Alterego-X said:
1.From in-game advertisments. If I can watch my TV channels for free, it can't be that hard to apply the same business model for games. Or even if they would need to reduce the budgets, it wouldn't bother me, the $100 million blockbusters of our days are overrated.
2. From hardware sales. Nintendo could easily support its developers from the tons of money the DS and Wii make. Sony and Microsoft would either have to release cheaper consoles next time, or sell them for more money. Third parties could get their money directly from the console company, for the number of hours their game was used, or whatever. I would gladly buy a $600 console if it would mean no later responsibility at all, but loads of free games. I'm poor, and while I had that amount of money once, I instead grabbed the opportunity to buy a gaming PC, because I was afraid of the razor and blades model, afraid of getting tied to a console, and paying the price of the cheap hardware later. |
In game advertising is currently not worth anywhere near enough to cover the whole industry, although projected figures for what it'll be worth in the future are ever increasing it'll never be a viable financial model for this generation.
"depending on which research organization you trust, spending on in-game advertising is supposed to grow to between $732 million and $1.8 billion by 2010, although I personally believe the current economic climate might prevent spending to reach even the more conservative prediction by the end of next year."
The U.S game industry alone is worth well over $12 billion. In-game advertising will be big bucks but not at the moment.
Hardware Sales seems like a really silly business model too, simply cause Nintendo / Sony / Microsoft would never commit to it. Whats in it for them? Except a huge risk. It could be viable as a subscription based model where you get all games for free but pay x-amount per month to access and play them, but that involves you spending money so it'll be back to piracy for you.
