Welcome to the world of macro. (I could swear you already owned a macro?) In any case, welcome!
[Btw, I heard macros are going to be discontinued? Is that true?]
I hear all sorts of rumors. You are reading posts from several years ago when we did indeed cancel macro controllers for awhile. We are now in the new age where we brought them back
Good, this controller is FAR too amazing to discontinue. I don't understand how you're not blowing the competition away... And why did you guys discontinue them in the past?
We never hit "Critical mass". That is, we never hit the sales volume required to make these modchips affordable. We hit the very lowest end of our sales projections and when our supplier wouldn't budge on pricing for components for the expensive modchip, we stopped selling them. We finally got the supplier to budge on minimum order requirement but it took a loooong standoff to get what we needed to produce another batch of macro controller modchips.
Everyone will tell you the #1 reason we are not blowing away the competition is price, but I have to disagree. When we started, we sold macro controllers at $149. Heck, our Odin's Raven stands up to any controller at its current price and our PS3 Ragnarok at $99 is equal to the same controllers being sold at our competitors sites for twice that price. Fact of the matter is advertising works. The customers who are here in these forums are the kinds of customers who research what they buy. Customers who research are a minority thing. Most customers just buy the first thing they see on Google.
Ill be honest, I think some of your employees are making to much money ( atleast the ones I heard about )
I also don't understand why there isn't more gaming magazines featuring the macro controller, it's a major advancement in gaming ... And nobody else out there has anything even close to it..
Google search for "site:youtube.com viking controller review" yields the following Viking controller video reviews:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8swgvJ-Rxc
www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ie1zBedekA
www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_F8tkZlvxI
www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWM-dl4EEIQ
www.youtube.com/watch?v=AqxyNRgW5lk
www.youtube.com/watch?v=fk0x7H0j_g0
www.youtube.com/watch?v=iU9h_9zv9Jc
www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxIol975Gkw
www.youtube.com/watch?v=0r3B_9piPSE
www.youtube.com/watch?v=PEgGWfSDxcQ
www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTCfOIjujWw
...
Ok I got tired of pasting but you get the picture . As far as I can tell there are at least 100 video demos of Viking controllers on youtube. The problem is simple -- we don't spend enough on SEO and marketing. If you do a google search like this instead "modded controllers" you get the following hits:
www.evilcontrollers.com
www.controllerchaos.com/modded-controllers.html
www.gamermodz.com/
www.intensafirestore.com/
www.geniusmods.com/
www.amazon.com
www.megamodzplanet.com/
www.ebay.com
www.rapidmodz.com/
www.kickasscontrollers.com/
Newbies are going to use Google to do their research when they decide to buy a modded controller, and sadly, Viking basically does not exist on Google for a variety of search phrases. We would start dropping $20-$30k per month on SEO and marketing like our competition, but then we'd have to eliminate the USB, eliminate free software updates, raise prices for our "fully loaded" mods (like the Raven and Ragnarok), etc. and do all sorts of other nasty things to make enough money to pay that much in advertising. We'd also have to fire our current employees (they are paid too much compared to the competition) and then open up a new shop in another state that has a lower minimum wage and looser labor laws. I'm just not willing to run a sweat shop nor am I willing to sell substandard products or advertise so hard it requires me to raise prices on my customers. If you look at what you get when you buy a Viking, we are still the best deal out there. I priced the equivalent to the Viking NON-USB PS3 Ragnarok the other day (ours sells for $99.95), some of our competition were charging over $200 for the same thing. So even if you didn't know anything else and just made your purchase based on most features for least money, we'd still beat some of the other guys. Unfortunately customers are not researching and finding us.
TY. I can always find something new to sell, just waiting around for an idea to pop into my head . I have been selling electronic widgets of one kind or another for the past 17 years.