Tomn
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You know, looking at this argument, it seems the key point is this: If there is a wider available market for wargames, then pricing too high loses sales. If there is not a wider available market for wargames, then pricing too low loses profits. So the question is basically this: Is the market large enough to support a lower price that returns greater profits?
Before we begin that discussion, though, I think it would be useful to define what, exactly, a wargame is, as I think this gets muddled fairly often in such discussions. So what is a wargame? I would suggest that a wargame can most usefully be defined as "a game that attempts to simulate warfare, with a greater emphasis on historical realities than on gameplay requirements." We understand, of course, that any game developer must at some point rely on abstractions unless it is their intent to simulate the entire world at once, yet this seems to me a functional definition that lays down a clear difference between wargames and more mainstream strategy games like, say, Command & Conquer or even Total War.
Is it a requirement, then, that wargames must possess an impenetrable interface, no real tutorial to speak of, lousy documentation and all the accessibility of a spreadsheet? Many modern wargames are like this, true, but if we are to say that a wargame can only be said to be a wargame if it included all these features, it appears that we would have to remove Panzer General and Close Combat and Unity of Command and any number of great hits past and present from the list of wargames. I propose that the above definition is enough to cover wargames in general, and that we might make a subgenre for games that go into such complex detail that it is quite impossible to spare any time or effort whatsoever to improving accessibility - call it "grognard" games, for now.
If we accept this as a definition of wargames, then, can we say that wargames are truly a small niche that would not benefit from a lower pricepoint? Can we say that the amount of those interested in a more realistic strategic depiction of war is too low to support a lower price?
This seems to me unlikely. Why? Well, right at this point in time, on the Steam 100 top-seller list, I can see a game about simulating life as an immigration officer in a dystopic Soviet country, a game simulating being a truck driver in Europe running a truck driving business (realistically enough I might add that it models driver fatigue, among other things), a great many adventure games (which until lately have been thought to be extinct as a genre), and a game simulating the space program in quite explicit detail, where orbital calculations are required to get off the ground and onto the Moon analogue or the Mars analogue or anything else in the solar system. That's just what's on the list RIGHT NOW. Previous top-sellers included train simulators and agricultural tractor simulators, among other oddities. Are we supposed to imagine, then, that games depicting war (one of the single most popular subjects in the world for all of humanity, let alone gamers!) in a realistic fashion are a SMALLER niche than realistic games about the space program or truck driving?
Then, too, let us consider the historical successes of wargames. It is common now to say that wargames are a tiny niche and ever will be a tiny niche, but what of such games as Panzer General or the early Close Combat games? These may not have sold as well as the Warcraft games or Command & Conquer, but neither were they tiny and insignificant - they made and left no small splash on the marketplace in their time. Indeed, was there not a time when wargames were the dominant genre in the games industry, long in a distant past? Was there not a time when companies such as Strategic Simulations Inc. were as well-known as any other?
It seems to me, then, that there almost certainly DOES exist a large market for wargames - for realistic depictions of war. There ARE people interested in games that simulate warfare with more depth than that which goes into common RTS games. If such a market exists, then, wargames CAN benefit from a lower price point, and CAN sell enough copies to recoup any loss of per-product profit. Not only would they make more money overall, they would find more fans and more people willing to enjoy the game, causing a snowballing effect as word of mouth brings in more and more people who earlier on would not have considered joining the hobby, or of paying the current high prices sight unseen. Should the market exist, and as we have seen the evidence point to its existence, high prices do more harm than good to a developer even if they aren't actually ruinous.
But I will concede that there does not, perhaps, exist as great a market for the aforementioned grognard games. In order to reach out to a niche which had previously been untapped, it would be necessary to make it accessible for these newcomers - they must be welcomed and eased into the game, so that they do not quit from frustration and complain to their friends. Games like Unity of Command or Panzer General 2 are proof positive that this can be done, and done successfully, and for games such as these (or even for games only moderately more complex than these!) I believe it can be seen that there should indeed be a market. But for games which are so immensely complex, that model such an incredible amount of detail that it is completely, utterly, and totally impossible to even contemplate trying to ease a new gamer in, that I could agree with as being too small a niche to accept new blood and new money, and which would probably only survive at the currently high prices.
From what I have heard, however, Command is not such a game - I've heard in fact that they've taken pains to improve the interface and try to allow a newcomer to understand it. I wonder, then, if the current pricing is really the best choice for it?
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RE: Pricing Suggestion - 
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