No matter how you slice it, forking over $60 to a frizzle-haired retail employee is a painful endeavor. Games, so very often, don’t live up to their potential, leaving gamers wondering, “did I just waste my money?”
But higher software price-points means more money in publisher’s wallets, so they wouldn’t change that, would they?
EA Canada senior producer Jason DeLong certainly thinks so. He foresees a time and place where the upfront cost of games is lower, with voluntary future add-ons buffing that price down the road.
“I think that we’re going to start to see — maybe not in the next year, but in the near future — games go down the route of smaller up-front experiences and lower prices at the beginning, and then the ability to extend the game through episodic material or future feature material. I think that’s a direction we’re probably heading in,” the man said in a recent interview with GameInformer.
Now, you can decipher this news however you’d like, but let me offer this thought. If game companies intentionally build their games in pieces, to be purchased and tacked on later by the user, then this is absolutely terrible news. Especially if the content is already on the disc and we’re required to purchase a code to unlock it.
What do you think?
Source: Destructoid
I think that this plan will only work if the price cut is drastic. If the initial game is say half of the story line of the game, but the price is then 30 bucks, it would be way more conveniant for a buyer who likes to test his game out first or even someone who only cares about playing around in a game. Than if someone seriously enjoys the game, they can buy the other half for 30 more. I think that would be brilliant, and game developers could then release games faster….