Let's clarify what this product actually is

[LarsenB]

I was a bit surprised to see ChessBase come to Steam, but, I have to say, not surprised at all about the reaction from the community... so, for those that might be interested in taking a step further than your average "LOL!! $200 bucks" Steam user, please allow me to explain a bit what this product actually is.

Is this a chess game?

No, it is not.

Why is in the Games catalog?

Honestly, I have no idea... Steam has offered a 'Software' section for quite some time, and that is where this product belongs to; someone must have thought that "chess = game" without elaborating further, but it was a mistake, and it should be moved ASAP in my opinion.

To reiterate: it's not a chess videogame, and you can't (directly) play chess against it

What is it then?

It's a chess database frontend with a rich database package included

What about the price? this seems a lot for a chess software anyway

The software itself, on the publisher own store, is available as a standalone product for around $90; what you are paying here is, for the most part, the 'Mega' database package included with the software.

This is a very extensive database that has been curated by the publisher for over a decade, and is continuously updated with the latest top tournament games; notable among some other bulk database archives, is the presence of almost 70.000 annotated games, by strong players up to top Grandmasters and world champions

Note that even after the included update period expires, you can continue to keep it up-to-date yourself by importing from various sources, the most popular being the 'The Week in Chess' (TWIC) website

OK, but what does the software actually do?

It's a training and preparation tool, mostly targeted at chess opening theory.

You can create and catalog any number of user made databases with it, from scratch and/or from external sources, to build your own personal opening repertoire or store your tournament games or whatever.
The big database included comes into play when you combine the above archives with it: it allows to generate reports and statistics comparing any desired line with the known, historical or recent, tournament practice to evaluate the effectiveness of it, or to prepare against a specific opponent etc.
It will also generate selected collection of games extracted from the entire archive, and/or cross-reference them, by using an extensive selection of filters, so that you can quickly have study material for your training, and you'll always have the support of one or more chess engine for automatic analysis.
I'm not 100% if it already comes with an engine (but I think it does) but it's not an issue anyway, since you can import any UCI compatible engine available, including, but not limited to, the very popular and top of the line 'Stockfish' engine, which is free.

There's a ton of other functions available; for example, there's a built-in rich text editor inside where you can supplement your data with written articles and stuff, and you can export all of that in HTML or eBook format and so on...

This seems a bit complicated...

Well, it is.

This is not a software tailored for the beginners, and will not directly teach you how to play (although it's a very nice platform for multimedia courses of all levels, but those are sold separately).
For the most part, it's specifically aimed at tournament players; this does not necessarily mean "super strong" players, it can be very useful even at amateur level, but still is for people that go a bit beyond the occasional, casual chess game here and there.

Is it worth it, then?

See above: it really depends of the kind of chess player you are

The price, in general, is surely not cheap, but if you are serious about the game, it's a piece of software that will serve you well for years to come... there are some alternatives, and some even free too (google 'Scid' for example), but again note that a big percentage of what you are paying here is for the data, not the software; big, quality database as this one are hard to find and mantain for free, especially with actually annotated games.

That should be it... If you survived this wall of text, congratulation: you probably have the patience to play serious chess anyway ;)

[Blurfester]

You sir, should be given a free copy of this by the developers (if you dont own it already, as i suspect) because you explained it far better than they can apparently. And you earn my respect for listing an alternative to this chess spreadsheet that is (lol) free. That being said, I'm betting your excellent post still won't get their product moving, so, the developers might just want to consider making their software only package available on Steam. If that dosen't work, try making Chesspro attainable at a REASONABLE price, especially for those beginners that can't toss 200 away which despite what you mention still seems to me to be an outlandish price to pay.

[LarsenB]

Originally posted by Blurfester:

[cut]
That being said, I'm betting your excellent post still won't get their product moving, so, the developers might just want to consider making their software only package available on Steam. If that dosen't work, try making Chesspro attainable at a REASONABLE price, especially for those beginners that can't toss 200 away which despite what you mention still seems to me to be an outlandish price to pay.

