In July 1984 Sinclair User told its readers about “the latest upset in the industry”. In March a company called Pulsonic had launched Spectrum and Commodore games at “an absurdly low £2.95”. Then Mastertronic went “one better”, “breaking the £2 barrier” with a range of games “at an unprecedented £1.99 each”, and Atlantis Software matched it at four new games a month. In the same issue, HMV’s price list had full-price Spectrum games at £5.50 to £7.95, and The Hobbit at £14.95.
The newcomers had not come from software. Pulsonic belonged to Warwick Leisure, which made the budget record albums sold in Woolworth; two of Mastertronic’s directors owned a video wholesaler; Atlantis was run by a distributor of horror films on video. All of them, Sinclair User said, had decided that games “have been over-priced and consequently have not achieved volume sales”. They called their products “pocket-money software”, and sold them where pocket money was spent: “newsagents, garage forecourts, supermarkets and off-licenses.”
Fast facts
- Began: March 1984 (Pulsonic, £2.95), with Mastertronic’s £1.99 range soon after.
- Price points: £1.99 for most of the 1980s; £2.99 for many labels from 1986 onwards.
- Where sold: Newsagents, garages, supermarkets and motorway service stations as well as computer shops.
- Main machines: Spectrum, Commodore 64 and Amstrad CPC cassettes; Amiga re-releases from 1990.
- Major labels: Mastertronic, Firebird Silver, Code Masters; later Kixx, Encore and The Hit Squad for re-releases.
“They hate us”
The established industry did not welcome it. Derek Meakin, head of the National Micro Centres, warned in April 1984 that “a price-cutting war could well bankrupt the more vulnerable ones”, that freelance authors would not spend months on a program for “meagre royalties”, and that “standards will slide rapidly”. Imagine had announced a price cut that March and then withdrawn it “to safeguard the growth of the software industry”. Asked how the older publishers felt about Mastertronic, its chairman Frank Herman said: “They hate us.”
Sinclair User had some sympathy with both sides. Most of the first cut-price games were, “to be blunt, fairly dire”: “tired variations on well-worn themes”, with titles such as Spectipede, Gnasher and Monster Munch. But it thought the losers would be publishers who had been selling “sub-standard software at exorbitant prices”. “Standards will not drop because standards were never that high to begin with, only the prices were.”
Buyers took to it. Within three weeks of launch, Mastertronic claimed sales of more than 150,000 games, “more than some software houses sell in a year”. In July 1985 it claimed audited sales of two million games in its first twelve months.
Why budget needed volume
In August 1985 Sinclair User printed a costing for a typical full-price game at £6.95. The magazine called its figures “speculative” and said they applied to “a small company with few overheads”.
| Line | Amount |
|---|---|
| Retail price | £6.95 |
| Sold to the distributor for | £3.82 |
| Left to the software house | £3.13 |
| Blank cassette, duplicating and inlay | 50p |
| Artwork and advertising | £1.00 |
| Bulk delivery to distributors | about 5p |
| Royalty to the author | 40p |
| Administration, telephone and overheads | 30p |
| Profit to the software house | 88p |
The magazine printed the cassette line as “fifty per cent”; its total of 88p only works if it meant 50p. Distributors, it explained, took an average 55% discount, and authors’ royalties were usually worked out on what was left, not on the shop price.
A £1.99 game could not carry £1.00 of artwork and advertising. It had to sell in far larger numbers, and the successful ones did. The same article reported that Booty had sold more than 100,000 copies for Firebird, and that Mastertronic’s best seller, Chiller, had sold more than 100,000 on the Commodore 64 and 30,000 on the Spectrum.
How games got published
Budget publishers needed a steady flow of new games, and most arrived in the post. Mastertronic told Sinclair User it looked at around 200 submissions a month; in May 1985 it had seen 220 and picked two, “one which was almost marketable and one requiring more development”. It published four to six games a month. John Maxwell of Mastertronic explained the pace:
We can only spend ten minutes on each and many come in without instructions or any form of documentation and so cannot be evaluated properly.
The magazine warned that anyone sending an adventure should include a map, because without one it “would be impossible to evaluate within the 10 minutes available”.
For a new author, budget was the easier way in. Mike Cohen of Lothlorien said that the full-price market had become “more critical”, while “budget software surged forward and youngsters got their games accepted because of the budget ranges”. Sinclair User agreed that “it is easier to get your first attempts accepted by a budget software house”, and named Mastertronic and Firebird’s Silver range. James Leavey of Firebird called budget “an opportunity for new software writers to enter the market”.
Not everyone was persuaded. Andrew Hewson of Hewson Consultants “feels strongly against pocket money software”, the article said: “We’re not interested in the budget range because of the aura associated with it.” A good game, he thought, deserved a reasonable price. Two years later Hewson launched a budget label of its own, Rack-It, at £2.99.
The labels
Firebird, owned by British Telecom, launched its Silver range in November 1984 with twenty games at £2.50; by mid-1986 Silver games cost £1.99, and by 1988 the label was called Silverbird. Mastertronic added labels: Mastertronic Added Dimension (MAD) at £2.99 from late 1985, Entertainment USA for American games and Bulldog at £1.99. In 1986 the Darling brothers, whose company had supplied more than half of Mastertronic’s first 30 games, left to found Code Masters, also at £1.99. CRASH reported late in 1987 that Code Masters claimed to have doubled its share of the budget market, from 6.3% to 12.8%, between August and October that year.
Quality varied widely. CRASH‘s Spectrum scores for Mastertronic’s £1.99 games ran from 94% for Knight Tyme to 21% for 1985. Firebird’s Booty scored 93%; its Silver Pneumatic Hammers 18%. On the Commodore 64, ZZAP!64 gave Mastertronic’s Kikstart II 86%, and Code Masters’ BMX Simulator started a long series of Simulator games, while the Oliver twins’ Dizzy became its best-known character.
