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How to promote the SB product


Guest HAVOC131

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Guest HAVOC131

Firstly I am not looking for credit, money or free stuff but merely trying to help others see the pros of SB. On another simulation forum a point was made that SB does a very bad job at promoting its product and all of its great features and unless I'm missing a link some place I think they are right. I gave them links to some reviews from 2006 but lots of great things have been implemented since then. So before I go on listing what I think this features list should have, can anyone provide me with one that's comprehensive and up to date? Thanks for the help, Havoc out.

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Guest HAVOC131
there's some pretty decent youtube videos that might help promote SB.

I need a list at minimum, list with pictures would be best. I will make it if I have to but will be kinda shocked if that ends up being the case.

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Guest HAVOC131
Who are you trying to present SB to..... Civilian or Military?

And which product.......Pro or ProPE?

Pro PE and just civilians who like simulations wanting to know more about its capabilities. I can't tell you how many times I've said "Wow that's cool, I didn't know it did that". I just think its time to provide a up to date list of sorts that shows off this great simulation and what it can do.

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;)

And No, since I occasionally got asked that at subsim.com, I am neither a member of this forum's staff here, nor am I a member of the eSim team.

I am just convinced by this sim's quality, so I do my share to help non-enlighted souls to see the light of truth. :D

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Guest HAVOC131

Ok, I would like to hear from eSim team on this. If you could please give some feed back on the topic that would take much of the guess work out . I think a new product capabilities list with everything listed with the up coming patch would be a great time to show off the simulatior like this one here but with SB PE.

http://www.vrsimulations.com/FA18EFSX.htm. Thanks, havoc out.

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I think a new product capabilities list with everything listed with the up coming patch

Oh-oh - everybody please raise your hand if you think you already know what Ssnake will answer to this. :lol:

Don'T take it queer, Havoc, I'm just pulling your leg. Fact is that the next upgrade is most likely around 9-12 months away, and history shows that they are extremely hesitent to release information this early and confirm just plans. History also shows that their predicted timetables shouldn't be trusted. :lol:

I recommend you check the already immense content of SBP - and let this content speak for itself. That is the best and most convincing advertisement I could think of.

Or as Ssnake once put it, in Spring 2006: "I have yet to meet a single soldier personally who isn’t excited about the possibilities of our software after ten minutes of demonstration." - And that is a statement about the software in a state several evolution phases ago. ;)

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I suppose we could do a bit more, marketing wise. I am not convinced however that extensive feature lists are the instrument of choice. There simply are too many features that could be listed, and my impression is that multi-page lists of features are tiring rather than exciting. Of course, not everybody thinks like I do, so my impression is just one opinion among many others of equal validity.

And I thank you for being so excited about SB Pro that you want to make it more popular without any material incentive from our end. But I wonder if you have a specific group of potential players in mind, who they are, where to find them, and how to communicate to them that we have something here that is worth their precious time.

I suppose we have a fair share of active and retired AFV crew members, be it that they fell nostalgic about past experiences, be it that they are professional soldiers who are using SB Pro as an additional tool of self-education. I guess, in these groups word of mouth is worth more than anything else - and seriously, what is the alternative to SB Pro when it comes to high fidelity AFV simulation on the PC platform?

I don't know if you noticed it, but we recently spent quite a bit of money on Google AdWords for the duration of a full month. There isn't the tiniest blip in the sales curve (in fact, we actually sold less during that time, but that's probably coincidental and a natural fluctuation, not an actual negative correlation).

I was, for a while, more active on Wargamer.com, but only met apathy there. I guess, SB Pro PE isn't worth their attention. SimHQ is a bit different, but we're already pretty prominent there, so I'm not sure that we could or should do a lot more (we don't really want to flood forums with uncritical fan messages, that smells too much of attempts of corporate marketing to subject netizens to their clumsy propaganda). TankNet - meh. There are some who are interested, but overall I wouldn't call it "excitement".

Is SB Pro PE suitable for classic first person shooter players?

I'm not convinced that we offer what they may be after.

Should we market it more to the flight simmers?

My impression is, they are in it primarily for the flying, not so much for combat and tactics (and even where they are, mechanized combat on the ground seems to be "too complicated" for many that I met - and in all fairness, SB Pro certainly throws quite a challenge at the novice player).

Maybe I simply suck at marketing and lack the creativity, but I just don't see at the moment a target group or a specific angle with which we could promote SB Pro more effectively. Word of mouth still is, in my opinion, the most valuable method. Tell your friends, write about it in your blogs, write AARs and post them with screenshots at SimHQ and other suitable web sites. Make YouTube videos. Start a Facebook group or something. I think, overall you'll have the biggest effect with it.

