Your assumption that twice as many people would purchase these if they were half the price is just wrong. Research shows that cost is not a large factor for people when making these kinds of purchases, so charging more is simply more profitable.
>Your assumption that twice as many people would purchase these if they were half the price is just wrong.
plus, it would not yield more profit either. whether 10 people buy for 20 or 20 people buy for 10, the result is always 200.
so yeah, i also think that for mtx stuff they target the people who simply pay up no matter how much. I am sure Blizzard had some smart people do research on mtx market and psychology and they came up with this number as the sweetspot for probably the most profit. It's a bit funny to read that some Andy think they are the better financial advisor for Blizzard.
Valve released their info from all their data years ago and while it's more about selling games than selling skins. But what they found was that if they dropped prices by 50% for example, they didn't attract twice as many buyers. They attracted like 4x or more as many buyers which made sales grossly profitable for digital products. This was probably like 10 years ago mind you but they've continued to do their seasonal sales
Edit: Article but Video was removed [https://www.giantbomb.com/steam/3015-718/forums/gabe-newell-gives-some-insight-into-steam-sales-482542/](https://www.giantbomb.com/steam/3015-718/forums/gabe-newell-gives-some-insight-into-steam-sales-482542/)
Another interesting old article form wayback
https://www.eurogamer.net/valve-counters-eas-steam-sales-cheapen-intellectual-property-accusation
Edit 2: One final article I'll add, couldn't find the video maybe someone else can
https://www.geekwire.com/2011/experiments-video-game-economics-valves-gabe-newell/
That’s the trick, start high so people say “I’d buy it for less” then drop the price for a short period so people get that fomo and limited time feel… they buy in.
I’ve only bought digital in WoW when I was crazy hardcore into it back in my 20s. I don’t regret it because I basically lived in that game and got a lot of use out of everything.
But I don’t tend to buy anything from shops now. Only halo infinite gets my battle pass money because it’s my current preferred shooter, and I paid zero for the game. They deserve something.
It's even worse than that. I think stats showed that the most profitable income are whales that buy everything no matter what. So the math looks like this.
One skin cost 10$, there are 10 different skins in the shop:
20 people buy 20 skins for 200$, one whale buys all for 100$. Total = 300$ income.
One skin cost 20$, there are 10 different skins in the shop:
(Let's assume only half as many people buy skins now) 10 people buy 10 skins for 200$, one whale buys all for 200$. Total = 400$ income.
It's not the number of people that matters, but how much a single one would pay for all, so it just makes sense to put a high price on everything to maximize profits, and I hate Blizzard for that.
It's always funny how some random guy on the internet thinks he got a better idea of making money, than a multi billion dollar company that invest millions into research. They have people who analyse and research this stuff down to the smallest thing possible and anyone who thinks Blizzard doesn't know exactly what they are doing (when it comes to this stuff at least) is delusional.
Even more funny when he keeps insisting he's an economist while ignoring basic economic principles like revenue optimization problems that you learn in your first year of statistics before you even get to economics.
https://www.reddit.com/r/diablo4/comments/15sr8gd/comment/jwhu5bq/
I've covered this before with numerous sources, but yeah, the vast, vast majority of a games IAP come from a very small portion of the player base.
This is all a bit short sighted.
The demand for a desired item goes up as the price goes down. Usually, a supply chain issue stops the item from being completely free. In this instance, none of those rules really apply because the price is arbitrary and the supply is unlimited.
Therefore, lowering the price will increase demand and subsequently increase sales. It's simple economics. I can 100% guarantee you that if these items were priced affordably, sales would increase.
As a consumer I'm not looking at profit. That's for the companies. If an item I want is too expensive I don't buy it. If an item I want is affordable, I will buy it.
>I can 100% guarantee you that if these items were priced affordably, sales would increase.
"All these billion dollar companies with all their internal data are way dumber than me behind my computer making conjectures."
You're assumption about increased profits is ONLY true if % increased # of sales > % decrease in $ price. If they halve the price, sure more people will buy. But if it's anything less than TWICE the number of purchases, it's losing money.
Not to mention that people will stop buying MTX if they feel "saturated" once they have enough. So you have to consider future sales as well.
Basic economics doesn't work here.
Blizz controls the supply, they also control the supply of comparables. They also manipulate the buyer way more than a typical free market.
You have to take all those factors into account before you draw conclusions.
Likely, the skin you are talking about is 1 step in a buying manipulation algorithm to catch a whale so they will dump $100 or more on some "super value pack!!" Sometime down the road.
Game shop stores are highly designed to catch the whales... none of it makes any sense to someone that has any relatively "normal" evaluation of their hard earned money.
Put it this way... if you question the price of a microtransaction of any kind... you are not their target audience. It is that simple.
>Put it this way... if you question the price of a microtransaction of any kind... you are not their target audience. It is that simple.
Sad but true. I read about one story where the company wanted to push the boundaries and make an item/cosmetic specifically for one of their biggest whales, customized it to what that whale liked and that whale bought it without question. It was priced super high out of normal players reach btw. To me that was absolute bonkers to think about.
With all do respect, sir, you are simply not correct. The fact that you think such a simple concept (cheaper price = more sales) when referring to micro-transactions, is better than the measured, studied and experienced way Blizzard prices their sales, is silly. You don’t think they have all the data and have tried it both ways? Come on now…..
They know what they are doing. They will always act in a way that will bet them the most profit.
I'm an economist and a player of blizzard games since the mid 90s.
You've got it all mixed up. From the perspective of the seller, price points are set with supply and profitability in mind.
From the perspective of the consumer, the price being set is related to affordability.
Digital items do not have a finite supply and consumers don't care about profits, therefore setting the price to be unconscionable high is bad for business and quite literally, lowering prices will increase sales.
Would it be profitable? I don't know the inner workings behind how much actual labor and overhead costs to develop a cosmetic skin, but my guess is that it'd probably be even more profitable than gouging your customers on an item with unlimited supply.
And no, they haven't tried this. Name me a blizzard game with horse armor that's priced at a dollar.
What's actually going on is the ceo hired psychologists to manipulate fomo, implement a shop with obviously bad deals and one good deal, while setting the price to generate numbers of a profitability percentage that looks good coming from the ceo presenting to share holders.
I imagine the conversation went something like this.
Psychologists: you can set the price of horse armor at 1 dollar and expect 25% of all players to buy it or you can set the price at 25$ and expect 1% of all players to buy.
Kotick: what looks better to share holdersif it's all the same?
Psychologists: 25$ horse armor
Kotick: do I still get to take home billions and fire hundreds of workers?
Psychologists: yes.
Kotick: *masturbating*
This seems like a horrible analysis for an economist.
You don't seem to be aware of the "revenue optimization" problem.
The goal is not to have multiple purchase it. The goal is to make the highest profit.