The price also shaped how reviewers judged a game. ZZAP!64 reviewed the Commodore 64 version of Pneumatic Hammers at £1.99 in March 1987, giving it 58% overall but 69% for value. One reviewer thought Firebird had been sensible to release it at a budget price. A game could earn a better mark for value than for its overall appeal; the low price was part of the judgement.
Selling full-price games again
Budget prices also gave old full-price games a second life. The idea was there from the start: in 1984 a video distributor’s label, Advanced Computer Entertainment (no relation to the later magazine ACE), cut ten Commodore games from £6.90 to £2.99, the only one of Sinclair User’s four cut-price publishers “to have lowered the price of existing software”. Firebird said in 1985 that it might take on full-price games that had “exhausted the market at that level”.
From the end of 1987 the big publishers did it with labels of their own:
| Label | Owner | Launched | Price | Early titles |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ricochet | Mastertronic | 1987 | £1.99 | Ultimate’s Knight Lore and Alien 8 |
| Encore | Elite | 1988 | £1.99 | Frank Bruno’s Boxing, Airwolf, Bombjack |
| Kixx | U.S. Gold | 1988 | £2.99 | Gauntlet, Metrocross |
| The Hit Squad | Ocean | 1989 | £2.99 | Green Beret, Rambo |
Elite promised in 1988 that its full-price games would not appear on Encore until three years after their first release. Kixx, formed by former Mastertronic staff, planned 24 titles in its first year from the U.S. Gold and Gremlin back catalogues, about a third of them new games. ZZAP!64’s reviewer thought Ocean’s Rambo was “the sort of game which rerelease labels were made for”. In 1990 Ocean launched a 16-bit Hit Squad for the Amiga, at £7.99, with Wizball, Super Hang-On, R-Type and Batman: The Caped Crusader.
By then £2.99 was a common budget price. ACE’s guide to football games in February 1990 listed the original Football Manager at £2.99 on cassette, next to Tracksuit Manager at £9.99.
Sources
- Sinclair User issue 27, June 1984: “Games firm masters prices” (Mastertronic at £1.99; Frank Herman, “They hate us”).
- Sinclair User issue 28, July 1984, pp. 4–5: the “latest upset in the industry” (Pulsonic, Mastertronic, Atlantis, Advanced Computer Entertainment; their backgrounds in records and video; “pocket-money software”; the outlets; 150,000 sales in three weeks; Derek Meakin; Imagine’s withdrawn price cut; the verdict on the first cut-price games). The same issue’s HMV price list gives full-price Spectrum games at £5.50 to £7.95.
- Commodore Computing International vol. 3 no. 6, December 1984: the Darling brothers’ games for Mastertronic; Frank Herman as chairman.
- Computer & Video Games issue 45, July 1985: budget round-up (Mastertronic’s two million games).
- Clare Edgeley, “Programs for Profit”, Sinclair User issue 41, August 1985, pp. 51–54: the costing of a £6.95 game; the distributors’ 55% discount; Booty and Chiller sales; Mastertronic’s submissions and John Maxwell; Mike Cohen of Lothlorien; James Leavey of Firebird; Andrew Hewson on the budget range.
- CRASH issue 10, November 1984: Firebird Silver range advertisement (twenty games at £2.50).
- CRASH issue 16, May 1985, “The Boys from Buzby”: Firebird on taking on full-price games.
- Computer Gamer issue 8, November 1985: Mastertronic launches Mastertronic Added Dimension. CRASH issue 24, Christmas Special 1985: Spellbound, “part of the new Mad Games range”, at £2.99.
- CRASH issue 29, June 1986: Firebird at £1.99. Issue 55, August 1988: Silverbird at £1.99.
- ZZAP!64 issue 17, September 1986: Entertainment USA at £1.99. Issue 20, December 1986: Mastertronic Added Dimension at £2.99; BMX Simulator (Code Masters, £1.99).
- ZZAP!64 issue 23, March 1987, p. 99: Pneumatic Hammers on the Commodore 64 (£1.99 cassette; 58% overall, 69% value); GP’s comment on Firebird choosing a budget price.
- Sinclair User issue 56, November 1986: the launch of Code Masters at £1.99.
- CRASH issue 45, October 1987, and issue 47, December 1987: Hewson’s Rack-It label at £2.99.
- CRASH issue 48, January 1988: index of reviews (the Mastertronic and Firebird scores above); “Is Code Masters getting it right?” (market share).
- ZZAP!64 issue 38, June 1988: index of reviews (Kikstart II, 86%).
- Your Sinclair issue 25, January 1988: Ricochet re-releases of Knight Lore and Alien 8 at £1.99.
- Amstrad Action issue 34, July 1988, news, “Elite’s encore”: the Encore label, £1.99, the three-year rule and the first titles.
- Amstrad Action issue 37, October 1988, and ACE issue 14, November 1988: Kixx (Gauntlet and Metrocross; ex-Mastertronic founders; 24 titles; £2.99).
- ZZAP!64 issue 53, September 1989: Rambo on The Hit Squad.
- ACE issue 26, November 1989: Hit Squad re-releases at £2.99, including Green Beret. Issue 27, December 1989: sales table listing “Hit Squad (Ocean)”.
- ACE issue 29, February 1990: history of the budget labels (Mastertronic’s outlets, including motorway service stations); Bulldog at £1.99; football games guide (budget and full prices).
- ZZAP!64 issue 67, November 1990: Ocean’s 16-bit Hit Squad at £7.99.