So I have been thinking??? ( LONG read )

battlelog

Member
Since we all know that the PS4 berserker has been put on hold because of funds to test out the program or whatever tech issues it has. I have been looking at the xone berserker forums and have seen a few issues with that controller? Now I know that a lot of people on here are XBOX fans and play COD games, even when I first purchased my first Rag for the ps3 I seen mostly Xbox threads and so forth.

Well things have changed; ps4 has out sold Xone and still is. I live in O.C, California. I have about 6 best buys in a 15 mile radius and god only knows how many targets and Walmart’s they are. Well I kind of was checking some of them out because my boy wants a ps4 so went out to look for one, well everywhere I went they are sold out even game stop, they have all the accseriories but no ps4, all I seen was Xone. Every place I went they had so many Xone’s so that got me thinking, why not make a USB rag, I know a lot of people would buy it for sure because it was so simple to use! You have your laptop next to you try out a gun if you do not like the sps, in about 15 seconds you put another sps in!!! Easy pezy, now with this new berserker I see that it has a lot of features, great but you have to learn how to program the thing. Then from what I am reading on the forums a few issues with the program or controller.

Now if I remember the ps4 rag had 5 to 6 updates to the controller and that was it, now I know these were free but let’s say if they did charge for them or made you pay an extra amount to get whatever updates do come out, or a flat rate for each update if needed? I for one would LOVE to have a USB rag, again easy to use and fast to program; I think they would sell a lot of these controllers. Look at the ps4 rag threads 6 posts that’s it, ether people don’t have many issues or they have not really sold many of them. I for one wish they would make a poll again and see if people would like an usb rag or a berserker. Let’s say they do make an usb rag and make some good money off of them, from there you get the funding to work on the ps4 berserker and so forth.

I would imagine that the hardware for the ps3 to the ps4 might be a bit different but maybe it’s the same, and you can use the same program that the ps3 rag had, that should be simple enough. This is just my opinion guys, the rag I have is great, Viking makes the best modded controllers out there we all know that!! I like this new rag, yes you can program it, but counting these lights and trying to test new sps, it’s a bit of a hassle. It’s not just like putting a number in and boom upload it to the controller, 15 seconds your done and back in the game!!

Sorry for the long read guys! J
 

odingalt

Well-Known Member
Staff member
Hi, thanks for sharing your thoughts on this. This would be as good of a place as any to hold a discussion on future of the PS4 Berserker, and also the decision so far to have non-USB Ragnaroks for PS4 and XBOX One. I'll ramble on myself a little bit.

PS4 is definitely outselling XBOX One worldwide. [PS3 outsold XBOX 360 outside of North America.] I haven't found good numbers to show who the clear winner is in the USA/North America but it's at least even. The new PS4 controller itself, in my opinion, is a huge improvement over the PS3 pad. My gut says PS4 is still outselling XBOX One in North America anyway, and trouncing XBOX One anywhere outside the USA. Going against it for Viking360 specifically is just the fact that we have more fanbase with an XBOX background than PS background. Sony customers will know us through VikingDigital while XBOX customers will know us from Viking360.com. Even with Sony pulling away from Microsoft it seems that we aren't known for Sony products and it does't help that "360" is right in the company name. The three main things we can do there is to get PS4 Berserker to market, get some PS4 Ragnarok tutorial videos uploaded to youtube, and to talk more about PS4 controllers on our facebook page.

Ok, about our decision to just sell Ragnarok (and not USB Ragnarok) on PS4 and XBOX One. The negative from a customer perspective: we've been known for our free software and our mods that can connect by USB, and to sell a non-USB mod is sacrilege. USB is a much handier way to tune speeds vs. having to bang out a bunch of button combinations whilst watching blinking lights on the controller. If I had to choose, as a gamer, between buying a USB and a non-USB, I'd pay extra for the USB every time. In my opinion, a USB controller is worth more than a non-USB controller (it costs more to make and support than a non-USB controller). Plus in an emergency if there is a workaround for a patch, we can roll that patch without having to go through the trouble of having customers actually mail controllers in (it's time consuming to crack open each and every controller to reprogram the modchip with an update).

Here's the downside of selling USB mods from a business perspective. If our competition are selling fully-loaded controllers for $149-$199, does that mean Viking can sell USB-enabled fully-loaded controllers for more say $175-$225? It can be a tough pill to swallow, some customers may not see the added value in that extra price tag. Sometimes customers do have an expectation for that for the extra price tag they should get customized USB updates by request (which just isn't possible to cater to individual customers on Ragnarok, that's what Macro/Berserker was invented for). Also it turns out that it takes me about 16 hours just to roll a patch update even just for a simple update like adding an extra dropshot mod. There's loading up the source code project, refamiliarizing with it, implementing the new feature or patchfix, doing testing (you have to retest ALL MODS - you never know when a patchfix for one mod will screw up another mod), fix anything that breaks, test more, fix anything that breaks, test more. Then you have to update the Windows app in addition to the firmware for the controller, which requires the same testing and bug fixing. Then you have to update any user documentation and even think about rolling a video tutorial for the new thing. It really does end up consuming 2-3 working days. This is just to roll a patch for ONE controller. So imagine having to roll patch updates for PS3 USB Ragnarok, XBOX 360 USB Ragnarok, Thor's Hammer, Odin's Raven, Tyr's Hand, and a macro update for the XBOX 360 Macro controller, the PS4 USB Ragnarok (if we had one), the XBOX One USB Ragnarok (if we had one), the XBOX One Berserker, and the PS4 Berserker. You are talking about, literally, somewhere around 180 hours of software development time to roll a single patch update across all our builds. Software dev's in the open market are charging anywhere from $75 to $150. So let's just take $100 to make the math easy, we are literally talking about $18,000 in labor just to roll a patch update. Now, my time is free, but if I hired a software dev (who could help get the updates out FASTER) it would run me $18k per patch updates. This huge number is what explains why we need to sell USB controllers for more than our competitors non-USB controller.

