Torque 3D 1.2 - Pricing Revealed

#81 echo Brian @ post #78

:-)

#82 I Transfer Torque 3D to Studio from binary couple of days for $49 and do now I have pay $20 for upgrade to T3D 1.2?

If yes, How?

#83 On the main products page, what are we buying for $99.

#84 for $99 you get Torque 3d Professional version 1.1 with Source Code.

#85

Quote:Also, all people that purchase Torque 3D 1.1 after the price increase on October 17th, will receive Torque 3D 1.2 for free.

I know this is mentioned before, but the people who bought Torque 3D before the giant price drop?

I can recall that in the long discussion that followed the price drop to $99 Eric Preisz mentioned that people who bought T3d for $1000 (in my case $600 for the beta) would not be forgotten.

Now it isn't the case that I'm not willing to pay the $20, but ......;)

#86 @Richard -Let me know if you can track down what you are remembering specifically.

I think I have a solid track record for doing keeping my word and being careful about what I can promise. You may not always agree with my decisions and direction, but at the least I am very careful to try and maintain trust with the community (and my employees).

#87 So for the $50 upgrade does 1.2 finally have the Soldier LOD's?

#88 If we'd see a big fix/change log from 1.1 to 1.2, I think a lot of people could be calmed down. It's always better in marketing and business to tease and tempt the taste buds of the user base before revealing the price.

The term "No-Brainer" was a bad choice. If the price ended up being $1 or $1,000, it is still an implied insult on your customer base, no matter your intentions when using the phrase. Your customer base is your life's blood as a company; referring to any customer that has a problem with the pricing as "incompetent" is never going to land you in good water.

I understand you guys need to make some revenue, and the that "new" company cannot be held accountable for the "old" companies actions. I have had a studio seat available to me for over a year now, but I purchased the products we use anyways, as I like to support the products I use as this helps to ensure the future of the company.

My only concern is that I hope this decision did not come from something like this:

"We need to start earning some more revenue, the $99 price tag is not helping much."

"Oh I know, you know that old China Town demo we've been working on for a year and a half?"

"Yeah"

"Let's finish it, and charge for it."

As long as you can promise me that conversation did not happen, then I have no beef at all. And yes, the post at the bottom of page 3 refers to a post about China Town, and it is from March 2010, so China Town has probably been in the works for 2 years now. I did not see where it was supposed to be free content, as the poster said, but still, China Town is really really old news.

I agree with one of the other posters, you guys really need to separate out assets/content/features/bug fixes. The new stuff is great looking, but without a change log/bug fix list 1.2 offers nothing of any relevance to myself or my company. I am not opposed to buying content packs and art assets, I never have because well, there have never been any that suit my needs.

Also, is the information from these surveys publicly available anywhere, or do you have a copy of the questions asked sitting around somewhere. I never saw them, and am curious as to what was on them.

Have you guys thought about a subscription process? This is the way that most "code" related businesses run. Buy the product at $XXX, get 1 year of free upgrades/support, then purchase another year of upgrades/support at $XX. You would seriously alleviate all of these problems and ensure yourselves a more steady income. When people know up front that their money gets them a year of free stuff, and then after that they need to pay again for the services, they are usually much more at ease. But the non major version cost seems to hit people in an uneasy way with everything that has gone on in the past year.

#89 @Thomas Bang:

Actually I saw that too (a while back) but I haven't since I installed version 1.1. I even (for this issue alone) went back and tried the same version (older version of T3D) that *did* have the issue, and it was gone. Why the faulty project suddenly works, can't be because of anything that was changed in Torque since then.

Out of curiosity, what card are you using, and what driver version (I have v285.38) are you using?

#90 *disclaimer: I rarely rant and don't intend to disparrage the product or any persons related to said products. Nothing personal.
/rant on

I bought this engine at $500 after buying a binary copy for I believe $100 or $150 (been a bit :P) and You really need to stop trying to pry more cash outta me for the basic engine... seriously. I haven't the extra cash and the reality is, this is a precedent that carries an ill wind.

That said, I appreciate the work going into the new FPS 1st/3rd person stuff among other things. I have to say that a subscription based setup is far more common in the industry. I doubt I will ever release anything with this engine commercially since I am a hobbyist at best, but that is hardly the point.

The whole of the issue is that I am being asked to pay on a point release......and it leaves me feeling cheated.

