Valve’s Gabe Newell talks about marketing…

Valve are busy finishing up Portal2, entering the final stretch, where the last remaining bugs are being ironed out and marketing strategies are being revved up.

Valve are also a success. You didn’t need to even read the news last week that Valve make more money per employee than Apple or Google to know that.

That success wasn’t only because Half-Life was awesome, or any of their other games being some of the most critically acclaimed games of all time, but what really helped was a great eye for innovative marketing strategies.

Around 8 minutes in there is a good outlining of Valve’s pricing structure with Steam, and how cutting the price by 75% can give a 40 fold increase in revenue.

Take a look.

Other highlights include

- Highest grossing item in the TF2 store was the most expensive item

- Second highest grossing item in the TF2 store was the cheapest item

- one price for everyone isn’t the best deal, people’s expectations of value is different.

- Valve are a bunch of dropouts. Awesome dropouts.

- Valve look for people that can build communities around their projects and manage that community successfully.