.) Even in the Amiga market, which everyone assumes to be very price-conscious, this did not prove to be true. Since 1987, InterChange's retail price went from $50 to $99 to $200. Street price went from $30 to $75 to $130. If anything, sales increased with the higher price. It might be argued that the Amiga market is simply value-conscious. Our customers still felt InterChange was worth it at the higher price. If anything, this reflects poor judgement on Syndesis' part – our perception of our customer's perception of our product was incorrect. On the PC, InterChange's most profitable, most reliable market is the pro or semi-pro animator, not the hobby 3D user. Which PC 3D programs do you regard as "hobbyist"? Even Imagine PC retails at about $600, right? 3D Studio has a street price of $2,800, and dealers tell me that typically half of them buy at least $500 worth of add-ons like IPAS routines. These people are running on $3K-$10K souped-up PCs. Not to mention the people who have $100K SGI systems. Maybe we should have an "InterChange Light" that addresses the hobby market. Which formats would you imagine in such a bundle? Then I'd segregate the high-end formats (perhaps as defined by the retail price of the program) into a separate package. These two classes of potential customers have very different expectations about the product, in terms of price / value, documentation, tech support, updates, etc. As for CD distribution, I don't think it's feasible. I'd hate to require the CD as a "key", that's more obnoxious than a dongle. Many 3D Studio users keep the 3D Studio disc in their drive at all times. Making a new disc would involve $1,000 a pop, while floppies can be reformatted and recopied endlessly. 🙂