You obviously have no clue what it takes to get products produced in relatively low volume. Even if he were getting 5,000 to 10,000 made, which I'm fairly sure he didn't do, it would still be a struggle to break even at $30. Go visit a printer and get pricing on what the manual for this product would cost in quantities of 100 and 250. You've got $5 or more tied up in shipping and handling.
Yes, there are things that have millions tied up in development. They mad produce them and sell millions of them. You'd probably be shocked at the actual cost to produce an iPhone, it's much lower than you'd expect. I'll bet the labor and parts cost are less than $50.
Apple (and most all electronics) products have a lot of slave labor involved. If they didn't the cost to produce electronics would be magnitudes higher than they are... However that's not even remotely a related topic...
I've worked at printers, I have friends that work at printers. There are many places more than willing to do one offs and low volume orders. Even higher priced low volume orders would not even come close to your $30 guess. The box (if the game actually comes in the box he is illustrating) would be the only thing remotely costly to produce. Everything else could be done cheap or even personally by hand.
Looks like a great product. I'd love to have one. Just thought I'd share my exact thoughts that many others are likely to have when they see the price tag. He's missing the oppportunity for more people to buy the game, share thoughts on it, show it to others and get people excited about it. There's a lot of free marketing to be had if the product is good enough and cheap enough to not turn people away.
So go ahead and argue with the natural reaction people are going to have. It's not going to help his sales. Right now is the perfect time to try to get as many as these sold as possible. It's a great gift for just about anyone that likes anything about pool. I love to see products like this, it's the perfect way to practice imho. I would stand behind it 100% if the price made it more attainable to the average joe.
I really do hope he does well with it. It just won't be me (and likely many others) that won't buy it because the price is more than they would like to spend on it. Sorry...
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