Is KSP too expensive?

[sal_vager]

Well look on the bright side, now it's 1.0+ they can't increase the price any further, and you all have already bought it, your friends can wait for a sale and Squad (almost) always sells KSP at 40% off*

*except at the 1.0 release when it was 20% off.

[Caelib]

It's worth $60.

[Frozen_Heart]

Easily worth it. Spent so many thousands of hours on this game that the price per hour is essentially free!

[selfish_meme]

I have purchased it several times, not everyone has gotten the same value out of it that I have. Still I do not regret a single giveaway. i think I have got more play value from this game in comparison to Half-Life (counter-strike), Star Craft, Battlefield Series (even then I had to buy new games) and Oblivion/skyrim. Most of those games were around for years after release as AAA games didn't move as fast then. These days a AAA game lasts a few weeks.

[Lord Aurelius]

It's a definitely overpriced considering that 1.0 is still really more like 0.27 and it still feels like an early access title. Once the devs actually get the game to a state that matches what a 1.0 product should be (i.e. no more placeholders (graphics and audio are still mostly placeholders), full balance/polish pass, proper career mode), then I would definitely consider it to be a reasonable price and be able to recommend it to others again.

As far as cost per hour, it's very good, but there are excellent free sandbox games like Dwarf Fortress that you can easily spend just as much time on, not to mention Skyrim is available for $5 now on sale and has more mods than KSP for near infinite replayability.

[TheMoonRover]

That said, the question really is this: Would Squad get more GROSS Dollars for KSP at $20, $30 or at $40?

At $20:

6 sales = $120

At $30

4 sales = $120

At $40

3 sales = $120

At $20, would SQUAD more than double their sales volume, compared to $40?

At $30, would sales increase by more than 33%, compared to $40?

At $40, would sales volume exceed dollar losses at lower price-points?

A Steam study from last year ( or was it 2013?) found that games that sold at lower price-points more than make up for it in total volume, increasing Gross Income (often times drastically!) Based on this finding, I might be inclined to say "yes!" it might be "over-priced."

Given that SQUAD is (or certainly was) primarily a marketing company, I reckon they'll have thought of that.

Edited June 1, 2015 by TheMoonRover

[Tank Buddy]

The value of the entertainment this game provides is priceless. I bought it at ~ 0.18.1 for $20. Now I would be willing to pay more than full retail price. Compared to games like battlefield that charge $60 + $60 for "premium", I'd say KSP is a steal.

[GusTurbo]

I bought it for $23, and I think it's overpriced. $40 is too much for a game that feels so unfinished. I say that as someone who absolutely loves KSP

[Windspren]

I'm glad I got it for $27. It should be $30 at the most.

[cybersol]

It's not overpriced by a long shot. Squad should really be commended from their approach to pricing. I wish more games started out cheap in early access and got more expensive along the way as the game became more complete. Instead, you usually have the opposite where they want $90 for the privilege of using the buggy game early, then reduce it by $20 dollars a month later, etc. until they are 75% off $40 by actual launch (this was the real progression of a RTS game). Or they could charge $40 dollars for the initial game as KSP was around 0.20 and then $20 dollars for the science expansion, $20 for the careers, $20 for building expansions, and $10 for 3.5m parts.

Plus despite being only $40 I've still spent many more hours in KSP than I have in those other games. Not to mention the fact value-per-entertainment-hour value I get out of games in general compared to what I spend on say 2 hour movies.

[Captain Sierra]

I'm glad I got it for $27. It should be $30 at the most.

I think I'd have an easier time compelling people to purchase the game at $30 without having to send them a "full demo" version.

I see a lot of people talking about the optimization, visuals, and what not (or rather the lack thereof in most cases), so here's my opinion on that:

The gameplay of KSP is so strong in most cases that I can get past that. I think 1.1 will go a long way towards that, however I previously did and still do believe that the current 1.0 version should not have been a 1.0 release. I think that was a mistake and trying to market what is, without any doubt, a beta game at best, as a gold release, is arguable.

If I strip my personal bias from 1200 hours away and examine the game as a whole, I honestly struggle a bit to justify a $40 price tag. If I imagine myself as a newer player who bought the game as soon as 1.0 dropped, I'd be pretty annoyed with the handling of the hotfixes, mostly because the game was no longer early access and I wanted something bug free.

Ultimately this is a matter of opinion. Given my experience, I answer the title question with a resounding no, however looking more objectively while still including my raw experiences with gameplay, bugs, and patches, I struggle to give the same answer.

[rollo1002]

I just bought the game at $40.00. Is enjoyable? Yes. Is it worth $40? No. At it's current state, I'd say $30 would be a good price point; however, a few more revisions and updates and yes the game would be worth the $40 I paid. There is a lot of things that are not polished and still rough around the edges. Tutorials and Training need more work and there is a lot of things that leave you wondering how do I do that? Does it make the game less enjoyable again no but it's that expectation of I paid this much I should get a game that is at this level.

[Razhan]

If we go to the hours played per dollar, KSP is the second cheapest game I've ever bought (it's hard to beat Binding of Isaac when it cost me less than $2). I bought it when it came to steam, in a sale for less than $20 (I think it was the KSP Is available in steam sale, sort of). However, convincing someone to buy KSP for $40, I think it will be hard. And let's be honest, KSP is a game you either love or don't care about (hard to imagine, but shortly after buying it for myself I gave two copies away, and they didn't like it. Maybe I should ask them to try again, or maybe I shouldn't have tried to convince lawyers to play it (my bad).

