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VS System 2PCG info released
Topic Started: May 27 2015, 12:20 AM (26,015 Views)
bortrea
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Mordis
Jun 10 2015, 06:05 PM
I can't understand the logic that got us from Gen Con of last year to now.
Personally, I think there was a secret cabal of top shadow operatives in the Upper Deck infrastructure of executives that have a burning hatred for all things fun in gaming and only drink blood and desire our last dollars to become happy at night. After their bitter defeat from the catastrophic failure of their diabolical trap the flagship product VS system (Classic version), which secretly had been designed to suck all players into a gaming vortex of doom and evil profiteering, they were enraged beyond all understanding and were determined to hold all the mean little players of that game responsible. Thus, they wanted to hatch an evil plan within more plans to destroy the game forever so that the players would be crushed in spirit and as a bonus they would exploit them for every dime they owned. It was fiendishly executed carried out in 2014 at Gen Con and you guys all fell for it. There, the Upper Deck Illuminati has been exposed. News at 11.

Disclaimer: This product is meant for educational purposes only. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental. Void where prohibited. Some assembly required. List each check separately by bank number. Batteries not included. Contents may settle during shipment. Use only as directed. No other warranty expressed or implied. Do not use while operating a motor vehicle or heavy equipment.
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xMr. Lemon Headx
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Boom!
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bortrea
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xMr. Lemon Headx
Jun 11 2015, 12:14 AM
Boom!
Every good movie should have a great explosion. Preferably at end.
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Bubba_Ho-Tep
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I believe you mean Ka-Boom!
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xMr. Lemon Headx
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bortrea
Jun 11 2015, 02:49 AM
xMr. Lemon Headx
Jun 11 2015, 12:14 AM
Boom!
Every good movie should have a great explosion. Preferably at end.

[grin] Excellent post, though. It was pretty entertaining.
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-TK-
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bortrea
Jun 10 2015, 10:30 PM
Mordis
Jun 10 2015, 06:05 PM
I can't understand the logic that got us from Gen Con of last year to now.
Personally, I think there was a secret cabal of top shadow operatives in the Upper Deck infrastructure of executives that have a burning hatred for all things fun in gaming and only drink blood and desire our last dollars to become happy at night. After their bitter defeat from the catastrophic failure of their diabolical trap the flagship product VS system (Classic version), which secretly had been designed to suck all players into a gaming vortex of doom and evil profiteering, they were enraged beyond all understanding and were determined to hold all the mean little players of that game responsible. Thus, they wanted to hatch an evil plan within more plans to destroy the game forever so that the players would be crushed in spirit and as a bonus they would exploit them for every dime they owned. It was fiendishly executed carried out in 2014 at Gen Con and you guys all fell for it. There, the Upper Deck Illuminati has been exposed. News at 11.

Disclaimer: This product is meant for educational purposes only. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental. Void where prohibited. Some assembly required. List each check separately by bank number. Batteries not included. Contents may settle during shipment. Use only as directed. No other warranty expressed or implied. Do not use while operating a motor vehicle or heavy equipment.
Nothing alike.

They just really like stupid people that buy everything they sell even after they treat them like shit.

It's fine if you want to be liked by them. Some of us beg to differ.
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bortrea
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Elwood P. Dowd: Years ago my mother used to say to me, she'd say, "In this world, Elwood, you must be" - she always called me Elwood - "In this world, Elwood, you must be oh so smart or oh so pleasant." Well, for years I was smart. I recommend pleasant. You may quote me.
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kariggi
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Topically applied fluoride doesn't prevent tooth decay! It does render teeth detectable by spy satellite!

Tell me what you know.

The plastic tips at the ends of shoelaces are called aglets. Their true purpose is sinister!
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PandaMan
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Mordis
Jun 10 2015, 06:05 PM
I can't understand the logic that got us from Gen Con of last year to now.
And with UDE's history we may never know.
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OnyxWeapon
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BatHulk
Jun 10 2015, 04:29 PM
I'm still not understanding how buying last year's set funded this year's game. The money for last year's set went to the production costs for that set (and I'm almost certain they didn't profit on it).
yes... Upper Deck, the card printing juggernaut cannot find a way to recup costs printing content that is already prepped to print.
literally the only thing they had to do was open photoshop and add living card game on the back. and you somehow doubt they could achieve this?

keep in mind packaging costs were literally as simple as they could possibly have been. the box was a standard 800 count card box (typically around 30 cents each in bulk) the cards were in a cheap sealed plastic wrap, so no need for packaging foil or other plastics only the box Sleeve was a new feature.

Even the t-shirt was a standard bulk print cheap custom.

For comparison's sake, the LCG card pack was 235 cards, a custom box sleeve an 800 count card box and a t-shirt.

here are MY COSTS if i did a similar venture. (assuming i did 1000 of these) compared to my profits.

THE CARDS:
Given the option of uploading my own print pages I'd treat each full cardlist as a single "set". (already confirmed with this site that i can)
Using a custom card printer's price guide HERE I would order 1000 at $2.30 per box (since i have less than 270 cards in each box I may even recieve a further discount here with some direct contact.)

MY CARD COSTS - $2.30 for each 270 cards printed
MY COSTS PER BOX SO FAR - $2.30

THE T-SHIRTS:
Literally using the first bulk t-shirt price list i could find... And with no special treatment, i was able to confirm a simple black shirt with a basic white font front-only design at this price.

