crowd-funded "War for Cybertron" Unicron (2019 HasLab)

The modern comics universe has had such a different take on G1, one that's significantly represented by the Generations toys, so they share a forum. A modern take on a Real Cybertronian Hero. Currently starring Generations toys, IDW "The Transformers" comics, MTMTE, TF vs GI Joe, and Windblade. Oh wait, and now Skybound, wheee!
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Sparky Prime
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Re: Friday November 4

Post by Sparky Prime »

Dominic wrote:.....Demand is a practical measure. For the purpose of any crowd-finding project, "demand" is a measure of who is actually going to buy the item being funded. People who think it is cool do not matter if they do not have, or are not going to cough up, the damned money. Crowdfunding offers a quick way to assess demand, and meet that demand if there is enough to justify the project.

The willingness to fund the item is a measurement of who is willing to spend money on it.
Who said anything about "people who think it is cool"? The two examples I've pointed out had to do with the demand for the final product being significantly different from the interest (meaning your so-called "demand", those that supported it) in the crowdfunding efforts. which you seem to have completely ignored here. Again, pointing to Mighty No 9 as an example, it was insanely successful as a kickstarter, making well over their goal to produce the game. But the final product was a flop. Do you really think all 67,226 of those people who backed the kickstarter would have bought the game had they known the final product would turn out that way? In fact, some backers even asked to have their names removed from the ending credits they were so unhappy with it. What had sold them on the kickstarter was Keiji Inafune's (and some other former Mega Man creators) reputation alone. The support for the Mighty No 9 kickstarter in absolutely no way reflected the demand for the actual final product.

So, once again, the demand for the final final product may not necessarily reflect the interest/backers it had during the crowdfunding if the quality of the final product turns out to be more/less than what was expected. Crowdfunding can help gauge demand at best only if the interest remains consistent to the final product. What you're saying is essentially 'counting one's chickens before they hatch' by claiming the support in the kickstarter is the same as the demand for the final product.
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Re: crowd-funded "War for Cybertron" Unicron (2019 HasLab)

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And as of this moment, Unicron has officially reached the goal. The website currently stands at 8,005 backers.
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Re: crowd-funded "War for Cybertron" Unicron (2019 HasLab)

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My buddy got charged $626 with tax. I was surprised to see sales tax wasn't included on the $575 pricetag. Shocking!
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Re: crowd-funded "War for Cybertron" Unicron (2019 HasLab)

Post by Dominic »

Who said anything about "people who think it is cool"? The two examples I've pointed out had to do with the demand for the final product being significantly different from the interest (meaning your so-called "demand", those that supported it) in the crowdfunding efforts. which you seem to have completely ignored here.
The people who funded the damn project are the sources of the "demand" that HasLab (or any place that runs a crowd-funding campaign) is looking for.
Again, pointing to Mighty No 9 as an example, it was insanely successful as a kickstarter, making well over their goal to produce the game. But the final product was a flop.
This example is wholly irrelevant.

Upwards of 67,000 people wanted to buy a game designed by Keiji Inafune. They assumed (however wrongly) that the game would be better than it reportedly was. (I have never played "Mighty No 9", and cannot speak to its quality.) The "demand" that the crowd-funding effort testing for is represented by 67,000+ buyers. T

The support for the Mighty No 9 kickstarter in absolutely no way reflected the demand for the actual final product.
In the case of "Mighty No 9", backers had a case of buyer's remorse (justified or otherwise) after they got the product.

Demand is a willingness to cough up money for something. Crowd-funding is simply a way to precisely measure that demand before a vendor commits to a full production run.


And, the last time I am posting this link. (This is mostly to ensure that the link is on every page of this thread.)
https://hasbropulse.com/collections/has ... on-unicron



I am glad that the people who bought in are getting their Unicron. (And, I hope they enjoy it as much as I have enjoyed tracking this and crunching numbers.) But, I am not sure that this is a proper "win".


On the original deadline (August 31), the buy-in was less than 6K. The margin of failure was ~30%.

After the deadline was extended for 5+ weeks, Hasbro cleared the goal.

The final recorded tally is "8,000+". We can probably assume that it is not much more than the 8,005 recorded on Saturday night.