Anyway, $40 is a quite important prize in the PC world, and although once you bought it, if you like it, you will love it and consider it a steal, many people won't try

[boxman]

I bought the game for 20 dollars in a steam sale. I saw it today for 39.99. I know this isn't my place to judge, but I think that's a bit much. Don't get me wrong, I love the game and have logged hundreds of hours on it, but I see it as a bit of a barrier to entry. I've recommended KSP several people about it and every one of them said it was too expensive. I would love to hear your opinions on this.

SmallFatFetus

EDIT: think of whether it's a turn off to new players. Is $40 too steep for a game they might not like?

Even though I think it was worth every single penny and even more I still think it is way overpriced for a indie game.

As it is now people just dont expect to pay anywhere near AAA price for indie games, so I think lowering the price would actually make squad more profits/sales.

[Ten Key]

I think the availability of dozens of high quality mods that let you polish and tailor the game as you see fit help justify a forty or even sixty dollar price point.

For me, the stock game is less of a finished product and more of a modular canvas. And that is a major selling point.

[regex]

I paid $17 for it and I think the "release product" I got in 1.0.x was worth that, not much more. The graphics are substandard, the game could be much better optimized, career mode wasn't designed so much as slapped together from pieces found by the side of the road... There are a lot of great things about KSP but it's no $40 game. It may be in the future, but the release version isn't.

[Tourist]

Worth it! Can't remember what I paid originally, but it is very low considering the time I've put into it. I'm even considering buying if for a friend, for no other reason that I feel, relative to what the AAA market usually expects you to pay for a "full length game", I've gotten much much more value.

Is it perfect? no. A rough diamond certainly. But a diamond nonetheless.

[helaeon]

$40 is a screaming deal. I've bought the game twice (gave a copy to a friend). So I think I'm at $50 now. I'd gladly buy it for someone at $40 (and am considering it).

EtherDragon's logic is the best for determining the price point. I think it's so they have somewhere to go for the sales. If they sell it for $30 on the sale and score a bunch of sales making up in volume. So sell 7 for $30 rather than 5 for $40, that's great. Harder to do that if you really should/need to get $30 for each copy, and it's always there so can't join in on the sales as you really can't sell it for less and make out even with volume.

[BudgetHedgehog]

If you look at it from an outside view, then yeah, $40 could be seen as expensive for what is is. But when you look at it next to other full release games like Far Cry 4, GTA V, Assassins Creed WhateverIt'sOnNow etc, it's pretty darn cheap. Also, I can guarantee you that in strictly hours spent playing per dollar, KSP wins by a country mile.

[mikeb30165]

Yes it's overpriced, & I'm saying that as a hardcore addict who's been playing KSP since 18.3. If anything, the game (stock or otherwise) feels even more unbalanced & "rough around the edges" than it did back in 0.90 (even some old, annoying bugs are re-appearing - like the dreaded radial symmetry bug that I thought had been ironed out in 0.25!).

Surely a new purchaser (which is what Squad needs a lot of to keep the game viable), would expect something at least a little more "polished" than it is at the moment for their precious 40 bucks, especially when you consider Unity 5 is on the horizon? The game is bound to be even more buggier when it moves over to '5 initially and it certainly will be very, very different (and not necessarily better - all those broken mods/ balance issues!).

And another thing; when is the demo going to be updated? Now it is no longer early access, this is about the only thing to tempt a wary newbie into a purchase; at the moment the demo does the game no justice at all and is very unrepresentative of the current version.

Edited June 2, 2015 by mikeb30165

[loch.ness]

I paid about 25-30 USD buying in at .23.

I've bought a few other games at that price range and Dragon Age Inquistion at double that.

Hours played (KSP beats everything by 10x or more).

Replay value (KSP never truely ends and I don't seem to get bored of it).

Brain stimulation: KSP has lead to me doing a lot of research into how real missions were flown and principles of rocketry and orbital mechanics. I've begun doing mathematics and engineering for fun for some time now. I also have enormous fun recording some of my adventures as fiction over in Mission Reports.

Graphics: For as simple as they are - with a few basic mods there are some sights which just blow you away. Kerbin rise on Mun is more impressive to be than all the blood-spatter of DA:I. Would I love an upgrade? Yeah. I wasn't able to get astronomers pack to work in V. 0.90 - I'll try again in Unity 5.

Sound: I usually wind up muting it - but this is rarely the most important part of a game.

In a meaningful analysis of value (monetary) compared to value (entertainment) I'd say KSP was too cheap. In needs to be because the learning curve is so high and the perfect story of player traits is niche enough - but Its returned the investment many fold already when most games barely scratch the surface.

[DexterMcKerbin]

best 20 or so dollars I ever spent! (I bought the Steam beta) For me, the only game that even comes close in terms of hours logged is Skyrim

[tg626]

Everything I've read defending the price is predicated on knowing its value as a player, this us not the state if someone deciding if they should "pull the trigger". You need a price point where someone us w ilking to take tgevgambke that they won't end up with a game they don't like. That's why I waited for a sale, and then later bought it again at full price.

[mikeb30165]

Everything I've read defending the price is predicated on knowing its value as a player, this us not the state if someone deciding if they should "pull the trigger". You need a price point where someone us w ilking to take tgevgambke that they won't end up with a game they don't like. That's why I waited for a sale, and then later bought it again at full price.

Totally agree - the defenders are converts: newbies need to be converted. Put it this way: we know its a great game 'cos we took a punt on it when it was cheap, so forgave its "quirks". Later, we really got ito it & now its an addiction (well, it is for me). But, $40 for a comparatively unknown indie game is a big ask for a newbie, & it looks overpriced (especially when you consider its far from the "finished article").

Edited June 2, 2015 by mikeb30165

[Superfluous J]

KSP doesn't cost $40. The $40 cost is so when it's on sale for $30 or $20 people buy it. If it cost $20, nobody would buy it unless it was on sale for $15.