Is it April already?

_________________
Support AROS sponsor a developer.

"AROS is prolly illegal ~ Evert Carton" intentionally quoted out of context for dramatic effect

@terminills

_________________
Moxee
AmigaOne X1000
AmigaOne XE G4
I'd agree with you, but then we'd both be wrong.

@Moxee

Fine

/Me pouts

_________________
Support AROS sponsor a developer.

"AROS is prolly illegal ~ Evert Carton" intentionally quoted out of context for dramatic effect

$39.96???? OMG.... so i must sell a software almost at 200$ since i'm sure i cannot sell more that 1/2 copies.. and $39.96 for what??? servers, sdk, api? what??

_________________
http://www.amigasoft.net

Official Launch Date December 21st, 2012

ah ok.. now understand...

_________________
http://www.amigasoft.net

I don't see the value DiscreetFX is providing her.

_________________
http://lifeofliveforit.blogspot.no/
Facebook::LiveForIt Software for AmigaOS

@ DiscreetFX

I'm a bit confused about "Project Metropolis", does it actually have any software for sale for the the Amiga using OS 3.x !!!

When you click on the Amiga3.x Text/ Link on the "Project Metropolis" application store homepage all it does it take you to a "Wiki" page for the PC product "Amiga Forever" !!!

So where/ how does a potential buyer of OS 3.x software actually see/ find what your store has to offer for sale for use with an Amiga running 3.x ???

_________________

Call me a cheap skate, but giving 30% to DiscreetFX for an application that I'm selling seems a bit high. I have the same complaint about Apple's app store, btw. I can see 10-15% but anything higher is just excessive, especially in light of how easy and inexpensive it is to set up your own e-commerce web site these days. Apple can probably justify such a high cut of the profits because of the sheer volume of customers they attract to their app store but that simply isn't the case with Amiga products.

And having to pay a $40 fee on top of the cut that DiscreetFX takes is just a slap in the face. What is DiscreetFX bringing to the table for the $40 that I can't get elsewhere?

Last edited by ferrels on 17-Dec-2012 at 10:51 PM.
Last edited by ferrels on 17-Dec-2012 at 10:43 PM.
Last edited by ferrels on 17-Dec-2012 at 10:43 PM.
Last edited by ferrels on 17-Dec-2012 at 10:42 PM.

@afxgroup

Quote:

Official Launch Date December 21st, 2012 ah ok.. now understand...

Do you suspect that all this is a joke?

______________
Moxee

_________________
Moxee
AmigaOne X1000
AmigaOne XE G4
I'd agree with you, but then we'd both be wrong.

The two schemes I've come across in the music world for distributing music (for non signed artists) either charge an anual fee and take no cut, or charge a one of setup fee and take a small cut.

Annual fee and a 30% cut seems more than I would want to be charged (if I had any commercial software)

Nice idea, you may need to rethink your pricing.

_________________
BroadBlues On Blues BroadBlues On Amiga Walker Broad

Quote:

Do you suspect that all this is a joke?

It's DiscreetFX, what else would it be?

Ah, you mean "intended as a joke"? Probably not.

@afxgroup @ferrels

No fee for developers for the next 72 hours, so why complain about $39.96 when you don't have to pay anything? Customers never get charged a fee unless they buy a commercial application from the Project Metropolis App, then they pay the set price the developer put on it.

@Franko

Amiga Forever is the only widely distributed version of AmigaOS 3.x in 2012 that we are aware of.

@cgutjahr

Trolling on aw.net in addition to Amiga.org I see. Thanx for your vote of confidence in us as always. It must be a slow news day like always for you on amiga-news.de.

_________________
Sent from my Quantum Computer.

@DiscreetFX:
Quote:

Thanx for your vote of confidence in us as always.

You're welcome, as always.

Btw., has slaapliedje been refunded properly by now?

DiscreetFX Wrote:
Quote:

@Franko Amiga Forever is the only widely distributed version of AmigaOS 3.x in 2012 that we are aware of.

