"VeeDub;c-18024917" wrote:
"logion;c-18024878" wrote:
"VeeDub;c-18024853" wrote:
"LeGardePourpre;c-18024848" wrote:
In term of money, free update is not profitable.
They need money to develop TS5, a ton of kits won't be enough for the next 7 years.
But free updates do foster at least some amount of "goodwill" which is sometimes worth more than money and can often boost profits in turn. Maybe not so much as brand new shiny things, but it's still nothing to dismiss out of hand as a fairly common business practice.
Yeah, that's the positive side with refreshes. I think refreshes are popular with the community and will increase player activity, make people go back and play the pack again and try out new things. And that's potential new sales when they are releasing new packs. But I'm having a hard time seeing how refreshes will increase sales for some people because:
1. I don't think the people who never bought the pack when it was released will be interested in buying it now because of a refresh. They were most likely not interested in the pack to begin with.
2. I don't really see how a refresh will make someone new who have never heard of the pack more interested either because they will probably not understand what is new and what was old. Unless they like something specific from the refresh, but then the chance is pretty high that they had already bought the pack anyway because they were probably already interested in it.
You make good points, but I didn't necessarily mean that free updates would translate directly to increased sales of existing packs, though in some cases that might happen. I was more referring to the general idea of goodwill that companies like to build up for long-term profits, as in more potential overall sales for all the products they offer. But thinking with more focus on the current product (Sims 4, that is), I can think of a few packs that I might decide to go ahead and buy if they get refreshed in ways that I could like. I'm sure I'm not the only one; not everyone buys immediately/soon after release everything that they might buy, after all. I certainly don't. Some things need time to percolate. :sunglasses:
That is true. Maxis earned some goodwill with their refresh, we will see if they will do more refreshes, people do seem to like them but I would probably not want it instead of packs.
