Why Banner Saga is Avoiding the Budget-Price Pitfall of the App Store

Polygon has published an interesting editorial about Stoic’s pricing strategy for The Banner Saga on the very competitive Apple store, and the decision to port the title to tablets in the first place. Here’s a snippet:

The actual development of The Banner Saga’s tablet port has been relatively smooth, Watson explained. The game was ported from its native PC platform to the iPad in just two days. The majority of the work that’s now going into the tablet version boils down to painstaking optimization, as well as the other factors, including wrestling with the “black magic” required to succeed on the platform. The biggest decision is, of course, how much The Banner Saga should cost on tablets.

It’s a decision that Stoic is still struggling with and, surprisingly, it’s one that Apple has been advising the studio on.

“Apple is frustrated, along with everybody else, about the mentality that’s gone rampant in mobile app markets, where people don’t want to pay anything,” Watson said. “They want to pay as little as possible. They think that four dollars is an exorbitant amount to pay for a game, which is very illogical considering most people’s lifestyles. They’ll spend $600 on an iPad, and $4 on a coffee, drop $20 on lunch, but when it comes to spending four or five dollars on a game, it’s this life-altering decision. I’m frustrated with that too.”

“Apple clearly knows this, and I think they’re hoping developers are going to be using that on iPad Air, because it can push it now,” Jorgensen added. “So they’re telling us to go higher-end with our game. We’re still making those decisions.”

Banner Saga is suited for the platform, they hope, and will justify a premium price tag. What that tag will be is still up in the air Watson quoted XCOM’s mobile port at $20, the recently launched Monster Hunter port at $15, and Broken Age at $10. There’s no set norm, which makes compressing the PC version of Banner Saga’s $25 launch price on PC a tricky proposition.

The price it will not be is free. While there are certainly exceptions to the rule Jorgensen and Watson called out Hearthstone and Fates Forever, a recently released mobile MOBA, as two notable, non-punishing free-to-play titles the studio’s feelings on that structure are bearish.

“I’m happy to spend money on a game, but I’m not happy to get a watered-down product where the object of the game is to play me, and my enjoyment is secondary,” Watson said. “Everybody’s trying to do that. We tried to avoid that when we put Factions out, like, ‘˜Here’s this free game, and here’s a couple things you can spend money on,’ but we didn’t build in any kind of compulsion to it, because it was supposed to be a demo. You don’t make money that way.”