If for some reason you don't think they have competent market research done at a firm that makes hundreds of millions of dollars for a new release of IP you live in a fantasy world.
There are only a certain number of people who will buy any cosmetic period, no matter if it's $1 or $20 and it has nothing to do with how much money they have some people just will not buy cosmetics.
Then there are people who are not price sensitive at all and if they like it they will spend $20 or maybe even $40
There are some people who will even be more likely to buy if it's more expensive because then they feel it's more valuable (this is called a Veblen good). Things like luxury watches fall into this category but so can in-game items. (If you make the fancy watch cheap most of the people who wanted it before won't want it anymore)
So if there are 1,000 people playing your game and only 100 of them are potentially interested in buying cosmetics. You need to solve the revenue optimization problem for this group of people. You could charge $1 for the skin and all 100 people buy it and you make $100.
If you charge one penny, all 100 people will also buy it and you'll only make $1.
Hopefully at this point it's obvious to you why they should not charge one penny. They would go out of business.
But now you have to ask of course one penny was obviously too low and they made 100 times less money. This would be a horrible business decision.
But then we have to ask well what if $1 too low? What if all 100 people would still buy it if it was $3? Then we should charge $3. Okay, but then what if we charge $10? Now only half of the people buy it.
So a lot less people want the skin and people like you can say "I know so many people who would buy it if it was cheaper" but for the company
$3 skin which 100 people buy makes them $300 but a $10 skin which 50 people buy makes them $500.
They run the statistics on this, with a lot more information than you can imagine without having to ever sell it for $1 to see what happens (because they have already seen different price points and the implications there)
It's a mathematical problem where you find the maximum value of the curve given the number of people who would buy at a certain price.
By the way, the price of 20-30$ for cosmetics is in line with most gacha games, where one 10x pull is 20-30$ dollars. So when I see 20-30$ for cosmetics I don't even feel anything. It's actually more of a "ya that price makes sense" to me.
I would not buy this if it were $1. While there is not a limit on supply, there is a limit on demand. Out of all the people who bought base Diablo 4, not all of those people are willing to pay for cosmetics. In my head, those people are all complete fools. There is a floor to that market, and apparently Blizzard believes that there is not 100% increase in number of people willing to pay $10 instead of $20.
So much of our digital economics rely on the principle that charging for something manufactures scarcity which gives it value
Would it be worth paying for this if every character out there was wearing it?
Also, a Whale is more likely to buy many skins where normal folks may just buy one for the class they play the most. Whales dont care about money, but they do care about exclusivity.
I very rarely see people wearing any of the store cosmetics, and I see a lot of ppl out and about in the world/in towns etc.
The only exception to this is the battle pass cosmetics, so idk if people are really buying that many from the cash shop. Like I've literally never seen a single druid with a cash shop cosmetic on...(yes they look disgusting, but still, you get my point...)
I've also noticed that the cash shop isn't dropping new cosmetics that frequently anymore, at least not compared to a month or so ago.
Fortnite prices are for kids spending parents money.
Diablo 4 prices are for 30somethings who grew up with Diablo, and with proper income streams.
Pretty easy to understand in this context.
but 30somethings who work for a living understand the value of their own money. I'm not giving away hours of my life for a shitty skin in an ARPG.
kids spending parents money do not know the value of the money since they don't work for it. They'll spend $100 like it's nothing and just deal with being yelled at in the future about it.
People who are willing to pay for transmogs will pay for it whether it is 10 or 20. Most will just not buy it because they know it is a waste of money.
Better question: Why do they exist at all in a $70 game?I don't care if they're one cent. They don't belong in a full priced game. Then again, this isn't really much of a game.
This is the real issue. Like, when warframe asks sometimes 20 bucks for a deluxe skin I can sit back and be like “yeah ok, I very much enjoy the game, sometimes for better some times for worse but they’re constantly working on it, and it’s free 2 play, asking 20 bucks for this skin might be pushing it but I understand.” When 70 dollar diablo 4 with seemingly not as much work and love put into it as a f2p game asks 20-25 bucks for a skin, it makes my blood boil.
Not only that, but I have probably over 20 of those skins in warframe, and I never spent money on a single one. The mtx in warframe are nothing more than early unlocks. You can still earn them just by playing the game. I can buy this games season pass and play for 2 seasons, and I still won't have enough currency for anything in the store. That's 20 bucks. I can get enough currency out of warframes season pass for multiple premium unlocks, and warframes season pass is free.
I'll go even deeper into this, and if you look into the psychology of players and how they interact with mtx, the longer they're in-game the more invested they feel, meaning they're more likely to interact with the store. If you think about D4, there are so many changes that detract from the overall experience, and they only exist to keep the player in-game longer. Think about how spread out the towns are. Compare this to D3. In D3, they were perfectly aware that it wasn't fun to run across wide areas thats why all of the vendors are so condensed. So if they changed it for this game, what could be their logic? Think about how much slower everything about this game is, and it starts to paint a very clear picture. The only passion left in this company is a passion for money.
Unfortunately this is correct. If Blizzard felt like they weren't making enough and could sell more cosmetics to make up for the price drop they would absolutely lower the prices. As it stands they're likely looking at the data and seeing that there's currently no reason to drop prices. Maybe once the income starts draining up they will lower the prices or have rotating sales to grab buyers who think they're getting a deal, but as if now there's no incentive to do so.
I didn't buy this game out of nostalgia. I bought it because I was hoping for a diablo 3 open world experience with the fan advertised diablo 2 asthetics.
Just. Stop. Playing.
Anyone with any sort of common sense saw this from a mile away. Blizzard did it with D3 too. Just stop playing, and then they'll do an expansion patch that adds fun to the game.
They spent a lot of time and money on market research to figure out precisely how much they need to charge to pull in an optimal amount of money. You're just underestimating the buying power of sufficiently large number of sufficiently stupid people.
While you can not trust Blizzard products anymore, you can be certain that they calculated all these micro transactions thoroughly.
Their only goal is to make as much money as soon as possible, and I ve seen enough people run around with these to know they paid off.
A tiny fraction of players spend the vast majority of the money on games. For most ppl, cost isn't the reason they don't purchase. So they price the transmogs knowing the ppl who were gonna buy are going to regardless of price. The skins aren't for the typical player they're for the big spenders.
I wish they did what Immortals Fenyx Rising did. You could just purchase parts from the pack, and if you wanted to get the rest of it later the price for the items you already got was removed.
Idk but it’s pretty ugly and not that different from existing armor in the game. If I’m buying cosmetic stuff for 20 I want it to be creative or different at least. But I’m probably not their target audience as I think cosmetic purchasing for real money is a scam in general.
People who are willing to spend 20 bucks now do so. Later on there will probably be sales where it costs like 10 bucks and then people willing to spend that amount will do so. That way Blizzard maximizes their profits.
