this post was submitted on 24 Oct 2024
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It's called price discrimination.
If there are multiple groups of potential purchasers who have different levels of willingness to pay, if you can identify some characteristic of people willing to pay more, then you can create a version of the product that targets that characteristic and thus the group.
In this case, you're going to have something like a group of "value customers" who care a lot about how much they need to spend on the game. And then you're going to have "premium customers" who aren't too fussed about what they pay, but want the very fanciest experience.
If you had just one version, sold the game at the "value customer" price, then you'd lose out on what the "premium customer" would pay. If you sold it at the "premium customer" price, then you'd have a bunch of "value customers" for whom the game would no longer be a worthwhile purchase, who wouldn't buy the game, and you'd lose the sales to them. But by selling it at multiple prices, you can optimize for both groups.
EDIT: l'd also add, on the technical rather than economic side, that I've messed around with having a custom HRTF model myself, as Linux (and maybe elsewhere, dunno) games that use OpenAL let you specify a custom HRTF model in the config file. My own impression was that any impact on audio experience was pretty minimal. Might be different if someone had really weirdly-shaped ears or something, dunno.
It starts with increasing price for specific customer > next decrease the normal features for regular customer > add the same feature for extra paying customers > brain wash people into believing its normal and who are protesting against it are cheap > rinse and repeat
In before: "Dude, you don't need high res textures or better audio. I play on lowest setting anyways."
I think most people playing video games are familiar with the phenomenon.
As a recent example Dragon Ball Sparking Zero has versions for: au$115, au$160, au$180, or au$390.
Au $115 is around $76 usd
FYI
It pleases me when I use a service at a low price tier with the knowledge my usage is being subsidized by those willing to pay more for features I deem unnecessary.
It stinks when the basic tier just doesn’t cut it. But overall I’d probably rather have power users subsidize things.