Malstrom: Why can't we LEND our WiiWare games?

[bazmeistergen]

noname2200 said:

bazmeistergen said:

Free stuff is perhaps a good marketing tool... if the game is good enough, especially for non-net nerd gamers.

I disagree to an extent, not so much with your premise so much as with how you limited it. The point of what Malstrom's recommending isn't just "offer demoes," which goes under the "Free stuff" you alluded to. The other two consoles already do that, and while those are helpful they are NOT as powerful as what Malstrom is advocating, namely allowing us to lend others are downloadable games.

It's a bit of a subtle difference, but with the first model the onus of finding/demoing games lands primarily on each player. That's fine, and I'd take it over what we have now (although curiously, I've seen some studies that say that demoes can be detrimental to sales in select circumstances). However, when you permit people to LEND their games to friends and families, you're doing two things.

First, you're making it easier to get people who aren't as much into games to try new stuff, because this way the gaming enthusiast does all the work of finding+downloading+bringing the game over. The first one is especially important for people who aren't as much into gaming as we are, as not only will they not have the time to browse through and sample dozens of titles, they're also less likely to bother in the first place, or stick with it for long periods.

Second, and this is the real key, when YOU lend someone a game you're not only letting them try it out (which is all a demo does). You're also implicitly recommending it to them. In other words, letting folks borrow games is a big part of the word-of-mouth approach that all marketeers will tell you is the most effective advertising strategy.

Simply put, lending>>>>>than just plain demoes, for sales purposes. I think whichever company let you do this would find their digital sales spiking relatively quickly. It would be especially easy for Nintendo to do this, since their SD card system is already meant to be super-portable. They've already surprised us by letting us gift digital games, and now they've done the common-sense thing in unlocking the SD slot. I think there's a good chance that they'll permit lending, albeit with quite a few restrictions, and that we'll be able to test these hypotheses soon enough.

 

I agree that lending is a good way for recommendations and word of mouth to spread. I was, in my point, trying to suggest that games would just appear on your system without going out and looking for them. Or an auto message link to immediately download. This would be interesting I think, but perhaps the lending thing would have the subtle 'this game is good, my friend' vibe that would get the recipient to believe the game was good and thus try to like it from the start.

Digital distribution has a lot of untapped potential.