noname2200 said:
I disagree to an extent, not so much with your premise so much as with how you limited it. The point of what Malstrom's recommending isn't just "offer demoes," which goes under the "Free stuff" you alluded to. The other two consoles already do that, and while those are helpful they are NOT as powerful as what Malstrom is advocating, namely allowing us to lend others are downloadable games. It's a bit of a subtle difference, but with the first model the onus of finding/demoing games lands primarily on each player. That's fine, and I'd take it over what we have now (although curiously, I've seen some studies that say that demoes can be detrimental to sales in select circumstances). However, when you permit people to LEND their games to friends and families, you're doing two things. First, you're making it easier to get people who aren't as much into games to try new stuff, because this way the gaming enthusiast does all the work of finding+downloading+bringing the game over. The first one is especially important for people who aren't as much into gaming as we are, as not only will they not have the time to browse through and sample dozens of titles, they're also less likely to bother in the first place, or stick with it for long periods. Second, and this is the real key, when YOU lend someone a game you're not only letting them try it out (which is all a demo does). You're also implicitly recommending it to them. In other words, letting folks borrow games is a big part of the word-of-mouth approach that all marketeers will tell you is the most effective advertising strategy. Simply put, lending>>>>>than just plain demoes, for sales purposes. I think whichever company let you do this would find their digital sales spiking relatively quickly. It would be especially easy for Nintendo to do this, since their SD card system is already meant to be super-portable. They've already surprised us by letting us gift digital games, and now they've done the common-sense thing in unlocking the SD slot. I think there's a good chance that they'll permit lending, albeit with quite a few restrictions, and that we'll be able to test these hypotheses soon enough.
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I agree that lending is a good way for recommendations and word of mouth to spread. I was, in my point, trying to suggest that games would just appear on your system without going out and looking for them. Or an auto message link to immediately download. This would be interesting I think, but perhaps the lending thing would have the subtle 'this game is good, my friend' vibe that would get the recipient to believe the game was good and thus try to like it from the start.
Digital distribution has a lot of untapped potential.
Yes.
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I usually ignore any malstorm threads
as usual he makes a silly point....such a thing could potentially be disastrous for small companies selling downloadable games online
| Daileon said: The lack of free demos of WiiWare games is the most disturbing thing of WiiWare. Surely I would have bought some more games if I could try it before pay for them. |
Agreed. Getting to physically play a game instead of just watching a video of gameplay would convince more people to buy it. For the "loan" thing to work it would need some sort of time limit. But how long? It has to be sufficient time for you verify if you enjoy it, but not too much time or you won't feel the need to buy it anymore. Maybe "gifting" demos would be a good solution?
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I think it would have to work like the demos in Brawl. Each publisher could pick maybe 5-10 games and compile their demos into a demo package that you can download for free. You can try each game for 1-2 minutes, or depending on the type of game, maybe you get one level or one boss, and it's free, and you can try them once or twice each and then it becomes useless.
Or maybe it could be a Wii Channel called the Demo Channel, where you get the first minute of a game, and the game changes each day.
Wait, now that u can play games off SD card, can't u just lend ur SD card to ur friend so he can play ur wiiware/VC games?
| darthdevidem01 said: I usually ignore any malstorm threads as usual he makes a silly point....such a thing could potentially be disastrous for small companies selling downloadable games online |
And how do you figure this, exactly? Shareware and lending would tend to INCREASE sales, for the reasons I outlined in my last post. Or do you have some sort of proof that lending games leads to a long-term decrease in sales? Let's stick with retail games, if you don't mind, since we've been able to lend those out for years.
How do you support your thesis that it "could potentially be disastrous for small companies selling downloadable games online"?
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