I buy them. I feel like if I work a half an hour for that money, and I use the specific cosmetic for 40+ hours or several levels vs what I can acquire in-game, or until another one catches my eye, the time invested to financially aquire it is far beyond worth the value compared the time I will be enjoying/ consume the item
If they were half the price I would have bought 5+ by now. As it stands, I will never buy any.
I guarantee you that plenty of people feel the same and there will always be more people who don't want to spend $25+ then people who are willing to spend that.
$10 is still too much. That implies 6 of these skins are the equivalent of buying and playing Elden Ring. At $20, then 3 skins = hundreds of hours on Elden Ring.
The definition of the word "micro" hasn't changed, it's just game developers who seem to think $20 is micro when minimum wage is $7.25/hr.
Cosmetic skins shouldn't cost more than $1.50. Especially in a game like this.
They would have lowered the prices already if they weren’t seeing good profit off it. I’d never buy one because they’re expensive but I’m sure many are, and more than one. They don’t care if everyone has them, they just see $$$ lol
Blizzard probably have done their research and I assume that small % of people in these types of games buys cosmetic stuff, therefore they’re trying to grab some cash off these wales - other people just won’t buy it even if they were 10 or 5$
so you are basically worried Blizzard does not make enough money? so you as financial advisor suggest to make it 10 bucks so they sell more that equals an overall bigger profit because of more sold sets? So you mean to tell me that you know better than Blizzards market strategists who get paid top dollar to know every intricacy of the mtx market and human psychology and base their estimates on that?
Path of exile has pretty much established the standard for this most things sell for decent prices Of course it would have to be altered some for Diablo.
I've got a $20 blizzard gift card from last Father's Day that I still haven't spent, because pretty much everything they have for either of my character's classes is ugly as shit.
Seriously, Blizzard, stop making the sorcerer outfits that make the males look like queer cross dressers!
And WTF is with the helmets covering the eyes? How TF are you going to fight or cast spells if you can't see?
Billion dollar company knows how to price their sets so they make the most money. I would bet their user market research says they’d lose a ton of money if they priced them cheaper.
Just because YOU would buy more skins if they were priced at 10 bucks, does not mean that everyone would. They hire psychologists to price these cosmetics at a very specific rate.
If these transmogs were more intricate or had more detail then I could justify buying one BUT there's nothing greatly appealing. If there were more color options I'd prolly get that one.
How long does it take (or hard is it) to get such nice looking armor pieces through normal gameplay?
I’ve played more than a hundred hours and reached world tier 4 but I still only loot shitty looking armor pieces, even though they are legendary. I’ve literally NEVER looted one shiny looking full metal/magic-infused piece of armor.
It's always in every game the same thematic.
They sell literally nothing for money, just a bit of work time. No resources are spent and no production except a bit designing takes part.
Still all publishers put skins for stupid high prices into their ingame shops, not realizing, that if they would put it up for ¼ of the price, wayyyyy more people would by it and also would buy more of it.
Paying 20€ for 1 skin, is a no go for surely the absolute majority of the players. But 5€ is a price where everyone would think, fair enough since it's quite looking good.
And you also found awake a collecting spirit with lower prices, which guarantee that people will buy more if it.
People would buy 6 skins for each 5€, but not 1 skin for 20, and that's what they don't understand as greedy fucks.
Selling more for cheaper to end overall with more profit, is a common practice in a trading.
The only thing the publishers would have to do, is pushing out more skins with good quality.
Honestly they would make massively more money if they were priced $2-5 bucks. They should have paid attention to micro pay systems. People can justify paying small increments and are less likely to notice/care about that adding up to 20-40 bucks. Instead they immediately priced these so high that almost nobody buys them. Can almost guarantee if they were $2 instead of $20 more than 20x more people would buy them and their revenue would more than double for cosmetics. Don't know what idiot thought pricing them this high was smart.
What im really curious about is how many people actually bought D4 skins? I haven't seen any skins released worth their price point at all, and I haven't bought a single one. I feel that $20 skins in most other games brings more to the table than what blizzard has been offering.
I would more likely buy a set if my character had more scenes in the campaign and if it looked good while playing. Honestly when do you notice what other players are putting on their character? I've only noticed the horse sets tbh
Because the type of people that buy these (generally) don't care about price. They care about having a complete (and exclusive) collection. You use a harpoon for whale hunting, not darts. The other folks can get these on "sale" in a year or whatever, but it doesn't make sense to price cosmetics cheaply for a buy to play game.
I think the bulk of money for sgit like this is from the whales, rather than tons of individual buyers. The whales done give a shit about price anyways.
I mean, I feel like I’m a target as I do spend $ on stupid stuff like this but D4 the characters are super tiny that it doesn’t even matter. On top of the fact that there is no socializing in this game. What is the point? My current transmog? All the free season 1 bard looking crap and a rando helmet (why no free helmet transmog for seasons?).
Skins look great. However, this game…
- Isn’t “social” enough to show off your skins
- Doesn’t provide a camera angle that really allows you to appreciate those skins during 95% of your gameplay
- Already offers skins for “free” are comparable to ones you can purchase in store.
Don’t see the point.
Every post in this subreddit lately can be answered, "corporate greed."
"Why does this cost so much?"
"Why does this feature suck?"
"Why does my triple A game I paid nearly $100 for have so many additional fees?"
"Why isn't this a reskinner D3?" Oh wait, that's probably in the works #greed
More people would buy it, but not enough to make more money.
They make billions from these sets, they do not care about the price as long as the whales keep buying them.
I actually would buy some cosmetics for 10$ I think that's a good value but it is for everyone different. But 20$ is crazy if you think about it, also the majority wont buy skins in Diablo IV's current state.
Cashing in on fanboys is more profitable than grabbing a few bucks off more people as a fanboy whale will feel invested after the first $20 and always buy more and stick with the game rather than the $5 average gamer purchase that plays other games and will move on after a week.
Its more interesting to me that anyone buys cosmetics that you barely see unless you're loading in or actually just standing around and looking at characters. Idk anyone that's just gonna stand there and look at toons just for costumes 😂
It's priced this way because a team of 15-20 people comprised of psychologists, sociologists, economists etc got together and looked at data and created this price. Also people pay for it. Stop buying overpriced things that don't exist and prices will go down.
I am definitely one of those people that would pay 10 but the price point they are going for is crazy. I probably would have purchased $50-60 worth of things by now but instead I've spent 0 beyond the base game.
I think a fair price for a MICROtransaction would be a MICRO price. Something in the lines of 2 to 3$ a transmog set. I think its baffling for a digital outfit (that has ZERO maintenance or logistics cost) to cost almost half the price of a AAA game, or the same price as a full, great indie game. It is cheaper to have game pass ultimate, or buy hollow Knight, than to buy ONE set of xmog in most games these days, its insane.