See, fact is that this will always be a niche market regardless... they actually have beeen doing quite good with the software for many, many years, since it's the de-facto standard for this kind of stuff much like Word is for word-processing (and, extending the analogy, there are stiil reason it is commercially justified even when there's a strong open source alternative, much like the "LibreOffice vs Word" scenario).

Putting this on Steam is just an attempt to reach for a wider audience (and why not? it's basically a nearly zero cost investment), but it will never be spectacular numbers, because the target for this software is very specific.

The problem here is not the price, it's the wrong placement in the catalog: you put this as a game, people will not understand and react with mockery, exactly like they did... once you move past that, this is actually not a bad deal, since with the launch discount in place, it is like $80 bucks cheaper than the publisher's website usual price.

The software-only package is of course a viable idea, but I think that for this specific kind of product, it makes more sense to buy it with the quality database (think, for example, about starting to work with an illustrator software, the difference in productivity between a stand alone package versus one with a huge clipart included): personally I would never suggest the software-only package over the open source alternative, but I could make a case for the whole package versus open source+free data scrapped around; even if the absolute cost is bigger, the bang for your buck is better.

Finally, true beginners should not toss money, no matter how much, at a software like this regardless, it's not meant for them.

[JZossMPLS]

Thank you for your very detailed explanation, LarsenB. We will probably move this to the Software section to hopefully stem off any further confusion.

[Encephalocele]

I am surprised to see an actual review of this product with an explanation that was competent. Well done LarsenB. I was VERY surprised to see someone who knew what they were talking about here in Steam. And then funny enough I looked at the profile and I saw he was a very high level community member. That is both extremely rare and extremely impressive. To find a knowledgeable chess player AND high active/level gamer is probably equal to finding the proverbial unicorn.

I am a nationally rated chess expert. (For those of you not aware of this, it is a player with a rating around 2000-2200. And they are under master classes, but over general class players. People joke about "Experts" or "Candidate Masters" as being the best of the poor players. Or my personal favorite "The Grand Patzer".)

I don't use chessbase. As a matter of fact I consider it out dated. I believe the only thing useful about the program these days is to obtain the training material. Which if you purchase the products individually they all come with a free chessbase reader anyway. You can simply update the reader to adhere to the new products you purchase after you install it once. On the flip side of that, the only other reason to purchase this product from my point of view is if you are a person who is either writing a book or recording a chessbase video trainer.

The reason I don't believe it's worth it for people to purchase this product is in my experience the annotated games are not really annotated. (Unless this has changed in the last 5-6 years because that is the last time I looked at that trash heap.) What they do is computer annotate it, or they have GM's place symbols in key positions with little to no words to address the annotated aspect. I vowed to never purchase that again because of this. I felt it was a waste of money, and that I was cheated. If they have actual annotations similar to let's say the "Move by move" series I will reconsider my position in this.

Next: You can obtain any size database you want online free.

Last: This is hardly even up to date. It feels like they are just putting the product out for people that try to buy it on accident and hope they don't ask for a refund. Chessbase 15 is the current release. And even then that might be obsolete soon too. I bought a stand alone copy of 14 two years ago just because I wanted to look at it. It was the current release then. I bought it for $99. Barely 2 months later they announced chessbase 15. I believe LarsenB did address this nicer than I did, but I think having someone who has purchased CB in the past and can give reasons it is truly lacking can also be helpful.

I think the people that bad mouth this with the "LOLs" are funny to read. However if you take the comments on a serious note, they neither have the experience nor the education in the field to give a valid reason this product is worth it or not to purchase. It was a mistake to list this in the games section, I totally agree. I did notice the comments that they took measures to move it to software from games. I just feel this should be said because I can't review the product because my purchase was from the actual site. If steam allowed me to keep my copy of Chessbase 14 on here, that would be awesome.. But I have my doubts.

People in general should look for real chess players comments if they are deciding to purchase this product for the price they ask for. My opinion is mine. That doesn't mean that someone should agree with this opinion. The database is known through the global chess community as one of the strongest databases. And FM's IM's and GM's can and will use this database in personal tournament preparation. The program is clean and works wonderful for the purpose it was created for. Just I wish everything was truly updated.. And they had real annotated games like mentioned previously.