/rant off

edit: What about the middleware????? I have AFX and several other solutions...are they going to support point release versions for perpetuity?? That is what major release numbers are about...and new products.

#91 I can't blame you guys for being mad, my boss has so much example artwork already with T3D, why would anyone want more ?

He has: the gideon player and level, the pacific demo with a soldier, the other levels from the beta days including purelight stuff.
How much example art does a licensee need ?

#92 As a Torque 3D Pro owner currently, if i upgrade to 1.2 for $49 does that convert me to a Studio lic?

#93 Yes, 1.2 will have the Soldier LODs.

#94 Collinsworth - The art produced for T3D as demos is a way for us to constantly test the engine, find bugs, enhance workflow, test new features, and much more. We release the art along with Torque as an added benefit and material for users to look at for examples.

The art we specifically create to sell, we put in our store.

#95 BtW - Will the tutorial documentation be in Electronic Book format? I like to use my iPad to reference documentation while I work on my main PC, without eating bandwidth or having to click through webpages. Despite my prior annoyance with the whole "pricing" stuffs, I really am looking forward to this next release and will be upgrading on the day of release. :D

#96 I do not want to come across as annoying and can only assume that my questions were missed, while some others were answered due to the sheer number of comments on this blog post. However, some of my questions have been asked by certain other individuals too, and I am hoping that I can receive an answer to these....

Quote:
What is the next step?
Will 1.3 be a paid update? (Am assuming not, AFAIK its only major upgrades that are supposed to be paid. But its better not to assume... )
How many months/years of support will be provided for 1.2?
What is the product roadmap? Am sure you guys would have thought of this... What's gonna come in v1.3 up to v2.0?

@Eric, wrt $150,000 artwork included in the engine, can I reuse that in a game that I want to make?

I understand its the weekend... but being in a service delivery role, I too work over the weekends...even when I have guests over.. So I know how horrible it can be...

#97 So far with the exception of Beta versions, the artwork bundled with the engine was available to be used freely in your own game. I assume it will be the same for 1.2, there was no info suggesting otherwise.

Another reason why you should be looking forward to these assets is that they will be the first reference models available for certain features - as such, they are an integral part of documentation and the tutorial. While they look badass, I believe they are primarily there to educate us.

#98 @Michael Tornberg: nVidia 8600GT / Driver 280.26 (the newest for WinXP and the gForce 8 series)

#99 //RANT ON

I have to say I am definitely sitting on the fence post on whether we move our product away from GG, firstly after starting at the $1000.00 price point.. then no short of 8 months later its dropped to $99.00, and now asking even though a low $20.00 per seat for the studio license it's a slap in the face. Especially since we could have paid 99.00 and now paid the 49.99 and still had 800.00 available for other software such as Adobe PS, which we are now in need of but don't have the funds.

The documentation at the start was horrible very out dated and very few tutorials, and you only really find that out after you buy the product, (Using the trial you hope the online documentation is better behind the members area). The search function on the forums has gone from ok to bad in the past year. ( I believe the switch to google search, or some back end change how the indexing works? )

As a small group of guys starting to work on a few small projects it has been a nightmare.

Whats the roadmap for these updates.. and items being fixed and implemented into the engine in the next 6 and 12 months?

Are there going to be other costs associated with minor updates in the future? Is this a trend?

I understand you are a company and being an owner I completely understand why you are asking for it, but be clear to your customers from the start... If I dropped my prices to 1/10th of the cost my original customers paid ... and then asked my original customers to fork out more.... I would not be in business...

Some consistency and transparency would be HIGHLY appreciated.

My 37 cents...

//RANT OFF

#100 *New guy around here*

From what I understand about GG's past, all this hate about paying 1k for T3D should be directed at their previous owners. We're lucky GG is still here.

I've looked at all the mainstream engines. GG in their *current* form, offers the best bang for your buck and the direction is *getting better*. Not good enough? Pay up... Unity/Unreal/etc != cheap.

Comparing T3D to Unreal is not fair on so many levels.

Frankly, I'm glad GG doesn't act like Autodesk and demand yearly ransom for updating the viewport cube.

Will I upgrade? Don't know... I plan to use Torque2D more because it is a better tool (imho) for a newbie 1 man indie "studio."

One last point, this is software... not a religion. Just a bunch of tools. It doesn't matter what you use to make your game, just make your game! Cost of labor/time will always be more than your tools.

There are games to make, back to work!