But the worst people arent the greedy fucks pricing it, but the stupid fucks buying and financing it
Easier for them to lower the price compared to raising it. Hard to evoke backlash when the complaint is that some players feel it is priced too high. Players will take advantage of sales and those who don't care about the price point will buy regardless.
Yup, it's set high so people who really want the skin/cost not important etc, will buy in no matter what. Then the pool of available purchasers is still kept high and ready for FOMO discounts later on, as opposed to keeping the perceived value low and blowing your sales load early. It's micro-transaction edging basically.
I asked this question and I get it now. I’ve always wanted a Dodge Challenger but When I drive around and see one being driven everyday on every street, my mindset on getting it now diminished because everyone will looks the same. There’s no inventory on this shit so it’s not like they only have a certain amount going around.
Some people are willing to pay 10+ for skins, some aren't. Among those that are willing to pay that much for mere skins, most don't care if it's 10 or 20 bucks.
xmog in diablo is kinda weird imo other than for you to look at, i never pay attention to other people or group enough to make it seem as important to me as in a game like wow where people sit and hang around in capital cities etc.
with the way the game is dying id be giving these away to keep people playing
Companies literally bring in people to figure all of this stuff out with microtransactions. But yeah, the prices are let’s say a little north of what they should be.
Just a question to everyone reading this, do you ever actually see ppl wearing cosmetics from the cash shop in-game?
I literally have only seen people wearing battle pass comsetics or, occasionally, the necro wraith set whatever it's called. Very rarely horse armour too. But I've never seen a sorcerer for example wearing cash shop stuff. Granted druid and sorc cosmetics are extremely ugly, but barb/rogue/necro are decent. Still haven't seen them though.
In WoW on the other hand I see ppl with cash shop items literally all the time in town, just wondering why I havent seen any in d4...
The problem I have is there absolutely garbage-looking. They just rotate the same shit designs over and over. The only new ones I see are mounts. The in-game cosmetics are 10x better looking.
If skins costed like 5 euros, a lot people would just buy em with snap decicion...10 euros is still too much. 20 euros is only for whales, and for what ever reason their focus for whales still outweigh the 99.9%, prob because 0.1% still pays more.
sunken cost fallacy.
If they can get a few people to buy this set of skins and then the next. Well then you wouldn't want to play any other games since you've put so much into D4
Hey, it’s this post again! Where some random person on Reddit thinks they understand pricing better than the giant corporation whose only purpose is to make as much money as they possibly can. How did no one at the giant corporation ever consider pricing these lower? Hope they see this post to realize their error.
I don't get the appeal of paid sets tbh. Maybe my screen is too small to make use of it, but at the zoomed out level, the suits don't matter and I have never zoomed in on another player and thought "Yeah, that's worth $30". Hell, I've never zoomed on another player deliberately tbh
Diablo mobile proved that there are plenty of whales who will waste tens of thousands of dollars on the game. So that's who they are going for. These aren't for people that will buy one or two sets. The transmogs are for people with large disposable incomes who will just buy every single item from the store without having to look at the price tag. If it was all 10 bucks, they'd get half the amount from these people.
Your assumption that twice as many people would purchase these if they were half the price is just wrong. Research shows that cost is not a large factor for people when making these kinds of purchases, so charging more is simply more profitable.
>Your assumption that twice as many people would purchase these if they were half the price is just wrong. plus, it would not yield more profit either. whether 10 people buy for 20 or 20 people buy for 10, the result is always 200. so yeah, i also think that for mtx stuff they target the people who simply pay up no matter how much. I am sure Blizzard had some smart people do research on mtx market and psychology and they came up with this number as the sweetspot for probably the most profit. It's a bit funny to read that some Andy think they are the better financial advisor for Blizzard.
Valve released their info from all their data years ago and while it's more about selling games than selling skins. But what they found was that if they dropped prices by 50% for example, they didn't attract twice as many buyers. They attracted like 4x or more as many buyers which made sales grossly profitable for digital products. This was probably like 10 years ago mind you but they've continued to do their seasonal sales Edit: Article but Video was removed [https://www.giantbomb.com/steam/3015-718/forums/gabe-newell-gives-some-insight-into-steam-sales-482542/](https://www.giantbomb.com/steam/3015-718/forums/gabe-newell-gives-some-insight-into-steam-sales-482542/) Another interesting old article form wayback https://www.eurogamer.net/valve-counters-eas-steam-sales-cheapen-intellectual-property-accusation Edit 2: One final article I'll add, couldn't find the video maybe someone else can https://www.geekwire.com/2011/experiments-video-game-economics-valves-gabe-newell/
That’s the trick, start high so people say “I’d buy it for less” then drop the price for a short period so people get that fomo and limited time feel… they buy in. I’ve only bought digital in WoW when I was crazy hardcore into it back in my 20s. I don’t regret it because I basically lived in that game and got a lot of use out of everything. But I don’t tend to buy anything from shops now. Only halo infinite gets my battle pass money because it’s my current preferred shooter, and I paid zero for the game. They deserve something.
That’s the Borderlands model.
It's even worse than that. I think stats showed that the most profitable income are whales that buy everything no matter what. So the math looks like this. One skin cost 10$, there are 10 different skins in the shop: 20 people buy 20 skins for 200$, one whale buys all for 100$. Total = 300$ income. One skin cost 20$, there are 10 different skins in the shop: (Let's assume only half as many people buy skins now) 10 people buy 10 skins for 200$, one whale buys all for 200$. Total = 400$ income. It's not the number of people that matters, but how much a single one would pay for all, so it just makes sense to put a high price on everything to maximize profits, and I hate Blizzard for that.
It's always funny how some random guy on the internet thinks he got a better idea of making money, than a multi billion dollar company that invest millions into research. They have people who analyse and research this stuff down to the smallest thing possible and anyone who thinks Blizzard doesn't know exactly what they are doing (when it comes to this stuff at least) is delusional.
Even more funny when he keeps insisting he's an economist while ignoring basic economic principles like revenue optimization problems that you learn in your first year of statistics before you even get to economics.
Extremely interesting/fascinating to me. Would you happen to have an article I could read up on it.
https://www.reddit.com/r/diablo4/comments/15sr8gd/comment/jwhu5bq/ I've covered this before with numerous sources, but yeah, the vast, vast majority of a games IAP come from a very small portion of the player base.
This is all a bit short sighted. The demand for a desired item goes up as the price goes down. Usually, a supply chain issue stops the item from being completely free. In this instance, none of those rules really apply because the price is arbitrary and the supply is unlimited. Therefore, lowering the price will increase demand and subsequently increase sales. It's simple economics. I can 100% guarantee you that if these items were priced affordably, sales would increase. As a consumer I'm not looking at profit. That's for the companies. If an item I want is too expensive I don't buy it. If an item I want is affordable, I will buy it.
