作者：Nicholas Lovell

Valve刚刚宣称开发者将能够控制它们在Steam上的定价。它们可以无需经过Valve同意而进行促销，提供折扣并推广游戏。这是PC游戏价格朝着零端点下滑的开始。以下便是原因。

边际成本参数

在《The Curve》第三章节中，我为数字产品将随着时间的发展出现零成本的情况提出了一些经济参数。一个名为Joseph Bertrand的经济学家确定，在竞争市场中，所有的一切都是平等的，产品的成本将随着时间的发展跌落至编辑成本，而这主要是受到竞争的驱使。

marginal cost（from wikipedia）

让我们想象一家鞋厂为一个小城镇供应鞋子。撇开工厂，土地和设备等成本不说的话，创造每双鞋子的成本是1美元。每多制作一双便加1美元。如此工厂A决定以5美元去销售鞋子。

一名企业家发现有机会能够从投资1美元于一双鞋子身上赚取4美元的利益。于是他便向别人借钱去创建一家工厂并购买装备去制造鞋子。他想要确保能够获得一定的市场份额，所以他决定以4美元的价格去出售鞋子，这意味着他只能赚到3美元。现在他的鞋子比竞争对手便宜了20%。他吸引了所有消费者的注意。于是工厂A也削减了价格为3美元。然后该企业家又将价格降到2美元，根据Bertrand Competition（游戏邦注：描述了一种竞争格局，即生产同质产品的寡头厂商可能并不总是以产量做为决策变量进行竞争，也可以以价格做为决策变量的竞争方式），他们就这么一直相竞争着，直至定价已经不再能够承担制作一双鞋的成本时，他们的价格便开始趋于稳定，也就是所谓的边际成本（在这个例子中便是1美元）。

在数字世界中，边际成本是0，或者接近于0。在iOS和Android平台上，AppStore吞噬了分配带宽成本，这意味着对于许多开发者而言边际成本实际上就是0。在PC世界中并不是如此，但带宽成本却不断下降着，即使不是0，边际成本也是非常低的。

关于Bertrand Competition伴随着一个问题：它排除了市场营销的影响；它假设一双鞋与另一双鞋一样精致；它并未考虑到比较成本或者转换成本，所有的这些都是真实的。但它所传达的是推动产品成本的下降元素是竞争，而非盗版，特别是在伴随着较低边际成本的数字产品情况下。通过自身从Steam的定价过程中删除，Valve将自己的平台变得更具有竞争性。

硬件参数

免费的手机平台上主要的价格点。为什么？因为两大巨头并不在乎通过销售软件或应用内部购买（IAP）赚钱。

App Store的收益只占苹果总收益的不到1%。苹果已经成为了世界上最有价值的公司，即主要是通过制作高利润，精致且让人满意的硬件做到这点。他们的硬件之所以能让人满意的一大原因是有超过100万款的应用可以出现在其平台上，并且许多应用都是免费的，在某种程度上手机能力的延伸也是苹果可能未料到的。Steve Jobs希望给手机应用设置0的价格点是因为他假设拥有一个充满竞争性的企业市场去推动其软件致力于自己的设备中将提升消费者对于他的硬件的需求。

谷歌并不是为了销售软件而创造出Android。它创造Android是为了创造一条“经济护城河”。谷歌的主要领域是在台式电脑，并且主要是通过广告赚取利益。它明确了网络的使用与探索将转移到手机平台的真正威胁，并且它需要确保自己不会被丢在背后。Android便是他们对此做出的回应。

不管是iOS还是Android，保持较高的软件价格都是与苹果（硬件）和谷歌（与搜索相关的广告）的核心业务背道而驰。电子书并不是免费的唯一原因是亚马逊的核心业务是零售，而非硬件。如果亚马逊相信它能够通过销售Kindles赚到比销售电子书更多的钱，那么电子书便会是免费的。主机游戏并未变成免费的是因为索尼和微软的业务模式是资助硬件并依靠软件赚钱。在他们的模式下，资助硬件并冒着免费游戏的风险对于在职者而言似乎都太遥不可及了。