Pushing the deadline back by over a month resulted in HasLab's Unicron being funded by a small margin. By all rights, it should have failed. is the lesson that HasLab needs to allow more time for higher-priced items? Or, is the lesson that a higher priced item (or maybe a higher priced Transformer) cannot be viable with standard rules?
\

Final result:
Unicron will be funded, after the deadline was extended 5+ weeks.
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Re: crowd-funded "War for Cybertron" Unicron (2019 HasLab)

Post by Shockwave »

I was watching it on Saturday. At last viewing, which was around 11pm Pacific time it was at 8334 Or somewhere close to it. So there were at least 300+ over the 8000.
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Re: crowd-funded "War for Cybertron" Unicron (2019 HasLab)

Post by Sparky Prime »

Dominic wrote:The people who funded the damn project are the sources of the "demand" that HasLab (or any place that runs a crowd-funding campaign) is looking for.
No they aren't. In general, crowdfunding is simply to fund the development/production of a product. They may also be part of the demand for the final product, but that doesn't make them the source of the demand.
This example is wholly irrelevant.

Upwards of 67,000 people wanted to buy a game designed by Keiji Inafune. They assumed (however wrongly) that the game would be better than it reportedly was. (I have never played "Mighty No 9", and cannot speak to its quality.) The "demand" that the crowd-funding effort testing for is represented by 67,000+ buyers. T
How is the example "wholly irrelevant"? You have not said one thing that actually disputes anything I've said here, or pointed out anything to actually back up your own claims beyond your own assertion. Mighty No 9 is a perfect example of what I'm talking about. The backers in that crowdfunding project didn't reflect the actual demand for the final product when it was released and thus is wholly relevant to this discussion. This is a fact you cannot just dismiss. It was much more successful as a kickstarter than it was commercially.

Also, "testing" demand is not the same thing as demand itself, as once again this example goes to show, despite the success of the kickstarter, the product failed to live up to those expectations.
In the case of "Mighty No 9", backers had a case of buyer's remorse (justified or otherwise) after they got the product.

Demand is a willingness to cough up money for something. Crowd-funding is simply a way to precisely measure that demand before a vendor commits to a full production run.
Buyers remorse? These weren't people that simply pre-ordered a game and weren't happy with it when it got released Dom. And once again, you are completely ignoring the sales the game got once it was released. That's the actual "demand". A crowdfunding project isn't simply the willingness to give money for a good/service, as you keep pointing out the definition of "demand" to be. You're ignoring the purpose of most crowdfunding projects is to have the consumers funding the production of the good, usually for the general market. It's not the same form of "demand" you're talking about, nor is it a way to "precisely measure that demand" at all, especially when that demand can (and does) change with the release of the final product to the general market.
The final recorded tally is "8,000+". We can probably assume that it is not much more than the 8,005 recorded on Saturday night.
It had jumped up a couple hundred more when I'd checked it again later Saturday night. It was over 8300 last I saw it.
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Re: crowd-funded "War for Cybertron" Unicron (2019 HasLab)

Post by Shockwave »

Demand is people wanting a thing. If people don't want a thing, then the company making the thing is going to lose money and have tons of that thing hanging around with no one to buy it because there is no demand. Crowdfunding works for companies to gauge this before they commit to producing the thing so they don't wind up making a thing nobody wants or is willing to pay for. We can say on forums all we want that we want a Unicron figure. But if people aren't willing to pay for it once it gets made, then there's no point in Hasbro making it. A better example of this is Castle Grayskull. That was started as a crowdfunder on Mattycollector.com. It was about the same size and price as Unicron. It was a good way for Mattel to determine if He-Man fans actually wanted a Castle Grayskull that was that detailed, big and expensive. Turns out they did and they went into production. In this case, Hasbro was testing to see if Transformers fans actually want and are willing to pay for Unicron, rather than just cranking out another titan that winds up being a shelf warmer. Mighty Number 9 was not that different from preordering a game because, at least back in the console days proper, you seldom got to play a game before it was released, but you could still pay for it in advance. The difference here is that the preorder money actually went into the cost of production where as before it didn't. And the quality of the product after the fact has nothing to do with any of this.
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Re: crowd-funded "War for Cybertron" Unicron (2019 HasLab)

