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If a gas station finds they can't sell gas at $2 per gallon, they could rip out the gas tanks and stop selling gas or they could raise the price to whatever is
by troupe 4y ago
If a gas station finds they can't sell gas at $2 per gallon, they could rip out the gas tanks and stop selling gas or they could raise the price to whatever is profitable. I'm not understanding the business logic of removing the game.
- scarface74 4y agoApplications on the App Store need continuous maintenance and updates.
- troupe 4y agoI realize that, but it seems that a wildly successful older game would probably be able to amortize that cost over quite a few people still buying it at $3, $5, or $10.
- scarface74 4y agoIt’s hard to get people to pay for anything anymore. For instance, Soul Caliber was ported to iOS and it costs $10. I think I might have been one of the few people who bought it. It seems like the only way that you can make non scammy games make sense is via subscriptions like with Apple Arcade and even then it’s probably a loss leader for Apple and they subsidize game makers. This is partially the fault of the App Store model that doesn’t allow upgrade pricing.
- cld8483 4y agoIt's not a simple matter of the organization making the most rational decision for the interests of the organization. Individuals throughout the organization have an incentive to suppress past products to make newer products, and by extension themselves and their own careers, look better in comparison. Organizations can behave irrationally when the constituent members of the organization have incentives that puts them at odds with the rational interests of the organization itself.
- mcherm 4y agoWhat if a gas station finds that people keep fueling up and then driving off -- the customers don't seem to want to plaster their cars with bumper stickers related to the advertisers who are paying extra to the gas station and they don't seem to want to use the fuel "filter" that requires you to put a small extra charge on your credit card every few miles or the fuel won't move from the tank to the engine? For the sake of profitability, I could imagine the gas station might choose to stop selling gas through pumps since those simply couldn't be as profitable.
- troupe 4y ago> What if a gas station finds that people keep fueling up and then driving off I'd assume the price of gas would go up once they found it wasn't being subsidized by other sales.
- fhd2 4y agoYeah, sounds like they could have just raised the price of the original. But I guess they are convinced that this would still cannibalise their other offerings, which I suppose monetise better. So it's more like you having two gas stations next to each other - one with a price per gallon and nothing else, one with a more confusing user experience that yields more dollars per gallon of fuel than a fixed price.
- gambiting 4y agoThe thing with mobile games is that you make 90% of your money on 0.001% of your players - the big spenders. It's "better" to have a free game where a wealthy player can spend $10k on gems or whatever, than a one-time paid game. It's a sad state of the market, but that's how the big companies make money.
- thriftwy 4y agoThey may still keep both. The bug spenders will not play the original one - it becomes challenging at some point and does not have gems.
- gambiting 4y agoYes, but if the original non-monetized version is result number 1 or 2 when searching for "angry birds" in the store, then the big spenders might never come across the version you want them to come across. You can't "fix" that by just increasing the price of the original game.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- tadfisher 4y agoThe owner of the gas station also sells crack cocaine on the side. The longer people stay to fill up their vehicle, the more likely it is they'll purchase some crack cocaine. Right now, most of their clientele fill up without leaving their car, but the ones with electric cars will stay for up to an hour. So, considering both the refueling business and the crack cocaine business, the best move is to rip up the gas pumps and install more electric vehicle chargers.
- humanizersequel 4y agoYou don't even need the sensationalist reference to crack — this is already plausible with gas stations being convenience stores (and sometimes much more).
- JohnFen 4y agoIndeed. Modern gas stations make very little money selling gas. They make money by people buying the stuff in their store.
- troupe 4y agoI don't think many intentionally lose money on gas though. If they weren't covering the cost of the gas, they would raise the price, which seems like a rational thing to do for a popular game.
- JohnFen 4y agoQuite a few do intentionally lose money on the gas itself, but it depends on the circumstances for the particular station. They consider the gas a loss leader. People are very price-conscious when it comes to gas and will drive far out out of their way to save a couple of pennies. Very few gas stations can afford to price their gas higher than other gas stations, and there is very often a price war going on between stations. But even the ones who don't lose money are nearly always only breaking even on the gas. It's a lot like how movies theaters make basically nothing from the ticket sales for the movie. They make their money at the concession stand.