是什么将我带到Steam。Valve所创造的Steambox是主机的竞争者。它应该能够提供一种开箱即用的PC游戏体验，尽管它努力在价格或市场营销方面上与主机竞争着。似乎Steam并未渴望资助box的成本，这与微软和索尼的水平也有差。

但如果Steam的USP是免费出售无数游戏的话会怎样？如果它与采取史蒂夫·乔布斯那伴随着开发者所设定的价格的开放平台的方法的主机相竞争的话又会怎样？如果Steam因为主机将是一种强大的竞争武器（就像它能够与主机制造商相抗衡）而希望PC市场能够趋于免费会怎样？

然后我便会期待Steam面向更多开发者打开Steam，让更多游戏能够出现在这里并让市场去控制定价（开发者能够设定自己的销售）。

这似乎就是正在发生的事。

新业务模式参数

但你可能会呼喊着，Steam可是个零售商。它是通过向在数字箱子中销售的游戏抽取30%的利益而赚钱。

Steam也是一个成功的免费游戏渠道。它是早前西方市场曾经尝试过的一种业务模式，即《军团要塞2》始终保持在其免费游戏排行榜的最顶端。SuperDataResearch估算，单单在2013年，《军团要塞2》便通过应用内部购买共赚取了1.39亿美元。像来自应该工作室Firefly的《Stronghold Kingdoms》等游戏也一直高居Steam的免费游戏排行榜。

Valve是通过源自平台的应用内部购买而赚钱。它同样也通过预先销售游戏在赚钱。如果消费者比起预先付费反而更习惯进行免费下载，那么Valve便可以通过任何一种方式去赚钱。

但这并不意味着我期待Valve会停止支持付费游戏，同样地我也并不期待苹果或谷歌会这么做。我的意思是Valve似乎将面向更多开发者打开市场，通过更多的试验以及各种价格点去明确怎样才是适合消费者和业务的。

我期待受到竞争铁律所驱动的免费模式经济和技术最后能够获取成功。

这可能是Valve尝试着推动Steambox去获取的一种有意义的竞争优势。

（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转载，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

Valve has just started the PC games race to zero

by Nicholas Lovell

Valve has just announced that developers will now be in charge of their own pricing on Steam. They can run sales, offer discounts and promote their games without talking a Valve representative. This is the beginning of PC games prices drifting downwards, with an endpoint of zero. Here’s why.

The marginal cost argument

In Chapter 3 of The Curve, I set out the economic arguments for why a digital product will tend towards a cost of zero over time. Broadly put, an economist named Joseph Bertrand established that, all things being equal, in a competitive market, the cost of a product falls over time to the marginal cost, driven predominantly by competition.

Let’s imagine a shoe factory supplying shoes to one small town. Leaving aside the cost of the factory, the land and the equipment, the cost to make a pair of shoes is $1. Every extra pair of shoes made costs an extra dollar. Factory A decides to sell its shoes at $5.

An entrepreneur sees that there is an opportunity to make $4 for every $1 he invests in a pair of shoes. He borrows money to build a factory and buy equipment to make shoes. He wants to make sure that he gets some market share, so he decides to sell his shoes for $4, meaning that he only makes $3. His shoes are now 20% cheaper than his rivals. He gets all the customers. So Factory A cuts its prices to stay competitive to $3. The entrepreneur custs his prices to $2 and so on and so on until, according to Bertrand Competition, prices stabilise when they can no longer afford to make one pair of shoes, the marginal cost, in this case, $1.

In the world of digital, the marginal cost is zero, or as close to zero as makes no odds. On iOS and Android, the AppStores swallow the distribution bandwidth costs, which means that the marginal cost is actually zero for many developers. In the world of PC, this is not yet true, but bandwidth costs keep falling, and the marginal cost, if not zero, is pretty small.