What do the large shops do in terms of mod updates? They charge anywhere from $50-$75 fee and require that the customer mail in their controller. So under my scenario above, if I charged an update fee, I'd only have to have about 300 customers mail in their controllers for a paid update in order to cover my cost of developing a patch update across all controllers. But that scenario sucks for customers. Unfortunately very few customers (only the smart ones, which are here at Viking reading this now) see the advantage of free updates over USB. What we found in our first 5 years in business is once sales slowed down, we didn't have enough money left to keep rolling patch updates. The free software for life sounds great and works great when business is booming, but it's really hard to support when sales are down. A pay-per-update or subscription service works a lot better - even if no NEW customers are buying, existing customers all chip in a little bit of money and that money goes directly into software development that helps make the product better for those existing customers today.

So... enter the Berserker. The Viking Forge access is currently free (and will continue to be free for life for any customers who have already purchased, and is free-for-life for all new purchasers for the foreseeable future). The Viking Forge does have the ability to go with a paid model. It could do a one-time access fee, it could do a monthly or periodic access fee. It can even be set up to have runepacks for sale for a fixed price. You guys won't like this but my main reason for going with a web-based Viking Forge was to open up the possibility of moving away from "Free software updates for life" and instead move towards a "pay as you go" system. This isn't necessarily all bad... it does allow us to slice and dice the pricing in a lot of ways to meet the needs of a lot of different customers. It also solves our issue for longevitiy of the software... if we need to roll software updates 5 years down the road even if business is slow, we can still collect a nominal amount of payments on software updates and put that into software developer labor.

For customers who don't want to have to edit/create runes, they would have the option of just buying the "Fifa 2014" controller, probably in the $100's. We can justify selling Berserker hardware for lower costs to customers, even down in the $100's, if we can try to sell RunePacks or software subscriptions to the Viking Forge editor. For customers who just want the original - free software updates for life - we can sell a lifetime subscription for x dollars along with the hardware. Haven't thought it out fully but since it's web based we can make changes down the road. Let me make it clear though, all customers who have bought up until now will always have 100% free access to anything and everything that the Forge offers. Consider yourselves "founding members". Any customers who buy here in 2014 also will likely continue to receive the free lifetime "get everything" Viking Forge access. We are sticking with the "Free for life" model for now until such a time as we can figure out what to do next.

This still doesn't explain why we offer Ragnaroks then? Well, we developed a modchip for wholesale purposes and decided we might as well build and sell the controllers since we were already building and selling the modchips. Thus, PS4 Ragnarok and XBOX One Ragnarok. They are solid controllers. Not everybody cares about USB, Ragnarok is the best fully-loaded controller available out there, hands down. The only controller that's better is the Berserker. Not everybody can afford Berserker so we have the Ragnarok. And it's helping fill in for sales while we are waiting to fund up the PS4 Berserker project. I could see ultimately retiring the PS4 Ragnarok and XBOX One Ragnarok, since ultimately the Berserker will be able to fully emulate what the Ragnarok does. In the future we would essentially sell a Berserker in sheep's clothing, so to speak. We could sell a Berserker with a "Ragnarok" RunePack loaded onto it for the same price as a tradtional Ragnarok, and then hope that customer might buy other RunePacks down the road.

Basically we are looking to spread out our revenue.. rather than collecting one huge up-front payment for the harware, we'd like to collect a smaller up-front payment for the hardware, and then smaller payments along the way for the software. This leveling of the revenue stream will help us survive those slow sales months, will help us always have funding to roll patch updates or other software updates, even if new hardware sales die. It also helps customers on a budget get into awesome hardware like the Berserker in the $100's instead of up in the $200's. It keeps things the same for those customers who want the "all and everything" package up in the $200's.

Pay for software is a dangerous thing to talk about, considering we have been free software and built our business based upon free software. I just wanted to explain that the free software model is great for customers but can be a tough business model to sustain. A lot of businesses have pay-as-you-go, subscription based, or pay-for-upgrade based models that work pretty well, and there are even some consumers that prefer to be on this kind of pay-less-now, pay-a-little-as-I-go plan.

Thoughts??? I may have strayed a bit off the original topic but have been meaning to get some opinions on this.
 
Odin, I love that you take the time to keep your customers informed. I think the lower upfront cost of a controller and the pay as you go model should keep sales steady for a longer amount of time. Im also stoked that you're still going to have the "free upgrades for life" to all the founding Berzerker owners. Now I just have to wait for the PS4 Berzerker launch. Viking360>Everyone else
 

Boricua

Member
Im gonna pay for the "all and everything" package as soon as that PS4 Berserker comes out. I love my xbox 360 macro controller and I hate the fact that i cant use it right now because i don't own an xbox anymore.
 
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