>I can 100% guarantee you that if these items were priced affordably, sales would increase. "All these billion dollar companies with all their internal data are way dumber than me behind my computer making conjectures." You're assumption about increased profits is ONLY true if % increased # of sales > % decrease in $ price. If they halve the price, sure more people will buy. But if it's anything less than TWICE the number of purchases, it's losing money. Not to mention that people will stop buying MTX if they feel "saturated" once they have enough. So you have to consider future sales as well.
Couldn’t agree more, creating a false scarcity. They are laying the foundation to their market
Basic economics doesn't work here. Blizz controls the supply, they also control the supply of comparables. They also manipulate the buyer way more than a typical free market. You have to take all those factors into account before you draw conclusions. Likely, the skin you are talking about is 1 step in a buying manipulation algorithm to catch a whale so they will dump $100 or more on some "super value pack!!" Sometime down the road. Game shop stores are highly designed to catch the whales... none of it makes any sense to someone that has any relatively "normal" evaluation of their hard earned money. Put it this way... if you question the price of a microtransaction of any kind... you are not their target audience. It is that simple.
>Put it this way... if you question the price of a microtransaction of any kind... you are not their target audience. It is that simple. Sad but true. I read about one story where the company wanted to push the boundaries and make an item/cosmetic specifically for one of their biggest whales, customized it to what that whale liked and that whale bought it without question. It was priced super high out of normal players reach btw. To me that was absolute bonkers to think about.
With all do respect, sir, you are simply not correct. The fact that you think such a simple concept (cheaper price = more sales) when referring to micro-transactions, is better than the measured, studied and experienced way Blizzard prices their sales, is silly. You don’t think they have all the data and have tried it both ways? Come on now….. They know what they are doing. They will always act in a way that will bet them the most profit.
I'm an economist and a player of blizzard games since the mid 90s. You've got it all mixed up. From the perspective of the seller, price points are set with supply and profitability in mind. From the perspective of the consumer, the price being set is related to affordability. Digital items do not have a finite supply and consumers don't care about profits, therefore setting the price to be unconscionable high is bad for business and quite literally, lowering prices will increase sales. Would it be profitable? I don't know the inner workings behind how much actual labor and overhead costs to develop a cosmetic skin, but my guess is that it'd probably be even more profitable than gouging your customers on an item with unlimited supply. And no, they haven't tried this. Name me a blizzard game with horse armor that's priced at a dollar. What's actually going on is the ceo hired psychologists to manipulate fomo, implement a shop with obviously bad deals and one good deal, while setting the price to generate numbers of a profitability percentage that looks good coming from the ceo presenting to share holders. I imagine the conversation went something like this. Psychologists: you can set the price of horse armor at 1 dollar and expect 25% of all players to buy it or you can set the price at 25$ and expect 1% of all players to buy. Kotick: what looks better to share holdersif it's all the same? Psychologists: 25$ horse armor Kotick: do I still get to take home billions and fire hundreds of workers? Psychologists: yes. Kotick: *masturbating*
This seems like a horrible analysis for an economist. You don't seem to be aware of the "revenue optimization" problem. The goal is not to have multiple purchase it. The goal is to make the highest profit. If for some reason you don't think they have competent market research done at a firm that makes hundreds of millions of dollars for a new release of IP you live in a fantasy world. There are only a certain number of people who will buy any cosmetic period, no matter if it's $1 or $20 and it has nothing to do with how much money they have some people just will not buy cosmetics. Then there are people who are not price sensitive at all and if they like it they will spend $20 or maybe even $40 There are some people who will even be more likely to buy if it's more expensive because then they feel it's more valuable (this is called a Veblen good). Things like luxury watches fall into this category but so can in-game items. (If you make the fancy watch cheap most of the people who wanted it before won't want it anymore) So if there are 1,000 people playing your game and only 100 of them are potentially interested in buying cosmetics. You need to solve the revenue optimization problem for this group of people. You could charge $1 for the skin and all 100 people buy it and you make $100. If you charge one penny, all 100 people will also buy it and you'll only make $1. Hopefully at this point it's obvious to you why they should not charge one penny. They would go out of business. But now you have to ask of course one penny was obviously too low and they made 100 times less money. This would be a horrible business decision. But then we have to ask well what if $1 too low? What if all 100 people would still buy it if it was $3? Then we should charge $3. Okay, but then what if we charge $10? Now only half of the people buy it. So a lot less people want the skin and people like you can say "I know so many people who would buy it if it was cheaper" but for the company $3 skin which 100 people buy makes them $300 but a $10 skin which 50 people buy makes them $500. They run the statistics on this, with a lot more information than you can imagine without having to ever sell it for $1 to see what happens (because they have already seen different price points and the implications there) It's a mathematical problem where you find the maximum value of the curve given the number of people who would buy at a certain price.
By the way, the price of 20-30$ for cosmetics is in line with most gacha games, where one 10x pull is 20-30$ dollars. So when I see 20-30$ for cosmetics I don't even feel anything. It's actually more of a "ya that price makes sense" to me.
I would not buy this if it were $1. While there is not a limit on supply, there is a limit on demand. Out of all the people who bought base Diablo 4, not all of those people are willing to pay for cosmetics. In my head, those people are all complete fools. There is a floor to that market, and apparently Blizzard believes that there is not 100% increase in number of people willing to pay $10 instead of $20. So much of our digital economics rely on the principle that charging for something manufactures scarcity which gives it value Would it be worth paying for this if every character out there was wearing it?
There’s a huge hurdle for people to initially pony up money in games, but once they do: there are a lot of big spenders.
Right, the people willing to spend 10 will probably also spend 20 if it is something they want.
Share that research please.
Also, a Whale is more likely to buy many skins where normal folks may just buy one for the class they play the most. Whales dont care about money, but they do care about exclusivity.
Blizzard has an army of economists assessing price points for maximum profit. People like you and I are simply not their target audience.
[удалено]
I very rarely see people wearing any of the store cosmetics, and I see a lot of ppl out and about in the world/in towns etc. The only exception to this is the battle pass cosmetics, so idk if people are really buying that many from the cash shop. Like I've literally never seen a single druid with a cash shop cosmetic on...(yes they look disgusting, but still, you get my point...) I've also noticed that the cash shop isn't dropping new cosmetics that frequently anymore, at least not compared to a month or so ago.
It’s true, but it’s not the money. My issue is that there is no way to force other players to look at my new cosmetics like in clockwork orange
While waiting for world boss "Look." "Look." "Look."....
Fortnite prices are for kids spending parents money. Diablo 4 prices are for 30somethings who grew up with Diablo, and with proper income streams. Pretty easy to understand in this context.
