Let's say it's a game where you produce and sell a product (tycoon). Usually in such games you end up producing like 50 variants/subtypes of a product in late game and it become tedious then (micromanagement hell, need for more advanced reporting tools, etc,etc). So, I was thinking that it would be great to introduce some sort of soft limit or encouragement to the player to stick to a lower number of products, like 5-8 for example.

Ideas how such soft limit could work?

Quick solutions:

- sales cannibalize each other

- unfocused marketing (spread on too many products) yelds a penalty

- you own only one factory (I'm not sure if it's great...) and you get a manufacturing penalty for too many different things produced there

- significant fixed cost *per product* for selling those (not sure how it could work, like a shop which sells too many things gets a penalty maybe?)

Some products naturally have few variants, making exaggerated negative feedback unnecessary.

For example, in a brewery simulation the product range consists of a handful of beer types, each sold in 2 or 3 SKUs (crate of small bottles, crate of large bottles etc.). There is no evolution until the player decides to change a recipe or replace a product to track public taste; no brand makes many beer types because they would just look silly and unfocused.

The best limitation is competition. Make the market-share a key in the demand for the product. An example from real life is e.g. Windows Phone or Black Berry, they have a low share and nobody wants these, because nobody has these. Similar e.g. if you just look at the Android market. There might be phones as good or better than Samsung's S7 ot S8 (for half the price), but it's the most wanted one. And if you ask marketing people, they'll tell you that "mind share" of users is what they all aim for. On the lower end, you need to invest more than the revenue, to get mind share. On the higher end, it's self propelling.

Hence, make the player realize, one big product gonna have more demand, will lead to higher prices, bigger margins, longer lasting market success. Allow them in some way to merge products, maybe at a high cost (e.g 100%+100%==150%), but eventually worth it. This would usually also lead to fusion or buying of competing companies.

Let's say it's a game about a company that makes one type of product which is non consumable and overall a customer needs just one in a certain time frame (mostly until it gets too obsolete and needs replacement OR the customer get richer and wants a better variant), like: cellphones, TVs, cars, laptops, microwaves, etc.

Note: in real life companies that operate in those industries got bankrupt (or had serious trouble) when they tried to release too many products (like Commodore with their infamous dozens variants of similar Amigas or Apple when they got rid of Jobs and had too many electronics offered at once leading to confusion).