MY T-SHIRT COSTS - $4.89 per shirt
MY COSTS PER BOX SO FAR - $7.19


THE CARDBOXES:
Ordering in bulk yet again from one of the first hits recieved
it is another safe assumption personal follow-up could lower this price as well.
(This is also ignoring the fact that my custom print company includes these boxes for free.)

MY BOX COSTS - $0.44 per box
MY COSTS PER BOX SO FAR - $7.59


THE CUSTOM BOX SLEEVE:
Using a wholesaler that can print on poster stock and using an 11 by 17 inch layout I could print full color spreads according to submitted specs.

MY CUSTOM SLEEVE COSTS - $1.00 each
MY COSTS PER BOX SO FAR - $8.59


Since upper deck does all of this in house, and transported their own product, I did not apply shipping fees but after calling fed-ex established moving 1000 of these items would run me about $1.85 per box. (again no bargaining for better pricing or using a corporate discount, etc)

MY FINAL COSTS PER BOX - $10.44
MY TOTAL PROFITS PER BOX - $39.56 (Or $39,560 per 1000 sold)


If i apply MY cost-profit ratios to UDE's supposed 10,000 units sold at gencon in 2014, thats $395,600 worth of startup capital. To reiterate, this is after completely recouping my costs for the living card game release. And over the past year the design is obviously still being balanced and it has not gone to print (demo games were on blank design cards). If it were me... i sure wouldn't need to spend over a quarter-million dollars to completely FUND my attempt at a project like this, much less kickstart it.

BatHulk
Jun 10 2015, 04:29 PM

The cost for the design, development, production and marketing of VS 2PCG is way more than whatever last year's money bought... even if they made 100% profit.


You sound like you just assume this big budget project is much bigger than it is. Their go-to forums are my facebook groups and other neutral formum properties. The design team is the small legendary group around Danny Mandel. The marketing so far has been literally just updating their store order form to vendors interested in pre-ordering and a few UD blog posts. All they have to do is keep paying Danny and his legendary playtest group their salaries (which isn't likely to change based on this venture) and lake the product to print.

TL/DR the original release of the game in 2014, thanks to us, is most likely, barely an expense to Upper Deck. making it almost a zero-risk venture. Having brilliantly leveraged the game's name instead of attempting any serious marketing strategy at all on this new project.





Edited by OnyxWeapon, Jun 11 2015, 03:08 PM.
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BatHulk
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@OnyxWeapon:

So you are saying that UDE sold at least 1000 of those sets at GenCon 2014 last year? I dunno, I doubt UDE even made 1000 sets.

And costs are more than just the cost for the product. There are salaries to pay, convention fees, etc etc etc.

A one-man show running out of your house is obviously going to have lower costs, a company with employees, insurance, building/rent costs is going to have much higher ones.

I stand by my assertion, what was paid for last year sets were for last year sets, I don't think any profit (if there was any) was enough to even come close to funding the costs for this year's sets.

FYI: I was involved with a company that made retail boxed preconstructed sets for a card game. Our design costs (both art and game development) were free and so our base cost per deck was about 20-25% of retail price, so that jives with your numbers (and is usually what game producers should aim for because you sell it to distributors for 40% of retail so they can mark it up to 50% retail for their accounts).

But, to realize the kind of profits you are detailing, you would have to sell 100% of the product. Is there some YouTube link (since that seems to be the defacto proof here) where they said how many sets they produced and how many were sold?

#ScreenShotOrItIsntTrue!

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BatHulk
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BTW: I don't necessarily agree with what UDE did last year at GenCon.

From the images I've seen online, the cards are all reprints (and not even using the newer template, but the older sidebar one).

I don't know why they felt that had to sell these $50 reprint sets to "gauge interest" in the game. They could have done that without those sets and also introduced rule changes to determine how the players would react.

They already knew through Legendary what kind of sales/interest would be in another Marvel card game. I really think they just didn't plan it out carefully.

The only positive I can see from this (and again, my opinion because I know how much everyone else loves Vs 1.0) is that they realized they couldn't re-release Vs 1.0 and be accessible and made the hard decision of changing direction. They could have appeased the few to spite the many (which I know most of you would prefer) but in the end, made the right choice (again, to me).

Does anyone know if the DC DBG sells more than the Marvel one? I'm interested in the answer because it seems the DC one is an "easier" game thus making it more accessible but then the IP will probably skew the numbers.
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-TK-
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So, since UDE can't even make money from a 300 card box sold at 50 dollars, we should expect this new game to fail in how many months?

Honestly, I wasn't in this mindset when this started, but reading answer from people who still defend UDE, thinking about this game failing like everything else UDE did, makes me giggle.
Edited by -TK-, Jun 11 2015, 05:33 PM.
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kariggi
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Marvel Ultimate Battles 2PCG*

Makes me a sad panda

*Because this is how compatible it is with my old cards, I could have tolerated almost anything for more VS cards, but that is not what they have decided to offer me. You could have changed every rule on me if only you gave me cards I could convince my friends to buy, which would have meant compatibility. Instead I have a new game with an old name.

Back to work on the New Gods set for me.
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xMr. Lemon Headx
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The amount of negativity in this room....

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