It's not much use though to real Amiga users who for example buy an Amiga on eBay and may need to purchase 3.x on floppy disks to use with real Amiga hardware or someone looking to simply purchase proper floppy disks to use with real Amiga hardware...

Plus there's also the small matter of the licence/ distribution agreement Cloanto have that sates the included versions of Amiga OS can only be used in conjunction with their emulator package (Ie: on a PC) and with the Amiga community being quite pernickety on all issues copyright, it wouldn't be wise to upset them by saying "just go ahead and use them anyway, who's going to know."..

PS:Still doesn't answer my question as to where you find on "Project Metropolis" you find Amiga 3.x software to buy from DiscreetFX...

_________________

As others have mentioned, your pricing plans are out of whack with the current Amiga marketplace.

There simply isn't enough of a userbase left to really make it worthwhile, seeing as there is no guarantee that your site having any extra benefit really ... if it was up and running and had tons of eyeballs, then maybe. But there aren't tons of Amiga eyeballs left.

If I was thinking of a fair price, 10-15% would be fair, and no signup fee. I'd also suggest you should accept freeware too. Yeah, it'll eat up some bandwidth, but you'll get more traffic too. But even if you accepted freeware, no developer would pay you to put their freeware on your site.

@Nameless

We have an existing contract in place with our partner. No pricing would be changed without consulting with them. Apple has already proven this model anyway and it scales well in big markets and small markets. We won't be offering any freeware. Aminet has existed for years and already fulfills that need perfectly.

Last edited by DiscreetFX on 18-Dec-2012 at 02:06 AM.

_________________
Sent from my Quantum Computer.

It may work for Apple, but the problem (in my opinion) is the Amiga market is infinitesimally smaller. A developer could announce their products here and on other Amiga sites, and reach just about any Amiga person who would potentially buy their software -- no need for your portal.

And in Apple's case, a developer can't even compile code/sell products for iOS without a developer license. So they are tied to Apple ... Amiga people can compile and sell wherever they wish to.

And to put it bluntly, you aren't Apple.

@About Pricing

There are two ways to look at the pricing.

First of all is that 30 percent is very typical pricing set up for this type of business, and even 50 percent isnt that rare.

However, it is also true that many Amiga products sales are pretty low and giving 30 percent out of that small amount is quite big amount.

but then again, if you take only 10 percent (which indeed would be quite reasonable price from developers point of view), it doesnt give you much to work with. I mean DiscreetFX to work with.

For if DiscreetFX gets 30 percent got, and their sole source of income (in this case) is only the percentages they get from sold products, then it basically motivates them to do whatever they can to increase the sales, and with 30 percent you can actually operate quite nice even when sales are small.


@What is the benefit from Metropolis


Yes, it is fairly easy to put up a website and sell your Amiga software. It is also quite easy to reach Amiga market by putting only couple of messages to Amiga forums about your new product.

But, some people prefer to skip that part. For one man projects, even keeping up the website and sales might take too much time from being able to focus on your next project.

I would also argue about the reaching of amiga market. For I would say, yes, it is quite easy to reach Amiga Market once, but not twice.

What I mean by this is, lets take example. Not so recently "Who wants to be Amigan" was released. It was news item and basically everyone knew about it. But right now i doubt many remember it anymore.

This wasnt of course an actual commercial product, but lets suppose it had been. Right now it would be forgotten with zero sales.

However, if it would be on Project Metropolis (and supposing Metropolis succeeds), then even 1 year later someone might go to Project Metropolis and browse through its games, maybe even through game genre and find this game still and buy it.

If you give 30 percent from that. Its not much. For keping 100 percent from 0 is still 0, but keeping 70 percent from 3 Euros, is more than 2 Euros.


Another example I would give from G.E.M.Z. which is actually available from http://www.ares-shop.de/

This is good example in sense that many other Amiga prodcuts to my understanding have similar delivery policy. You pay first, maybe with paypal to have payment show instantly, and after that you have to wait until someone looks at your payment and sends you the game files or link to game files through email. And while it isnt that long wait (many times less than 1 day), it still can be very annoying.

