Question about IPS

[Razzlion]

So i aquired a company that went under. Their IP they made just before they collapsed was selling really well, until the month i took it over. It just died straight up. Went from selling over 2 million copies to nothing over a tick.
Why??

[nosedigger]

What is your Market Recognition for that IP's category ? If you took over an Antivirus IP, but you do not have any AV of your own, then your Market Recognition for AV is 0, and it would be hard for you to sell acquired products.
Market Recognition is extremely important for sales, each product category has it's own MR, and it is grown by releasing quality products (and sequels). The more MR you have for certain product category, it will boost both sales and how fast is it selling.
That's the simplest explanation

[JD_Mortal]

Unfortunately, "popularity" does not transfer with IPs... (A big anti-reality "kick in the teeth".)

One would assume that it is the actual software that is "popular" and "desired", but this game really doesn't have "desire" or people. Software isn't actually "liked", and is just a number scratched onto your bed's headboard. You don't get the other guys headboard, just the bed, with dirty sheets.

However, you WILL gain some of the companies followers. (But that may just be a coincidence, due to lack of the customers being able to go anywhere-else.)

That was my only reason for investing in all these small companies that had TONS of users. I hoped that the users would follow the product. (Well, they do, but only the ones calling "support", to report bugs.)

Jump right onto the program and start a marketing campaign. Port it to any OSes that you own, or consoles or phones, or whatever. Drop the price and update the tech. (If possible, see if you can buy the IP rights, so you can develop it without the lead. Since that lead kind-of disappears from the world, once the company goes under. Actually, it would be nice if any existing IP owner was presented to you, with the IPs, to consider hiring or buying the IP rights at the moment of acquiring the IPs.)

I have a BAD habit of acquiring failing companies, and this game provides TONS of failing companies to acquire.

It doesn't take long to flip the income in your favor, for many things. Just remember, they went under for a reason. Chances are, that the AI printed 4,000,000 copies and only sold 500,000 copies, leaving you with tons of unsold copies. That would be in addition to many sequels that were made, when there was no justifiable reason to make them! (I often find that some older version is more popular than any of the newer versions. They were all super-marketed and had little ROI.)

It can become a heavy burden to try and manage all the new IPs you obtain. The only way to safely get rid of them and NOT hurt yourself in the process, is to just stop upgrading them and ride-out support and do bug-fixing, until they just fade away to 0-users.

[JD_Mortal]

On a side note, though the popularity does not transfer, the HATE will...

If you don't "support" the IPs that were forced on you, then YOU get the hate for failing to "support your software" that has "active users and unresolved bugs"... As if YOU actually made the software.

There is no option to just reject the IPs, and simply sell them off or give them away, before obtaining them. (You can sell the IPs, but I am not sure that actually removes YOUR demand to support the existing software that was forced onto you. I always just start supporting it and continue marketing and updating it. Then I let them all fade away in time.)

My plan of attack for those...

Any IP with 0 users, I just archive, to remove it from the lists. If it has 1 user, you are really forced to support it, or start getting hate!

Jump right into "supporting them", "adjusting the price", "start printing", and "start marketing". I update everything to the latest tech, porting it to work on my latest OS, if they are not already supporting my latest OS. Then I start marketing with about $2000 a month, to let the NEW people know I am the owner and they have been updated. Then I drop the price by a few dollars of the "recommended price", after marketing and updating has happened. (I have not seen a price ever rise, but dropping the price after marketing with the full price, seems to work in my favor.)

For printing, I just tell it to keep a stock of 1000-2000, if that is even needed. Most times you will see that you also get some stupid number of copies, up to 4,000,000, unsold copies, along with the IP rights. (Now you know why the AI company went bankrupt!)

If it is not ALSO ported to a popular OS, with 200,000 users or just any newer OS, then I now port to those new OSes too. (So that will almost always increase users and sales at the new marketed, updated tech, lower prices.)

I will not keep updating anything that isn't worth updating and porting. I will let that older software, that "competing software", die-off.

My generic rule of thumb, with versions of IPs that I get stuck with, in relation to updating... I keep only the latest creations and most popular creations "fully updated" with tech-levels. The prior version or lesser popular software, I do a lower level of updating, and STOP updating after that. (That will introduce new bugs, but it also increases potential new users, with the adjusted prices.)

So, tech will look like this, for an OS that I have obtained...

- My OS tech level 1998 (maxed)

- Inherited V6 (maxed) {It could be better than mine, but it won't be after the next update, which it will NOT get, but mine will.}

- Inherited V5 (one tech-level lower than the V6 version) {So this will be relevant longer, but eventually fade away. There is often new software being created for this still, which will get updates too.}

- Inherited V4 (two tech-levels lower than the V6 version) {Sometimes this version might have the most users. Like it was the peak of the quality, at the time.}

- Inherited V3 (three tech-levels lower than the V6 version) {Some AI company will make software for this, for some stupid reason.}

- Inherited V2 (four tech-levels lower than the V6 version) {There may only be 10,000-30,000 users here, but the price of $20 for an OS, might still bring a few new customers. :P )

- Inherited V1 (Archived, due to zero users.)

Customer support will be going crazy. So, knock out those bugs as soon as they are found. It gives your "noob programmers" some busy-work to learn from. The faster you resolve the bugs, the less calls you get about the same bug being found. Eventually, with no more updates being done after this, the bugs will fade away to 0, before the customer base fades to 0. Which is when you stop support and archive it.