There is an issue with Bertrand Competition: it excludes the impact of marketing; it assumes that one pair of shoes is as good as another pair of shoes; it doesn’t factor in the cost of comparison, or the cost of switching, all of which are real. But what it does say is that the thing that drives the cost of products down, particularly in the case of digital products with low marginal costs, is competition, not piracy. And by removing itself from the pricing process on Steam, Valve has just made its platform hyper-competitive.

The hardware argument

Free is the dominant price point on mobile platforms. Why? Because the two main players don’t care much about making money from the sale of software, or even In-App Purchases (IAPs).

The Appstore is less than 1% of Apple’s revenue. Apple has become one of the most valuable companies in the world on the strength of making high-margin, well-designed, highly-desirable hardware. One of the things that makes its hardware desirable is that there are over a million apps available for the platform, many of them for free, that extend the capabilities of the phone in a way that Apple might never have imagined. Steve Jobs wanted to enable the free price point for mobile apps because he hypothesised that having a competitive market of entrepreneurs striving to make their software work on his device would drive the desirability of his hardware. Boy, was he right.

Google didn’t create Android to sell software. It built Android to create an economic moat. Google was dominant in the desktop and makes the majority of its revenue from advertising. It identified the very real threat that Internet usage and search was going to migrate to mobile and it needed to ensure that it did not get left behind. Android was its response.

In the case of both iOS and Android, keeping prices high for software would have been in direct opposition to the core businesses of Apple (hardware) and Google (search-related advertising). The only reason that ebooks are not yet free is that Amazon’s core business is retail, not hardware. If Amazon believed it could make more money selling Kindles than selling ebooks, ebooks would be free. Console games are not going free because the business model of Sony and Microsoft is to subsidise the hardware and make their money back on the software. In this model, subsidising the hardware and taking the risk of free-upfront games seems too high for incumbents.

Which brings me to Steam. The Steambox is a competitor to consoles, created by Valve. It is supposed to provide an out-of-the-box PC gaming experience, although it struggles to compete on either price or on marketing with the consoles. It doesn’t seem as if Steam is keen to subsidise the costs of the box, not to the level that Microsoft and Sony are.

But what if Steam’s USP was thousands or tens of thousands of games for free? What if it competed with consoles by taking the Steve Jobs’ approach of an open platform with the price set by developers (and hence likely to tend to free, according to Bertrand Competition). What if Steam *wants* the PC market to go to free because it will be a powerful competitive weapon as it battles the console manufacturers.

Then I would expect Steam to open Steam to many more developers (Greenlight), to make games available fast (Early Access) and to give the market control over pricing (developers set their own sales).

Which looks just like what is happening.

The new business model argument

But Steam is a retailer, you might cry. It makes its money from the 30% cut it takes from selling games in digital boxes.

Sort of.

Steam is also a successful free-to-play channel. It was an early experimenter with the business model in the West, with Team Fortress 2 staying consistently at the top of its own F2P charts. SuperDataResearch estimated that Team Fortress 2 made $139 million
in In-App Purchases in 2013 alone. Other games like Stronghold Kingdoms from independent UK studio Firefly have been consistently high in Steam’s F2P charts. (Disclaimer: I have worked on Stronghold Kingdoms since its inception).

Valve makes money from the In-App Purchases discovered through its platform. It also makes money from selling games upfront. If customers are becoming more comfortable downloading games for free than paying for them upfront, Valve can make money either way.

That doesn’t mean I expect Valve to stop supporting paid games, in the same way that I don’t expect Apple or Google to do so. I do mean that Valve seems likely to open the market to more developers, to more experimentation and to more price points to see what works for consumers and businesses alike.

It is my expectation that free, driven by the iron laws of competition, economics and technology, will win out.

That may be a meaningful competitive advantage as Valve tries to make the Steambox work.(source:gamasutra)