In G.E.M.Z. case it didnt really matter to me, since when i bought it, i wasnt planning to play it instantly anyway. But lets say you decide you want to play some new light game and right now. So you browse through Metropolis, you find this G.E.M.Z. there and you decide, this is exactly nice kind of little simple puzzle game i want to play. So you pay it and play it.

But in reality, you go to Aros-shop, you instead look the same way, but now you pay it and wait it...


So yeah. I think Metropolis serves some purposes.


Putting up a website is easy. But making your download both secure (in sense that no one gets it for free) and instant is much trickier. I personally am not so worried about security and have sold (non amiga) products even by sending them through paypals own pay system directly to unsdecured download site, link which they could just pass on to someone else and anyone could download the sold product from there and have just trusted no one does that.

But when you have put some actual effort in your product, you rather not take the risk that someone posts your download link to some forum and suddenly loads of downloads happen without payments.


What metropolis offers is

1. trouble free way of selling your product. Just sent the product to DiscreetFX, and they take care of the rest.

No need for website (you can still have and have link to metropolis), and no need for customer srervice to handle payments and deliver products. By other words, you dont need to check everyday your email to see if someone bought your product and then manually email the files/links to them each separately.


2. instant and secure delivery of your product to customer. They pay it and they play it. And they get personal download link for it (at least i suppose thats how it works)

3. Marketing beyond your own scope (this is where the 30 percent comes into play).

Yes, you can easily reach amiga market once, but twice you need update or something.

In addition, you dont put advertisement about your product to Amiga Future Magazine if its small product. Metropolis can put bunch of their products there to show on page, and your tiny little project might be advertised on Amiga Future Magazine.

Also. As Franko have pointed out, Amiga Market is much bigger than just the forums (which are easily reachabale). There are also countless amount of people on Facebook etc.

You dont have muscle to promote your tiny product in facebook seriously. However, Metropolis with its 30 percent share can do that. And it means that while your product might be bit small. Say G.E.M.Z. Having facebook ads about metropolis might result in some more G.E.M.Z being sold too.

And especially for games like G.E.M.Z. they can easily sell even 5 years later on place like Metropolis. For even 5 years later people will browse through games searching for some fun game to play right now, and G.E.M.Z could easily be the game they choose to buy and play, right now.



So yeah. I am rooting and hoping for Project Metropolis success, since I can see lot of benefits if it works out. And yes, I do agree that 30 percent (especially if there would come the one time fee in addition in future) is bit heavy in current Amiga Market, But i also believe that if they are able to pull this off succesfully, then 30 percent will be justified when they start reaching Amigans out there that are not reachable through Forums.

But not all products are equal, and for some products it might be wise to still keep selling themselves, while to some products like G.E.M.Z kind of products, this could be real good thing as long as they dont need to pay that one time fee.

I've got one real question about "Project Metropolis" that no matter how much I try to come up with the answer, well, I simply can't...

Where (and this is directed at the OS 3.x side only) are all these new software products going to come from that are going to be sold via "Project Metropolis" ???

I mean there is currently hardly anyone (if anyone at all) writing commercial quality software for the OS 3.x (AKA "Classics") whom are trying to sell their software commercially (most folk give their stuff away for free on Aminet and no matter how good it may be most of it is hardly commercial quality, heck most folk won't even pay shareware fees).

There have been a number of people in the past couple of years I've been on the net whom have either been thinking about starting up sites or have actually done so where the idea was to bring software writers together to collaborate and write new software and all of them have quite simply gone down the lavvy pan without trace...

So I'm left wondering just where are all these software writers going to suddenly spring up from whom will write new commercial quality software for the "Classic" Amigas, plus there's also the small problem that if we're honest about it there are a lot of tightwads about in the Amiga community whom will simply never pay for software when they can easily find it for free online (give any new release a couple of days and you'll find it for free somewhere on the net)...

Simply don't see how it could possibly ever work to be honest...

Last edited by Franko on 18-Dec-2012 at 07:40 AM.

_________________

Mmmm Apple gives you servers, payments handling, Store itself is integrated into operating systems = big market.

I don't see these advantages here.

_________________
ikir