Why is middleware so expensive?

I suppose its expensive for the same reason Windows 7 or adobe photoshop is. But what makes a developer SDK such as speed tree (Ten Thousand per kit.) or source, so damn expensive? It may be a relatively intricate program, but why must it be so damn expensive, are you paying all that extra money for it being user friendly?
 
I'm asking this because  that Lincoln Force game would have actually been made if the tools weren't so darn expensive.

What exactly do you mean by "simple" and "intricate"? It seems contradictory.

The price is determined by the demand for that product and price of any alternatives. There are probably cheaper tools for tree generation but not as good, easy to learn/use or have good customer support.  Torchlight used the Ogre graphics engine which is basically free and open source which is a far cry from the price of a commercial license for the Unreal Engine. So Lincoln Force doesn't need to use all the latest tech and the best tools. Does it really need that level of tree technology in the first place?

 Even using cheap tools,  I still don't see Lincoln force being made. =P

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 Even using cheap tools,  I still don't see Lincoln force being made. =P

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What exactly do you mean by "simple" and "intricate"? It seems contradictory.

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Windows is expensive for the same reason gas is expensive. Everyone has a car...they only runs on gas (lets not get into hybrids for this). Everyone has a computer (well pc users and lets not get into stuff like linux for this) and they run on windows.  
 
But expensive similar to why photoshop is? Yes. Reasoning being that users can create things to sell and can stand to make money.

Speedtree is not expensive.

" Speedtree is not expensive. "

think about it this way: The market for middle-ware is not big. you won't find a copy of SpeedTree or the Unreal engine in a store because you are not the target market. So they are selling to developers only. Now, these things don't really come out with yearly versions, so one purchase is a long term one.  
 
So you have a small market, with a highly sought after SDK, that you can't re-sell every year. You have no choice but to price it fairly high to make a profit. 
 
and 10K isn't THAT expensive for a SDK. i think i heard once that an Unreal engine is around the 50K.

That ten thousand dollars saves thousands upon thousands of man hours that would be spent modeling trees from scratch.  If you make a game with trees in it, It's well worth the price.  That's just the sort of thing you have to consider when you're making a game.  Do you want to pay for a pre-made tool, or construct one from nothing?

For a game that's expected to make millions, $10K to remove virtually all work from foliage creation sounds pretty well priced. It's mainly for open world games or games made to look like real-world locations.

How much do you think it costs to set a team of people to work on the foliage/environment otherwise? People are expensive, using a good proven tool to cut costs and produce something good only has benefits.

I think some programs are priced expensively because the publishers expect you to make money from their wares.  In other words, the middleware you use to make games, has the potential to make you more money than you paid for it.  I've used AutoCAD in my line of work and it runs $4000-$5000 for the base program.  Like Photoshop a new one comes out every year, but you don't need to buy a new one each year to do your job.  Secondly, if you are buying it for your business, you can write it off your taxes which further cuts the cost.  These types of software are not meant for the amateur hobbyist, but for professionals who use them to accomplish their jobs.

" I suppose its expensive for the same reason Windows 7 or adobe photoshop is. But what makes a simple developer SDK such as speed tree (Ten Thousand per kit.) or source, so damn expensive? It may be a relatively intricate program, but why must it be so damn expensive, are you paying all that extra money for it being user friendly?  I'm asking this because  that Lincoln Force game would have actually been made if the tools weren't so darn expensive. "

For a small indie game, expensive middleware is not essential. You can make your own trees or find alternative tools that will get the job done. But if you expect a game to make make millions, then $10,000 is a small price to pay for powerful tree-making middleware.

then $10,000 is a small price to pay for powerful tree-making middleware. "

Lincoln FORCE could no doubt benefit from speed tree. Maybe we can cut a deal with that speed tree guy.

Remember that unless you are a game developer, you are not the target market for this. $10,000 is a drop in the bucket when you look at the development budgets of games. 
 
You have to look at is from the developer's perspective. If speedtree wasn't creating trees, developers would have to allocate well educated and well paid people to "tree-making". It would not take long for that cost to far-exceed $10,000. Automate that process, and you've got more flexibility with your human resources so that you can focus on more important needs in the development process.

