Is Metal Gear Solid Zeros an Important Release for the Industry?
With Metal Gear Solid Zeros releasing in March it brings a question to mind, is this an important release for the industry? And you may be asking yourself why would it be? See Metal Gear Zeroes isn’t actually a full title. What it is, is a prequel to Metal Gear Solid 5: Phantom Pain. However, instead of releasing Zeroes with Phantom pain they are marketing it as a short prequel for $30 on 8th gen consoles and $20 on last gen consoles. Hideo Kojima explains this as introducing us to the new style of Metal Gear. But is that really true? Why couldn’t we just have had it in the actual release and got use to it that way? So instead of paying $60 for the game, we will need to pay 80-$90 to have the full experience from beginning to end.
This really isn’t the first time this has happened in the gaming industry though. If we look back to 2007 Sony’s Polyphony Digital did something very similar with Gran Turismo 5 Prologue by releasing a glorified $40 demo to keep their fans satisfied while they continue to work on the full installment. The scary thing is it sold 4 million copies world wide.
Oddly enough this tactic never took off in the 7th generation of consoles even though Polyphony Digital made a ton of money off of it. See, when you have a popular franchise that people really want you can get away with these type of things.
This is where Metal Gear Zeroes comes in. This is the first time we have seen this happen with story driven game. It is one thing to do it with a game that is only about gameplay, but when it is a story driven game youll need both games to experience the full package. Or maybe I’m wrong and this will be all about gameplay as well. Who Knows.
But let’s say this is a story driven game, if it takes off will it suddenly make an impact on the industry with this happening more often?
The gaming industry is a copy cat industry afterall. What makes money will certainly go around whether it is good for the gamers or not. Gaming like any other industry is a business first and foremost.
Let’s just take a look at some of the things released last generation that became popular.
Xbox Live and PSN
Xbox Live literally changed the entire market. This expanded to Xbox Live Arcade, Achievements, tracking friends, and really made consoles not only for the hardcore gamers but also made it into a social experience with friends and family across the world.
Since then we have seen PSN take notes and copying Xbox Live in many ways from trophies to now paying for online. However that isn’t to say copying is bad. In fact it creates competition and drives them to get better. As an example would be PS plus. With PS Plus you get free games each month as long as youre paying your PS Plus fee. This in return made Microsoft add Games with Gold coming sometime in 2014.
However something that changes the industry to have another company copy them isn’t always a good thing.
this is where DLC and Micro-transactions come in.
While DLC is actually a really good idea if implemented right there has been some pretty shady tactics over the years which includes Day 1 DLC. So as long as youre understanding me on this, to get the full game with many games today, you have to pay the ful $60 price and then on top of that pay for day 1 DLC making it anywhere from $70 to $100. This is kind of ridiculous since all this could have just been included in the first place.
On the other hand games cost a lot of money to make so maybe this is something they have to do to make a profit.
But what about Micro-transactions. This is another tactic to get extra money out of the gamers. But just like DLC there is a good way to do this and a bad way to do this. The two ways that has become infamous with gamers is the pay to win model and micro-transactions on day one that should have been on the disc.
Pay to win in other words would be where you play a game where you must level up to unlock weapons. However the devs make it almost impossible to level up forcing you to pay for the guns because other people are paying for them giving them an unfair advantage. This leaves for a highly unbalanced game.
Day one Micro-Transactions have certainly been on the rise recently with two popular franchises doing it as well in Forza and Gran Turismo. The sad part of all this is, both of these games already sell very well. Theyre $60 games and really shouldntt have micro-transactions on day 1,
It is ok to add them later on in their lifecycle, but don’t not include something just to make an extra buck.
With all that said both DLC and Micro-Transactions can be done correctly. I will use Dota and Killer Instinct as an example for micro-transactions and DLC.
Dota unlike many other free to play games does not require you to pay to win. However they have to have a way to make money right? What they do is make an excellent game and gives you the option to buy cosmetic items for your characters. This doesn’t change the gameplay what so ever and allows people to still have fun and support the game. This is where it pays off for making an excellent game.
Killer Instinct has a different approach to free to play and also did it efficiently. With Killer Instinct your first character is free and then you have the option of buying each character individually for a small fee. Or you can buy the full roster for $20. Each character released later on can then be bought individually as well. This allows you to pay for what you want and not what you don’t want.
Anyways after getting a little off-topic I will get back to my original point.
The gaming industry is known for copying each other once something shows it can make them money. Anything from hardware, sales tactics, to software. It doesn’t really matter if it is shady or not. What matters is them making money. So is Metal Gear Zeroes an important release?
Let me know what you think in the comments below.
