Quoted from RobT:Baiter said:they are fixated on milking the "Limited" thing at the expense of sales and customers.
Again.....why would they intentionally do this? They exist to make profit. What advantage is there to them to be fixated on the "Limited" thing at the expense of sales and customers?
You are making generalizations without knowing all the facts. Stern's business model may not be the one that you or I prefer, but it appears to be a conservative one that it working well for them. How many people had predicted their demise several years ago?
Yea, Stern has been actively rebuilding their business the past couple of years, but I'd attribute their recent success to hiring back talent and choosing the right licenses. It's a fairly static customer base, so sales tactics are not nearly as important as it is to other industries.
Once they achieved strong sales again, they started to heed the calls to reverse their trend of cheapening the games, it's great progress. Now that all the Stern attitude has turned from "when are they going to fold" to customers putting a deposit down on a rumor of the next game, they are in a position unfamiliar to them for years.
But frankly Stern has been stumbling with the LE thing. Avatar LE wasn't even announced until the Pros shipped, which really ticked off some buyers of the Pro. Tron LE was such a huge success that after-market prices have jumped thousands of dollars... none of which Stern gets, leaving hundreds of customers that would pay Stern's Tron LE price today, but not the street price, but Stern has no way to fix it. Transformers LE they split into 3 versions, over-promised and under-delivered on a few functional items, again ticking off customers who pre-ordered the LE because they didn't get to see the final product before they had to pay. Finally they got everything right with ACDC.. 3 LE's 1 Premium, 1 Pro. Everyone who wants the full game gets it.
Then the VERY NEXT game they are rumored to toss out their only win/win premium-priced game model strategy in years, and the only complaint left with Stern is consistently people worried about getting burned on the Pro/LE strategy again. "Is the pro missing features the designer wanted, and is only in the LE" "Do I risk a pre-order without being able to see it first at risk of under-delivering". This what Stern's customers need to be worried about?