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Demand is not simply people wanting a thing though. Demand, by it's economics definition, is "consumer's desire to purchase goods and services and willingness to pay a price for a specific good or service." For a crowdfunding project however, you're not necessarily paying for a good/service outright, you're paying for it to be produced if it meets a certain goal. And depending on the specific crowdfunding project, consumers who supported it may get the final product if it meets said goal. So let's cover a few other economic terms here. Crowdfunding can be used to help in gauging demand or "demand forecasting", which will get you an "expected demand" (at best) - meaning the "quantity expected to be consumed in a given time frame at the forecast rates". This will not give you the actual demand however. This really shouldn't be this difficult to understand. Just because a kickstarter might give you certain expectations, it does not necessarily mean those expectations will match the actual demand. Sometimes a product may sell better than a kickstarter would indicate, sometimes it may sell worst, or otherwise it could even fall somewhat in line with those expectations. I fully realize Mighty No 9 is not the same situation as Unicron, given HasLab has already developed the figure (although I'm not so sure I'd say quality is not a factor here, as Unicron has some criticisms, like the shell pieces on his back, and no one has actually had a chance to mess around with the figure to attest to its quality). I only pointed out Mighty No 9 as an example to illustrate to Dom that "demand" is not the same thing as the "expected demand" which he erroneously claims is all simply "demand", while he ignores the game itself didn't sell as well as the kickstarter numbers would indicate it should have. I also had pointed Hollow Knight to illustrate the opposite effect, that kickstarter was fairly small with only 2,158 backers, but it sold much better than those kickstarter numbers would indicate, prompting it to get released on every major console. Which was a dream come true for those developers. So, once again, just because the crowdfunding might give you certain expectations, that doesn't mean it'll necessarily match the actual demand for the product, and thus crowdfunding isn't necessarily always a good measure for demand. It isn't an exact science.
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Re: crowd-funded "War for Cybertron" Unicron (2019 HasLab)

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I don't think video games are the best example as there could be issues with availability and visibility. People are more likely to buy a game if they can download it through their chosen console. And that's if it's even on said console. Toys on the other hand is more straightforward. There's only so many people that even want a Unicron. And out of that there are only so many that are going to be willing to pay a certain amount for it. And those people are already likely going to know about the crowdfunding and how to support it. The only thing I can think of that change the demand for Unicron at this point would be if Hasbro lowers the price point, which I doubt they'd be willing to do. Plus, this also gives them the opportunity to only make the exact (or close to it) amount of Unicrons that people want and not have any left over. That's why Castle Grayskull is a better example than Mighty Number 9. The demand is way different. The demand for a video game is going to be: People who like video games, people who play video games on consoles, people who play video games on pc, people who like Mega Man games... and not all of those people are going to know about or have access to the kickstarter. So yeah, that crowdfunding wasn't necessarily the best judge of demand. But toys are different. The only ones who want either Unicron or Grayskull are going to be Transformers and He-Man fans respectively and they are probably already on all the forums and websites advertising/supporting it. Super 7 is going to do a similar thing with Snake Mountain. I also noticed that they are no longer taking orders for Unicron, so I wonder if they'll have it for regular sale on pulse and what the regular price will be.
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Re: crowd-funded "War for Cybertron" Unicron (2019 HasLab)

Post by Sparky Prime »

Mighty No 9 certainly didn't have issues with visibility or availability. It was a highly anticipated game (that had 67000+ backers in the kickstarter!) and was released for everything. Hollow Knight on the other hand began as a very, very small project, and was originally only released for Steam. However, upon release, it quickly gained visibility, becoming popular enough for it to eventually get released on every major console. And even then, I only found out about it because of a random Let's Play I came across of it on youtube. Again, these are two perfect examples of what I'm talking about here, illustrating how a crowdfunding project doesn't necessarily indicate how well something will sell despite whatever issues they may, or may not have in terms of visibility or availability. I'd also have to say, I don't think toys are any more straightforward than a video game. They can just as easily have issues with visibility and most definitely availability. For Unicron, it's certainly possible it could have flown under the radar for some fans who don't really visit any of the major TF sites. You've pointed out the He-Man crowdfunding sets a few times. But until you'd pointed it out, I had no idea they'd had any crowdfunding products because I don't really visit any He-Man sites. Not to mention, there are probably a few countries where they weren't able to order/ship Unicron to. Honestly, I think you're completely wrong that the demand for a video game would be any different than it is for a toy. I mean really, it seems to me everything you've talking about here can apply to either.

And to my understanding, there are still some sites taking orders for Unicron.
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