Scirra is really not good at announcing so far.
Scirra - Construct3:
They make a website announcement, release little to no info for 2 years.
https://www.construct3.com/
Claim that there will be no 3d game support, no native exporters, nothing will change but the editor itself.
Users complain on forum - asking for native exporters again, scirra snubs them.
Little to no interaction with their users during that time. No feedback taken from the community as to what they want, but users post threads with feature wish lists anyways. Note that these feature requests are not prompted by the developers. The developers show up once in a while to post there - but nothing major.
Little to no interaction on the forum. all hush hush
Then they tease with a big announcement a few days prior to today.
Then instead of announcing any new features to make me wanna buy it or upgrade, they announce a polarizing licensing model - in a blog post. Not on the fancy website. We also have a price for the rent - 99$ per year - for the indie dev. At this point we have a price and a licensing model we know half the users are gonna hate - but no exciting features or screenshots demonstrated or announced. Only announcements of what it's not gonna have - exactly what your community keeps requesting over and over again. Create new forum - half/most the posts are unhappy users complaining about the price and the licensing model.
Compare to clickteam - fusion 3:
- all key clickteam devs are actively taking in feedback on the forum for years - on a thread where they announced they are working on fusion 3 , they dont release a website but very early on start revealing information about the progress and some of the new features going in.
They ask their users as to what licensing model they would prefer. Then they announce that they will stay with their pay once model, where you can buy extra exporters. They are aware of the renting model as well, but choose to stay away from it, because most people on their forum don't like it.
Then at the forum they start announcing new features and confirming them - features based on requests and feedback from the community. At special events - show off work in progress videos.
Then they start showing videos on screenshots on a dev blog explaining the new features and how they address current problems.
http://www.clickteam.com/fusion-3-development-blog
At this point clickteam has given us incredible exciting feature demonstrations, we know their next engine is going to be awesome and we love the licensing model because we are very comfortable with it - buy once. Clickteam has met most of the community requests and demonstrated excellent involvement with the community. We still have no price, but at this point I am pretty sure most people would be willing to break the piggy bank and upgrade
Ashley - here is a rule of marketing - dont reveal the price. Delay revealing the price for as long as possible. In the meantime reveal the value of the product instead. Keep revealing the value and delay revealing the price - even when the user keeps asking for the later. Then once you have them convinced they must buy it, then reveal the damn price.
And don't give them a shit payment model that replaces the one good one they are on at the moment. The rent model is gonna lose you a lot of users