Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Running a Web Hosting Business : game server host priceing

[mjfroggy]

Hello

I was hoping someone (or ideally a few people) might share some pricing logic with me.

Basiclly I was wondering how most people set their prices when offereing game server hosting.

I mean would the below be a good standard pricing logic to use:

inital game price + public or private server surcharge + per slot surcharge + branding or no branding surcharge + location surcharge (i.e., different dc may have different costs to be in) minus any discount for paying for a bulk # of months = the total cost to customer

or is it more appropriate (industry standard) to follow the following logic?

inital game price + public or private server surcharge + per slot surcharge + (inital game price multiplied by the physical # of slots selected) + branding or no branding surcharge + location surcharge (i.e., different dc's may have different costs to be in) minus any discount for paying for a bulk # of months = the total cost to customer


which one would be the best standard logic to follow? I understand different people have different costs. However I am just looking for what a standard would be

[Kemik]

I have experience in this before and all I can really say is Game servers have moved more into price competitiveness than anything else now adays, especially with alot of kiddies making clans and communities.

However, I would look at:

Server cost per slot = Cost of server per month / Total number of slots you can fit on that server (Remember it's different for each game and tickrate)

Overheads = All your support, billing, advertising costs added together.

Cost per slot = Server cost per slot + (Overheads / Total number of slots on all your servers)

Price per slot = Cost per slot + Mark-up (can be amount or %)

[innovation]

Yeah, they charge like $99 a month on average

[KenThomp]

Originally Posted by animecivil

Yeah, they charge like $99 a month on average

I hope you are not talking about a game server price. I dont see most game providers with 99/month pricing. I asume you are talking about a dedicated server. This would probably be a Pentium 4 server and more then likely not the best choice to use when hosting games.

When pricing game servers you need to take into account what you are spending to keep your company alive. There are many other GSPs that are trying to low ball the industry but after about 2 months vanish off the face of the earth never to be seen from again, pretty much like the webhosting industry. You need to take into account the price of the data center, hardware and also normal operational costs in order to establish a decent priceline.

[innovation]

I don't know the exact price, but I remember when I was looking for gameservers a couple years back, all I found from google was $99 a month. And, considering that before that I had no experience with gameservers, now that all I find is high prices, a person will come to believe that those are the standard prices.

[mjfroggy]

thanks for your comments all. I actually was not looking for prices for actual game servers I was looking for comments on how companies comeup with pricing to charge their customers for game servers with various games (i.e., half-life, etc)

I mean I know each game source costs $$ and then the server and bandwith costs $$ so I was just looking to see what faurmulas different companies use to comeup with a pricing structure

thanks

[Kemik]

Most games you dont need the games themselves, just download the dedicated server files.