SB Pro caters to a pretty narrow and specific group of computer gamers. As much as you may love it for what it is, others may loathe it for the very same reasons. ;)

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Word of mouth still is, in my opinion, the most valuable method. Tell your friends, write about it in your blogs, write AARs and post them with screenshots at SimHQ and other suitable web sites. Make YouTube videos. Start a Facebook group or something. I think, overall you'll have the biggest effect with it.

^this.

Plus the - utopic, I know - option to use the engine for recreating WWII tank scenarios. The major reason why SBP does not attract most tankers out there is that it is modern, not historic. Most tank-players out there want WWII tanks, no modern ones - that simple it is.

If there would ever be a gaming-market version of SBP-Pro PE, a real dedicated SBP 2 like once a long time ago it was planned, and you want to make it successful in bigger number son the gaming market, then make it a WWII sim. You would lose some players like me, who are not interested in WWII tanks, but you would gain multiple times as many newcomers.

Just noted for the record.

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Lowering the price a bit, would surely add more buyers. But on the other hand what kind of buyers? I've been put of by the price for quite some time, but decided to buy it now.. Even if I have to live on noodles for a month!

I've seen around a few forums that people want this, but it's too expensive, for it's 'outdated' GFX. The look of the game doesn't scare me away, quite the opposite.

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Guest HAVOC131

Thank you for your quick response. I agree with you on the about the word of mouth approach for your sales but like you said, the amount of capabilities this simulation has is quite expansive so trying to explain all of it can be challenging. What would be nice for starters is a new product website to direct them to. Not that its bad but It's not very forthcoming with information and lacking the shock and awe it needs to help those on the fence about purchasing the product. The sim has been around along time and much like a fine wine has aged very well into a much better product . However if you look for a review of the sim your going to get 2006 product information. I know this product rocks but it took some time for me to figure that out, hell, I'm still finding cool things out. All I'm saying is show off a little, brag that this is the only true tank simulator for civilians and all the reasons why!

You have done great things with this sim and should be very proud of it, I am and show it off to everyone I know. Let's take a pole on this topic and see what others think. Maybe I'm off my rocker but I think it deserves a better presentation. Thank you for your time, Havoc out.

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Sex sells, so print "STEEL" and "BEASTS" on the backside of short-shorts and let human nature do the rest of the work. The boys and girls who buy them will think it refers to their shapely and athletic posteriors, but the phrase "steel" and "beast" will likely get Googled more as a result. Can't hurt...

Hey, just thinkin' outside the box and all that... :biggrin:

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Guest HAVOC131

Clearly I've missed my objective here. My guess is your doing well on the military end of the house and that's great. I just see an opportunity to improve on what you have on this side. No disrespect to anyone on your team. Cease loading, End of Mission Out.

DOD HQ J5. Havoc.

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Lowering the price a bit, would surely add more buyers.

You're not the first to suggest that, but if you accept our business records as evidence, it simply isn't true. We are selling every week about the same number of copies for $125.00 as we did with the first version of SB sold through our first publisher for $39.90.

When we reduced the price to $100.00 during the three months prior to the latest PE release for the 10th anniversary, again there was no discernible elasticity in demand.

All this suggests that SB Pro caters to a very narrow and specific type of customer, and the only alternative is to massively push copies through worldwide retail to cater to impulse buyers, as we did with our second publisher and Steel Beasts Gold. Will that bring us happier customers, or more people who are disappointed that SB Pro is "too complicated"?

I suspect that we wouldn't be a hundred thousand happy forumites all of a sudden. Yeah, it would bring in people, but probably not of sustainable interest.

SB Pro is a very specific piece of software. It requires a fair bit of investment from a novice player - money, yes, but far more time (!). I think that demands a strategy of word of mouth. New customers should have a precise idea of what it is about so that they are willing to go through the initial process of familiarizing themselves with the topic and the handling of the software. You can't play it casually, and more or less at any time that you like. Instead you have to schedule your weekly SB Pro multiplayer sessions, you have to set aside two or three hours for a single player scenario if you want to do a proper planning and AAR before and after the trigger pulling. In many ways SB Pro is precisely NOT what other computer games are, and we have to recognize these fundamental differences, as much as we are enthusiastic about our favorite simulation game.

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But the price isn't all that high, at least not for swedish users.

A new console game bought at a retail store cost 699SEK here.

With the current low dollar, 6.6SEK = 1 USD, that is close to 106 USD.

Add another 19 bucks and you got Steel Beasts Pro PE. And if you got over 100 USD to spend, you might have that extra 20 bucks too.

Kind of put things in perspective even on a game to game price comparison.

In other words, for swedish (and probably other scandinavian countries) it's really not that expensive when compared to other games.