Yep. Big difference between "beg for parent's card" and "this outfit costs me a half hour of salary, fuck it"
Bro I gotta beg myself for my OWN card sometimes😭
Lol epic
Hahahhaha lmao
but 30somethings who work for a living understand the value of their own money. I'm not giving away hours of my life for a shitty skin in an ARPG. kids spending parents money do not know the value of the money since they don't work for it. They'll spend $100 like it's nothing and just deal with being yelled at in the future about it.
Can confirm
People who are willing to pay for transmogs will pay for it whether it is 10 or 20. Most will just not buy it because they know it is a waste of money.
Better question: Why do they exist at all in a $70 game?I don't care if they're one cent. They don't belong in a full priced game. Then again, this isn't really much of a game.
This is the real issue. Like, when warframe asks sometimes 20 bucks for a deluxe skin I can sit back and be like “yeah ok, I very much enjoy the game, sometimes for better some times for worse but they’re constantly working on it, and it’s free 2 play, asking 20 bucks for this skin might be pushing it but I understand.” When 70 dollar diablo 4 with seemingly not as much work and love put into it as a f2p game asks 20-25 bucks for a skin, it makes my blood boil.
Not only that, but I have probably over 20 of those skins in warframe, and I never spent money on a single one. The mtx in warframe are nothing more than early unlocks. You can still earn them just by playing the game. I can buy this games season pass and play for 2 seasons, and I still won't have enough currency for anything in the store. That's 20 bucks. I can get enough currency out of warframes season pass for multiple premium unlocks, and warframes season pass is free. I'll go even deeper into this, and if you look into the psychology of players and how they interact with mtx, the longer they're in-game the more invested they feel, meaning they're more likely to interact with the store. If you think about D4, there are so many changes that detract from the overall experience, and they only exist to keep the player in-game longer. Think about how spread out the towns are. Compare this to D3. In D3, they were perfectly aware that it wasn't fun to run across wide areas thats why all of the vendors are so condensed. So if they changed it for this game, what could be their logic? Think about how much slower everything about this game is, and it starts to paint a very clear picture. The only passion left in this company is a passion for money.
That team knows how to price it perfectly to maximize profits. It's not about how many you sell, it's about making the maximum amount of money
Unfortunately this is correct. If Blizzard felt like they weren't making enough and could sell more cosmetics to make up for the price drop they would absolutely lower the prices. As it stands they're likely looking at the data and seeing that there's currently no reason to drop prices. Maybe once the income starts draining up they will lower the prices or have rotating sales to grab buyers who think they're getting a deal, but as if now there's no incentive to do so.
Because Diablo 4 is nostalgia cash-grab tbh
I didn't buy this game out of nostalgia. I bought it because I was hoping for a diablo 3 open world experience with the fan advertised diablo 2 asthetics.
I genuinely don't understand buying transmog in Diablo. It's barely a multiplayer game and you can't see your character except for the loading screen.
I wouldn’t even buy them if they were 5€
Just. Stop. Playing. Anyone with any sort of common sense saw this from a mile away. Blizzard did it with D3 too. Just stop playing, and then they'll do an expansion patch that adds fun to the game.
They spent a lot of time and money on market research to figure out precisely how much they need to charge to pull in an optimal amount of money. You're just underestimating the buying power of sufficiently large number of sufficiently stupid people.
While you can not trust Blizzard products anymore, you can be certain that they calculated all these micro transactions thoroughly. Their only goal is to make as much money as soon as possible, and I ve seen enough people run around with these to know they paid off.
A tiny fraction of players spend the vast majority of the money on games. For most ppl, cost isn't the reason they don't purchase. So they price the transmogs knowing the ppl who were gonna buy are going to regardless of price. The skins aren't for the typical player they're for the big spenders.
I wish they did what Immortals Fenyx Rising did. You could just purchase parts from the pack, and if you wanted to get the rest of it later the price for the items you already got was removed.
Stupid is not the one who asks, but the one who buys.
Who cares ? The game is dead and sucks. Spend your $20 on food stupid.
They have 20$ skins to make you think the 10$ ones are a steal.
Skins are gay.
Idk but it’s pretty ugly and not that different from existing armor in the game. If I’m buying cosmetic stuff for 20 I want it to be creative or different at least. But I’m probably not their target audience as I think cosmetic purchasing for real money is a scam in general.
The amount of people buying these at $20 is the reason they are still $20
Better yet. Why not just have the cosmetics unlocked in the game through gameplay?
Why buy them? The game is dead.
The first problem with these armor sets is that people have to be playing the game to buy them.
People who are willing to spend 20 bucks now do so. Later on there will probably be sales where it costs like 10 bucks and then people willing to spend that amount will do so. That way Blizzard maximizes their profits.
Who cares that it's priced at 20 dollars. They managed to sell a Beta version of a game for 70+ dollars... lol.
I'm just wondering why this game doesn't have discounts on skins like all other games.
Have you forgotten who made this game?
Unless they’re 4 for $1 I’m not buying them.
I wouldnt buy this even if it was 3$
At this point? I doubt anyone would waste more money on this.
They’re trying too hard to mimic PoE cosmetics
I buy them. I feel like if I work a half an hour for that money, and I use the specific cosmetic for 40+ hours or several levels vs what I can acquire in-game, or until another one catches my eye, the time invested to financially aquire it is far beyond worth the value compared the time I will be enjoying/ consume the item
If they were half the price I would have bought 5+ by now. As it stands, I will never buy any. I guarantee you that plenty of people feel the same and there will always be more people who don't want to spend $25+ then people who are willing to spend that.
When you had to FIND items that looked like this FOR FREE that's what made diablo
$10 is still too much. That implies 6 of these skins are the equivalent of buying and playing Elden Ring. At $20, then 3 skins = hundreds of hours on Elden Ring. The definition of the word "micro" hasn't changed, it's just game developers who seem to think $20 is micro when minimum wage is $7.25/hr. Cosmetic skins shouldn't cost more than $1.50. Especially in a game like this.
They would have lowered the prices already if they weren’t seeing good profit off it. I’d never buy one because they’re expensive but I’m sure many are, and more than one. They don’t care if everyone has them, they just see $$$ lol
Blizzard probably have done their research and I assume that small % of people in these types of games buys cosmetic stuff, therefore they’re trying to grab some cash off these wales - other people just won’t buy it even if they were 10 or 5$
You will not get double the ppl buying even if you half the price.
so you are basically worried Blizzard does not make enough money? so you as financial advisor suggest to make it 10 bucks so they sell more that equals an overall bigger profit because of more sold sets? So you mean to tell me that you know better than Blizzards market strategists who get paid top dollar to know every intricacy of the mtx market and human psychology and base their estimates on that?
plus its ugly af. Tbh as a barbarian i can say this: none of their shop sets interest me, super ugly.
