How Sad: Decipher is now a Pyramid Scheme

[MoonHunter]

Given the number of stores having Events, Pokemon is still going strong.

I have a retailer friend. His store sells comic books, sci-fi fantasy books (limited), RPGS, CCGs, and a few board games.  He has determined that most of his customers have  XX amount of money they are going to spend on "hobby stuff" and "fun" every week.  Some weeks comics are flat, but the new gaming stuff moves the sales. Some weeks it is the other way around. When a super hero movie comes out, nobody comes in or if they do, they spend about 30 dollars less (price of tickets and such).  The XX seems to be a regular input for the store, per regular customer.

(He won't tell me what The XX factor in dollars is, so don't ask)

His, he calls them Junior Customers, follow the same basic patern with a smaller cash flow.  He also says his Junior Customers outnumber his regular customers two and a half to one.  

His reason for why CCGs sell better than other gaming material is the relatively small "entry cost".  The cost of a deck and a booster or two is much less than anything of note for an RPG or board game.  This puts it more "in reach" for the kid gamers (whom most of them are targetted for anyways).

He is thinking about branching out into hand held electronic games, just to catch all his Junior Customers money.

And an aside, which I don't want to hijack the thread for, but upon thinking about this.... should the RPG community think about putting together cheaper entry point games with moderate (but lower than standard) production values?

[jibbajibba]

Interesting. I looked at a business model for a CCG where players could sign up as subscribers and submit new card ideas which would be peer reviewed and the best ones would be added to the next release.
I think it works once you have established a game that people want to play, so it would work for Vampire say and certainly for Magic.
The idea came to me though some homebrew card games we were playing and my game group's love of creating new cards. Most gamers are aspiring designers and this is more true of CCGs that of anything else.
$4:99 a month subscription gets you membership and in on beta testing etc as well as other benefits and you can submit cards. Because the submission process is peered reviewed only the best cards come to you to actually have to look at. Players get a design note and you get new cards designed by people who pay for the privilege.
Of course CCGs died so  what ya gonna do :-)