One of the other things that can help, is in game advertising. now this idea has turned my stomach many times, but it may be one of the only ways to keep cutting edge games affordable. now that we are hooked up to the web almost all the time, much like tv ads could be swapped out realtime, and developers paid by how many people are playing the games. this means costs could stay down, on the bright side, for awhile you might have the option of paying more for the collectors or deluxe edition where no ingame ads are present.
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