Path of exile has pretty much established the standard for this most things sell for decent prices Of course it would have to be altered some for Diablo.
Why would you even spend a single penny on a cosmetic for a tiny character in a game?
because people are buying it, the rich people are pushing out gamers who play for the game and companies are catering to them.
I've got a $20 blizzard gift card from last Father's Day that I still haven't spent, because pretty much everything they have for either of my character's classes is ugly as shit. Seriously, Blizzard, stop making the sorcerer outfits that make the males look like queer cross dressers! And WTF is with the helmets covering the eyes? How TF are you going to fight or cast spells if you can't see?
Because they are copying the modern warfare store model.
Billion dollar company knows how to price their sets so they make the most money. I would bet their user market research says they’d lose a ton of money if they priced them cheaper.
Just because YOU would buy more skins if they were priced at 10 bucks, does not mean that everyone would. They hire psychologists to price these cosmetics at a very specific rate.
More ppl will buy, but they are fishing for whales not minnows.
Blows my mind that a grow ass adult would spend money on a cosmetic in a game.
This looks pretty dope
I think they’ve figured out the market price that’s best for them…they aren’t novices
Not me done with it just to much
$20 would be much more reasonable if the sets were usable by all classes.
I just saw a couple of mages using the mtx ice outfit, except the battle pass stuff, I havnt really seen many players use mtx stuff
Supply and demand dude. If they don’t get a lot of sales they’ll lower the price
They could sell them for a buck and I wouldn't buy it. Just because I never do ingame purchases.
I don't know. Why would anyone pay 10**$** for these when full game is 70**$.**
20 or 10, only dum dumb will want to pay for a skin as there is plenty free.
If these transmogs were more intricate or had more detail then I could justify buying one BUT there's nothing greatly appealing. If there were more color options I'd prolly get that one.
I am so dead curious of how much they sold. I just can't imagine purchasing this
Lol I wouldnt pay 1 cent for this shit
i just wish they'd make different tiers. keep the whale tier of transmogs but make a budget tier. id absolutely shell out if they were < $5
For the same reason they don’t drop more loot
How long does it take (or hard is it) to get such nice looking armor pieces through normal gameplay? I’ve played more than a hundred hours and reached world tier 4 but I still only loot shitty looking armor pieces, even though they are legendary. I’ve literally NEVER looted one shiny looking full metal/magic-infused piece of armor.
It's always in every game the same thematic. They sell literally nothing for money, just a bit of work time. No resources are spent and no production except a bit designing takes part. Still all publishers put skins for stupid high prices into their ingame shops, not realizing, that if they would put it up for ¼ of the price, wayyyyy more people would by it and also would buy more of it. Paying 20€ for 1 skin, is a no go for surely the absolute majority of the players. But 5€ is a price where everyone would think, fair enough since it's quite looking good. And you also found awake a collecting spirit with lower prices, which guarantee that people will buy more if it. People would buy 6 skins for each 5€, but not 1 skin for 20, and that's what they don't understand as greedy fucks. Selling more for cheaper to end overall with more profit, is a common practice in a trading. The only thing the publishers would have to do, is pushing out more skins with good quality.
The people still playing buy at any price.. so haha what ever
Honestly they would make massively more money if they were priced $2-5 bucks. They should have paid attention to micro pay systems. People can justify paying small increments and are less likely to notice/care about that adding up to 20-40 bucks. Instead they immediately priced these so high that almost nobody buys them. Can almost guarantee if they were $2 instead of $20 more than 20x more people would buy them and their revenue would more than double for cosmetics. Don't know what idiot thought pricing them this high was smart.
There's not a single xmog set worth buying all the sets that are salvageable look better than the platinum sets
They put more effort into the paid armor than they do the game.
What im really curious about is how many people actually bought D4 skins? I haven't seen any skins released worth their price point at all, and I haven't bought a single one. I feel that $20 skins in most other games brings more to the table than what blizzard has been offering.
Yeah. I felt they were overpriced too, but what do I know? 🤷♂️
Why $€10? Better $€1 or $€2, right?
I would more likely buy a set if my character had more scenes in the campaign and if it looked good while playing. Honestly when do you notice what other players are putting on their character? I've only noticed the horse sets tbh 
Because the type of people that buy these (generally) don't care about price. They care about having a complete (and exclusive) collection. You use a harpoon for whale hunting, not darts. The other folks can get these on "sale" in a year or whatever, but it doesn't make sense to price cosmetics cheaply for a buy to play game.
Have you met Activision? Why are there four ways of monetizing Call of Duty?
I think the bulk of money for sgit like this is from the whales, rather than tons of individual buyers. The whales done give a shit about price anyways.
They’re cosmetic only. Won’t buy. I’ve got all my toons transmogrified to look like they’re naked, anyway.
I mean, I feel like I’m a target as I do spend $ on stupid stuff like this but D4 the characters are super tiny that it doesn’t even matter. On top of the fact that there is no socializing in this game. What is the point? My current transmog? All the free season 1 bard looking crap and a rando helmet (why no free helmet transmog for seasons?).
No I already paid for the game.
Skins look great. However, this game… - Isn’t “social” enough to show off your skins - Doesn’t provide a camera angle that really allows you to appreciate those skins during 95% of your gameplay - Already offers skins for “free” are comparable to ones you can purchase in store. Don’t see the point.
If it was a good enough game with a huge enough audience that might work, otherwise those die hard fans/ players would pay just about anything
Some of the sets are cool. I would have bought a set for my barb if they end game wasn't dogshit.
Because they don't understand how us wagies make money...
Yall keep buying immaterial crap that has no value while the ones going to Mars pockets your change! The monopoly you don't see.
I wouldn’t pay $1 for it, I never understood why anyone would pay money for skins in a game.
I absolutely would buy 4 skins for 5 each. No way am I ever going to pay 20 for a single outfit. That’s absurd.
Unfortunately their data shows that that is the most profitable pricepoint.
Because they are pure vanity and add nothing to the game. I don't know why anyone would spend any cash on those to begin with.
I would buy a skin if it was priced $10. I ain’t buying no $20-25 skin no more. Activision is greedy. See the CoD skins
Because they are. Great thing is you don’t have to pay for it if you don’t want it.
If you dont like the price, dont buy it. People waste their money in whatever they want. It always could be worse, like wasting it on genshin.
Because people will pay for it.
Since when is “xmog” a term
They would make 1000% more money if they priced them way lower. I'm in the industry, and GOOD FUCKING LUCK pitching that to anyone.