Because that's the price point they've decided will return them the most profit.  If they made it significantly cheaper - say $100 - would they ever sell it to enough extra people to end up making a greater profit?  Of course not, because most of us don't want or need SpeedTree whether it's $10,000 or $100.  Of course, if they made it significantly more expensive then their existing customers would start to look at alternatives.

" For a small indie game, expensive middleware is not essential. You can make your own trees or find alternative tools that will get the job done. But if you expect a game to make make millions, then $10,000 is a small price to pay for powerful tree-making middleware. "

Define "Expensive" from a big game developing studios perspective?  

" @LordAndrew said:

" For a small indie game, expensive middleware is not essential. You can make your own trees or find alternative tools that will get the job done. But if you expect a game to make make millions, then $10,000 is a small price to pay for powerful tree-making middleware. "

 that line made me happy :) "

"That ten thousand dollars saves thousands upon thousands of man hours that would be spent modeling trees from scratch.  If you make a game with trees in it, It's well worth the price.  That's just the sort of thing you have to consider when you're making a game.  Do you want to pay for a pre-made tool, or construct one from nothing? "

A. It takes a lot of time and people to develop those apps.
B. The list of customers is very very limited.
C. Thousands of copies will be sold using the tech, so the middleware maker gets their cut.

Supply and Demand. You charge what the market can bare. If you're selling middleware to a company with a multi-million dollar budget and much more in expected revenue, why wouldn't you charge $10,000? It's a standard program that lots of people use and want, so you gouge because you can.
 
It's a small market they're selling to, but the market is made up entirely of million dollar companies. I learned from a friend of mine in advertising that you don't want to go to these big companies and say you can do something cheap because they assume they will get what they pay for. They have lots of money to spend so if your service is expensive, it means it's probably worth it.
 
Plus, like other people have said. It's expensive to develop these programs and you're not selling to a large audience. You're not selling millions or even thousands of copies. You're selling hundreds. So, to cover costs, you have to charge a lot. But you know you can because of the operating budgets of your expected clients.

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What exactly do you mean by "simple" and "intricate"? It seems contradictory.

The price is determined by the demand for that product and price of any alternatives. There are probably cheaper tools for tree generation but not as good, easy to learn/use or have good customer support.  Torchlight used the Ogre graphics engine which is basically free and open source which is a far cry from the price of a commercial license for the Unreal Engine. So Lincoln Force doesn't need to use all the latest tech and the best tools. Does it really need that level of tree technology in the first place?

 Even using cheap tools,  I still don't see Lincoln force being made. =P

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" @kheldorin said:

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 Even using cheap tools,  I still don't see Lincoln force being made. =P

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Dude, we had a user build a GiantBomb app for the Android platform...from scratch, just by himself... "

The cost may also contain support to train your devs on the tool, so that could also be extra :) 
 
Middleware is outsourcing - rather than pay 70k (say one man year of work) of salary to develop great trees, you spend 10k and perhaps 3 man months of salary to integrate the tool.  Plus you get updates and bug fixes and dev support.

" I suppose its expensive for the same reason Windows 7 or adobe photoshop is. But what makes a developer SDK such as speed tree (Ten Thousand per kit.) or source, so damn expensive? It may be a relatively intricate program, but why must it be so damn expensive, are you paying all that extra money for it being user friendly?  I'm asking this because  that Lincoln Force game would have actually been made if the tools weren't so darn expensive. "

they are usually so expensive for a few reasons the most important being. 
 
1. they usually spend lots of money simply building the software to begin with.
2. they usually only want to market to game development firms and larger studios to prevent pirating abuse of the software.
3. they often spend lots of money keeping the software up to date and problem free with testing and updates.
4. managing business to business Software support and servicing hardware is expensive. (servers)
5. they are usually only a few different software suites for what you would need so they can simply price whatever they like and people will pay because there are really no other software suites out there for what they need that are professionally built and supported.
6. the developers often are willing to spend large amounts of money because they are serious about utilizing the software in question because they seek to have large revenue returns from whatever they develop like games or cg videos and whatnot.

$10,000 for SpeedTree might still be less expensive than paying your own development team to build a similar technology, you already know the results, and you have all the more dev time for the rest of your product. It's just like asking "why don't deveopers just build their own engines?" Everything takes time, money, a lot of know-how, and it's all not even guaranteed to work to begin with.
 
On top of that, demand isn't as high as, say, demand for an operating system like Windows, therefore, the price has to be high per license fee in order to make a comfortable profit.