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I'm a bit weird when it comes to what I buy and why. First off, I can't stand twitch-based first person shooters no matter how "epic" they are, for instance the Call of Duty series. Yeah, it's like playing a Bruckheimer movie, that's true, that's great when I'm half-drunk and sitting in front of the computer, but...

1) Costs $60 at release.

2) I generally only get ~8 hours of playtime out of the single player campaign, or campaigns if there happens to be more than one.

3) Replayability is extremely low because everything is so heavily scripted nothing changes. If anything changes it is simply the number of enemies / the number of rounds they take to kill / both.

4) Custom content not available or extremely limited in nature.

5) Multiplayer community not well developed, generally prepubescents fuelled with sugar and amphetamine.

6) Costs for major titles generally don't reduce over time dramatically; CoD was $60 is now $40. Still kinda hefty when I can get RTS games like the Theatre of War series now for $20 + DLCs + a better developed community + they have a mission editor so I can create my own content.

The "ideal model" of a game in my world is still Operation Flashpoint: Cold War Crisis or :Resistance. The successor Armed Assault series is also good. Well developed, well organized and varied community, all-arms battle gameplay, excellent custom content often exceeding the quality of the default content, cooperative multiplayer with colleagues, etc. Cost $60 at release. However, I'm still playing OFP today (just made and played a mission as a Soviet Forward Detachment to coup de main a bridge) and that was originally released in 2001. A decade of gameplay is worth $60, certainly more than eight hours.

SB Pro PE is similar to OFP; lots of customization is possible, new content can be created via the scenario editor, there is a well developed community. It takes time to learn, but so do flight sims. On that line I've been playing IL-2 Sturmovik: 1946 for quite some time as well, again, a good use of $60.

When comparing games and simulations, the options are therefore I can spend $120 on two games providing probably ~20 hours of gameplay or I can drop the same money on SB Pro PE and get what'll turn out to be another ten years of gameplay with varied content, some epic cooperative battles with community members, and so on. The choice then becomes "I can buy two crappy games or one good sim."

When comparing apples with apples (sims with sims), SB Pro PE is the only tank sim on the market. There are a lot of flight sims. SB Pro PE is a one time acquisition; you pay for patches but they're well tested and the game is well supported. In Rise of Flight, you have half the initial outlay but you pay for a lot of DLC to get the game up to a similar level of content. In the DCS series, the Ka-50 sim has dropped in price some but A-10C is still up ~60 dollars. In both cases though, you're flying, not tanking. The same logic applies though; two sims for more of the same, or shall I try something relatively novel in sim-world and hop aboard the kampfpanzer instead of the A-10?

Sim players tend to have more money to spend on the software as an initial outlay, but do not have enough money to constantly rebuild their computers to play the latest; premiums are placed on realism and the ability of the sim to run smoothly moreso than graphics power; graphics are a nice plus. View: SB Pro PE's popularity despite sprite-based crunchies.

In absolute terms in the North American market SB Pro PE tends to be twice the cost of other games (barring "special edition" crap that can run into the triple digits) but has significant value to a set demographic who can easily justify it to themselves, as I have demonstrated above, based on the "Two crap games in the next three months or one good sim for the next twelve plus months?" comparison. I would view any target market as the already-niche simulator-buyers, rather than the general gaming public for whom "World of Tanks" is approaching levels of complexity too high to understand.

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I feel that the price really doesnt make too much of a problem.When you look at the cost of a console or PC game,usually about £40 ish,then how much playability they have.How many of us have bought games,played them for a few weeks then thats it,or we get a hyped up game and its totally crap?all it takes is for this to happen 3 times and you got the cost of SBPPE.Given just what you get with Steel Beasts compared with regular PC games is far more.Ok Steel Beasts doesnt have the sexy photo realistic graphics that a lot of games do,but then you cant hang aroung admiring the countryside if many rounds of incoming seem to be heading your way.A game is only as good as it PLAYS.It may look dead sexy but if the game play is crap whats the point?Personally i want game play over looks everytime.Currently im playing Grand Theft Auto 4 on the PS3 a lot.Bloody damn good game but it doesnt look brilliant graphically!

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You're not the first to suggest that, but if you accept our business records as evidence, it simply isn't true. We are selling every week about the same number of copies for $125.00 as we did with the first version of SB sold through our first publisher for $39.90.

When we reduced the price to $100.00 during the three months prior to the latest PE release for the 10th anniversary, again there was no discernible elasticity in demand........

I understand you proven point of view. I have triggered a mate into buying it for it's full price (hopefully) He makes 4 times as much money as I do, yet he's an idiot.. But I might get him interested in playing around with it, if I make some 'target areas' which would appeal to him. Then I might lure him into the multiplayer aspect.

(speaking purely hypothetical of course, since my copy haven't arrived yet)

But I hope he passes on the word about it, when he's at the oil-platform where he works!

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