Market
So I had a chat with a guy at work today who has set up his own business.
The main concern that has been raised is the size of my market. Basically I was looking at a guesstimate of 5000 people in the UK who would be interested in my game. Given that I only need to sell about 200 copies to break even I'm looking at needing to sell to 4% of my market.
That's all well and good (assuming I CAN sell 200 copies) as long as this is just a hobby and I'm not bothered about making a profit. Unfortunately more recently I've been thinking that this could be a career in which case I NEED to sell all 1000 copies that I get printed.
We're now at 20% of the market. It might not sound like a lot but imagine 1 in 5 friends buying the same book or cd. It wouldn't make sense since they could just lend it to each other (assuming of course that all 5 friends LIKED the book or cd).
Of course my market opens up considerably when I factor in the US. Significantly in fact. A quick facebook search finds a group with 68,000 members which is quite a nice potential market although I have no idea where these people are in the world.
If we imagine that I can market to all these people (unlikely but lets go wild) then I only need to sell to 1.5% of my market which is a much more attractive proposition. Of course there's no way I can sell direct to anyone outside of the UK which means I take a big profit cut due to the retailer.
As my friend at work pointed out, creating a mass market game has far more potential business potential. I'm talking 68,000 people but a mass market game has a market of millions. The trouble there of course is making a mass market game that is any good. The mass market is flooded with games and most of them are complete rubbish.
There is of course the chance that my game will appeal to the gaming market and/or the mass market to some degree but only research will tell me. It's really tough to do research without letting the industry know that there's a gap in the market but if I do want to make this a business then I don't see that I have much choice....
The main concern that has been raised is the size of my market. Basically I was looking at a guesstimate of 5000 people in the UK who would be interested in my game. Given that I only need to sell about 200 copies to break even I'm looking at needing to sell to 4% of my market.
That's all well and good (assuming I CAN sell 200 copies) as long as this is just a hobby and I'm not bothered about making a profit. Unfortunately more recently I've been thinking that this could be a career in which case I NEED to sell all 1000 copies that I get printed.
We're now at 20% of the market. It might not sound like a lot but imagine 1 in 5 friends buying the same book or cd. It wouldn't make sense since they could just lend it to each other (assuming of course that all 5 friends LIKED the book or cd).
Of course my market opens up considerably when I factor in the US. Significantly in fact. A quick facebook search finds a group with 68,000 members which is quite a nice potential market although I have no idea where these people are in the world.
If we imagine that I can market to all these people (unlikely but lets go wild) then I only need to sell to 1.5% of my market which is a much more attractive proposition. Of course there's no way I can sell direct to anyone outside of the UK which means I take a big profit cut due to the retailer.
As my friend at work pointed out, creating a mass market game has far more potential business potential. I'm talking 68,000 people but a mass market game has a market of millions. The trouble there of course is making a mass market game that is any good. The mass market is flooded with games and most of them are complete rubbish.
There is of course the chance that my game will appeal to the gaming market and/or the mass market to some degree but only research will tell me. It's really tough to do research without letting the industry know that there's a gap in the market but if I do want to make this a business then I don't see that I have much choice....
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