| NiKKoM said: We have seen it with the GT prologue games.. And when people still buy it at that price... Good for the publisher.. We'll probably see more episode games in the future with a season pass like the telltale games.. Its better for a developer to spread out the risk in this difficult times for gaming with developers and publishers not making enough money. |
That may be so, but I genuinely don't care what's good for the developers and publishers... I'm old fashioned when it comes to entertainment and I genuinely believe that consumers come first and what's good for the consumer is all that matters. If the developers and publishers want to make money, make a good product that I want to buy and I will buy it. There's a prime example here... Minecraft.
Minecraft is a perfect example of a game like this because it's a great game with small but focused development. It's on PC so suffers with ease of piracy, so much so that I pirated the game myself. The game impressed me though, and I bought it. In fact I bought it during beta, so I even got it at a reduced price. I took part in the community discussions on the forums and saw the feedback put into effect. I recommended the game to friends and family. Six people are now playing this game, having paid for it, because of my recommendations; including my 51 year old mother who loves it. We've bought merchandice including little plushes, mugs, and a bag from websites like ThinkGeek, all under licence so supporting the developer.
This is how games work. You make a good game and people will pay for it.
I've not pirated a game in well over 2 years now. I never feel the need any more because games are so cheap on PS3 and Steam that I can literally get 20-40 hour experiences for under £5. I've so many games I can't begin to tackle my backlog. That said the last three games I pirated; Minecraft, Dragon Age: Origin, and Plants Vs. Zombies, where all games I ended up buying in the end... the last two I've double dipped on.
My belief is that publishers and developers trying to squeeze so much money out of people is only going to push them away.
Here's a list of games from Amazon:
Batman: Arkham Asylum, Splatterhouse, InFamous, Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, Saints Row: The Third, Grand Theft Auto IV, Kane & Lynch 2, Lolipop Chainsaw, Darksiders, Bioshock, Spec Ops: The Line, Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Brutal Legend, Sleeping Dogs, Uncharted 1, 2 and 3, Vanquish, Need For Speed: Hot Persuit, Fallout 3...
These are all on Amazon, Play.com or available though eBay buy it now stores for less than £10. Most of them are around £6-7 now. That means you could have all 20 of these games for around £150. If I can have all of these experiences for that low a price, why would I pay the same in peicemeal for one game; including all it's DLC, added content, prologue disc and more... hell, even if we only pick 10 of those games, that's still about £80, the current price for the collectors edition of InFamous: Second Son. So why are we paying so much for new games. Surely you can find a few games in the list above you've not played.
My point is; it's not our job to support developers and publishers. It's their job to create compelling entertainment that makes us want to spend money. Now, I really want to get a PS4 and InFamous Second Son. I've seen the first hour on a let's play and it look genuinely great, but when I can get so many games on my PS3 for the price of a single game on PS4, and I've not even considered what the price of the new console is worth... I simply can't justify it. Ground Zeroes is the same; for the same price I could pick 4 games from the list above and have change left over.
This move by the industry will only serve to harm it as people collectively decide it's simply not worth handing over their hard earned money.
