The orginal recommended retail price, and release price was set at £29.99, if individual retailers choose to reduce it that's up to them. Likewise PSN have reduced it in a promotion, you'll notice it's not reduced on Xbox Live.

Apparently games are too cheap. People will buy anything for any price if they think it's worth it. This is not even a problem isolated to AAA games. Just look at how much people are willing to pay for unfinished games on steam or games that aren't even released for quite some time like on Kickstarter. The more popular a game or its creators are the more are people willing to spend on it. Simple demand/price situation.

This is a consumer made problem that the publishers are exploiting well.

Indeed it is, though the worst culprit I've found are indie games... they're deceptive.

It's the indie bundle thing that get's me. The amount of times I've bought one of the humble bundles just because I've convinced myself it's good value. "You're getting 8 games for £6.12" I tell myself, "That's less than 80p per game". The thing is, I'm not, I'm getting 3 games because I already own 5 of them from previous bundles, none of which I've played and I don't know this because I never even check these games out... this happens all too often. I'll spend days agonising over whether I should by a game for £7 on Amazon but I'll happily throw money at these games that I never play.

Look at some of these games. When am I ever going to play Jasper's Journey, Joe Danger 2, Gratuitous Space Battle or Jamestown? Why do I own any of these?! I don't even count them on my backlog for fuck sake... I tell myself every time "oh, there's bound to be one or two in there I'll like", and I never even install them. Even the good ones, or apparently good one according to the internet; I wouldn't know. Such as Braid, Gish, or Bastion... I still haven't played them. They just sit around on my Steam account making me feel like a total tool.

I'll never pay over $10 for a demo like this. End of story.

I think some more developers will end up trying this but what it will ultimately come down to is whether the consumer bites. If they do, unfortunately this could become common practice and may extend beyond selling prologues to games and turning DLC into full games like Assassins Creed Freedom Cry. That being said I think they will also be bundled or included in Collectors Editions/ Ultimate Editions etc.

Sorry, there is nothing all that reasonable about a "AAA" budget style game in this day and age, with gameplay that could seriously last you under 60 minutes to complete the entire thing, and charging anything more than $10 for that. Not by a longshot.

It may be a good game, great even, by MGS fan standards. But overpricing incredibly short games is certainly NOT a precedent that I think other companies need to be following. It is dangerous, yes, because they could all possibly see the $$$$$ flowing in, if people are willing to pay out the ass for a game that is honestly a fraction of what they would usually get from a $60 retail game. But it's one thing to pay $10 bucks for a classic-styled side-scroller, that you could conceivable speed-run through in an hour and a half or so, compared to a big, HD, 3D game whose story only lasts about an hour or less, and charging $20+ bucks for that.

It's about as bad as what Square pulled with FFIV: The After Years on WiiWare: they charged what would amount to a full DS game's price, for what should have been no more expensive than $10-$15, just because they wanted to fleece people by using the "download new chapters" model. They could have (and should have) just as easily released the entire game in one lump for $15, and that would have felt worth it. Paying $37 while having to wait months to finally have the entire game available, felt far less worth it, even though it WAS a fun game.

This Ground Zeroes model, to me, doesn't sound all that more appealing.

Ah, I didn't knew about your personal situation.. I probably spend the same amount of money every month but thats more cause I don't have the time to play games much (barely 2 hours in 2 weeks) I'm in the creative sector, so I believe a creator and its publishers should get what he deserves for his creation.. heck I still buy music from itunes, while I also have a streaming spotify account.. I just don't like these first world problems of saying games are too expensive.. they are not expensive seeing the amount of work that goes into one and most importantly.. its an optional entertainment form.. if you don't like it, you have different options.. too bad if its a game series you like but still nobody is forcing you to buy it at that price..

Games are already shorter then they used to be with these 6 hours campaign games.. We still bought them. its a pretty natural progression..

That is true, and if anything I'm part of the problem there. I've gone from supporting games like Vexx, GTA: San Andreas, Psychonauts, Ninja Gaiden and Star Wars: KOTOR on the original Xbox, all of which would easily hit the 25 hours of gameplay for me. Now I'm actively playing games like Vanquish, Lolipop Chainsaw, Splatterhouse, Alice: Madness Returns and Spec Ops: The Line... all of which are around the 6-7 hour mark. In many ways I guess I've moved towards shorter more concise experiences but I'm also more limited in play time so I think this is, at least in part a concious choice for me. That said there's a point where it stops being a concise experience and becomes a rip-off I feel.

As for my question, if you wouldn't mind, I would genuinely like to know what you feel here. Do you feel supporting games doing this; Having preludes and DLC, and games released in episodic form; do you feel this is a good thing for you? Is this something you want in games, to make them more digestable and more able to more risky concepts that may not get funded otherwise? Or is this a compromise you feel you must make to have games because it's the way the industry is going? Or perhaps you have another take on it. Also I'd be interested to know your opinion as someone working in the industry, does that change your opinion at all? Thanks.

Exactly why I haven't played it 

I understand the game is well made and all that. But for that amount of content, $10 is as much as I am willing to pay

I was talking with the clerk at the store I frequent for games. He told me that he put about 50 hours into Ground Zeroes. Replaying the game,getting better ranks, doing the extra ops.