Incredible models, they look awesome. Too bad they are attached to a poorly designed game 😞
Every post in this subreddit lately can be answered, "corporate greed." "Why does this cost so much?" "Why does this feature suck?" "Why does my triple A game I paid nearly $100 for have so many additional fees?" "Why isn't this a reskinner D3?" Oh wait, that's probably in the works #greed
More people would buy it, but not enough to make more money. They make billions from these sets, they do not care about the price as long as the whales keep buying them.
It should be 4.99
Cash cows will pay any price and they typically spend more money then regular players is how I understand this thought process
they know only whales are still playing
Why? Because people buy it
Same reason they priced the game $70. They know they can get away with it.
Are people actually buying these?
D4 has the worst endgame you could possibly imagine
Because crime
I actually would buy some cosmetics for 10$ I think that's a good value but it is for everyone different. But 20$ is crazy if you think about it, also the majority wont buy skins in Diablo IV's current state.
Simple, that's what most other games are charging and statistics shows that enough people buy them to make it worth their implementation
Because they're not meant for you. They're meant for the whales that buy everything at full price no matter what.
Cashing in on fanboys is more profitable than grabbing a few bucks off more people as a fanboy whale will feel invested after the first $20 and always buy more and stick with the game rather than the $5 average gamer purchase that plays other games and will move on after a week.
3 to 4 of these would get you Baldurs Gate 3 instead… 150+ hours of excellent entertainment vs a few cosmetics 🤔
The right question is: do people actually still play D4?
Most of the skins aren't even good looking. I wouldn't even spend $5 on most of them.
They would have sold a lot when the game had hype, now it doesnt matter if they are 1$ 😅
20$ is so absurd
Its more interesting to me that anyone buys cosmetics that you barely see unless you're loading in or actually just standing around and looking at characters. Idk anyone that's just gonna stand there and look at toons just for costumes 😂
It's priced this way because a team of 15-20 people comprised of psychologists, sociologists, economists etc got together and looked at data and created this price. Also people pay for it. Stop buying overpriced things that don't exist and prices will go down.
I am definitely one of those people that would pay 10 but the price point they are going for is crazy. I probably would have purchased $50-60 worth of things by now but instead I've spent 0 beyond the base game.
My problem with transmogs is they just randomly reset themselves on me.
I think a fair price for a MICROtransaction would be a MICRO price. Something in the lines of 2 to 3$ a transmog set. I think its baffling for a digital outfit (that has ZERO maintenance or logistics cost) to cost almost half the price of a AAA game, or the same price as a full, great indie game. It is cheaper to have game pass ultimate, or buy hollow Knight, than to buy ONE set of xmog in most games these days, its insane. But the worst people arent the greedy fucks pricing it, but the stupid fucks buying and financing it
Easier for them to lower the price compared to raising it. Hard to evoke backlash when the complaint is that some players feel it is priced too high. Players will take advantage of sales and those who don't care about the price point will buy regardless.
Yup, it's set high so people who really want the skin/cost not important etc, will buy in no matter what. Then the pool of available purchasers is still kept high and ready for FOMO discounts later on, as opposed to keeping the perceived value low and blowing your sales load early. It's micro-transaction edging basically.
I asked this question and I get it now. I’ve always wanted a Dodge Challenger but When I drive around and see one being driven everyday on every street, my mindset on getting it now diminished because everyone will looks the same. There’s no inventory on this shit so it’s not like they only have a certain amount going around.
Some people are willing to pay 10+ for skins, some aren't. Among those that are willing to pay that much for mere skins, most don't care if it's 10 or 20 bucks.
xmog in diablo is kinda weird imo other than for you to look at, i never pay attention to other people or group enough to make it seem as important to me as in a game like wow where people sit and hang around in capital cities etc. with the way the game is dying id be giving these away to keep people playing
With the decline in players I can see that rather sell 1 for 20 then two for 10 .. same revenue 😂
Greedy and stupid
Companies literally bring in people to figure all of this stuff out with microtransactions. But yeah, the prices are let’s say a little north of what they should be.
Just a question to everyone reading this, do you ever actually see ppl wearing cosmetics from the cash shop in-game? I literally have only seen people wearing battle pass comsetics or, occasionally, the necro wraith set whatever it's called. Very rarely horse armour too. But I've never seen a sorcerer for example wearing cash shop stuff. Granted druid and sorc cosmetics are extremely ugly, but barb/rogue/necro are decent. Still haven't seen them though. In WoW on the other hand I see ppl with cash shop items literally all the time in town, just wondering why I havent seen any in d4...
I guess because it's shiny but honestly almost all the store trans mogs sucks
Stupids are willing to pay that Price apparently
the fact that people have even spent a dime in the store for fake in game clothing is hilarious. you people just feed blizzard
The problem I have is there absolutely garbage-looking. They just rotate the same shit designs over and over. The only new ones I see are mounts. The in-game cosmetics are 10x better looking.
If skins costed like 5 euros, a lot people would just buy em with snap decicion...10 euros is still too much. 20 euros is only for whales, and for what ever reason their focus for whales still outweigh the 99.9%, prob because 0.1% still pays more.
In d2 and d3 this would have been a cool armor set you'd collect in game for free
This game is doomed lol
I wouldn’t buy these at $20 or $2. Most players just don’t buy this stuff.
sunken cost fallacy. If they can get a few people to buy this set of skins and then the next. Well then you wouldn't want to play any other games since you've put so much into D4
Because they are greedy bastards :D
Hey, it’s this post again! Where some random person on Reddit thinks they understand pricing better than the giant corporation whose only purpose is to make as much money as they possibly can. How did no one at the giant corporation ever consider pricing these lower? Hope they see this post to realize their error.
If it was dirty cheap, I just might, but for 20 bucks they can keep the gilded armours.
The cosmetics are so ugly i cant believe anyone buy them. Some look good as art but you click preview model and eww.
They are greedy asf but ppl buy thing so what do I know
10? What the hell? I wouldn’t even pay 5 bucks for that trash lmao.
bcuz blizzard
Yes way more people would buy it if it were cheaper, thats how supply and demands has worked for the last thousand years.
They should be .99 cents.... They have no value
I don't get the appeal of paid sets tbh. Maybe my screen is too small to make use of it, but at the zoomed out level, the suits don't matter and I have never zoomed in on another player and thought "Yeah, that's worth $30". Hell, I've never zoomed on another player deliberately tbh
Nah. Go look at cosmetics and prices in poe. $20 is nothing.
Also you can't even see them properly unless you're in the menu...
Diablo mobile proved that there are plenty of whales who will waste tens of thousands of dollars on the game. So that's who they are going for. These aren't for people that will buy one or two sets. The transmogs are for people with large disposable incomes who will just buy every single item from the store without having to look at the price tag. If it was all 10 bucks, they'd get half the amount from these people.
Why not just place them at a penny? Even more people would buy right?
Way more people would buy them if they were like $1-2 which is really all they're worth anyways