Square Enix hasn’t seen enough of a dip in demand to justify significant mobile pricing changes.
Square Enix’s mobile general manager, Antony Douglas, claims that Square’s high prices aren’t necessarily a turn-off for Western customers. Though Douglas acknowledges that customer behaviour changes all the time, he claims that there hasn’t been a negative sales response to Square’s high prices.
Douglas points out that Square Enix’s experience in Japan is very different. Speaking at Casual Connect, a social gaming convention held in Kiev, Ukraine, Douglas said that the $20 price point worked “very well in Japan,” but added that Western customer feedback was lukewarm. Western buyers weren’t as happy paying high prices for mobile games, when other titles had a much lower price point.
Douglas, using episodic title Final Fantasy Dimensions as an example, said that it did “a lot more revenue” than comparable free-to-play or advertising-based titles. Douglas also noted that revenue per unit was that much higher. “You’ve got to sell 12 times that in some cases,” Douglas said, “to get [as much revenue as] one game on that £14.99/£20 model.”
Though Douglas did admit that Square Enix was considering making changes to its pricing model to attract Western gamers, he went on to say that high mobile game prices “hasn’t had the negative sales response that some people would think.” Given that, it’s unlikely that Square Enix mobile titles will drop significantly in price, at least for the moment.
Source: MCV
