While on the iPhone app store today I ran across a puzzle game called Cogs. You slide some pieces around on a 3D object, and it had a little engineering flair to it. At a glance I saw "51 puzzles" and $0.99. Sounded good until I fully read the feature list. This was the first 10 puzzles for $0.99, and each pack of 10 puzzles thereafter was another $1, $5 in all. Well, the game was not at all appealing to me at $5, which begs the question, "Is there a market for piecemeal games?"
My gut reaction is no, especially how turned off I was by this encounter. So, I started thinking if this would work in any situation. For the consumer it seems like it would be a total win. Can you imagine the next big RPG (like FFXIII) being released as 6 $10 pieces. If you never made it past the first third of the game, you'd only be out $20 instead of $60. But why in the world would a publisher ever do that? There may be an increase in the number of people who buy the first segment, but you have to believe that a large number of the early adopters that would have paid full price would never reach $60 this way.
If I'm right, then the only way for this to work for a publisher is to charge way more the full game by charging more for each piece. Like in the FFXIII example, 6 pieces at say $20 a piece. That way people that play to half way have paid the old full price, but the ones that finish pay double the price. Well, who the hell is going to pay double the price for a full game? My point exactly.
Which brings me back to Cogs. They must know that their game is not worth $5 and are overcharging for each piece to balance out the number of people that stop after the first dollar or two. I'm not buying the idea that they are doing it for the benefit of gamers that only want to pay for what they play. Devious.
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I've heard piece-mail games be used as a potential way for publishers to combat used game sales. Imagine if you could only fight the last boss in FFXIII if you paid another $15. I'm not sure where I stand on the issue, honestly.
ReplyDeleteI prefer "expansions" as an optional, additional financial charge, but the game as a whole, i.e. the complete game being chopped up into pieces, is not good, as a sole means of attaining the game.
ReplyDeleteFable 2 was sold, and still is, to my knowledge, as an entire game and optionally, in pieces, via the XBOX Live service.
Giving the user/customer this type of choice will help balance both gaming appetites and help make a respective gaming company some extra money.
I will never be a fan of digital-only downloaded games (for any platform) that don't let me keep a copy of the game. This leads into a whole other topic entirely but is at the core of the episodic/part release games.
ReplyDeleteFable 2 has a secondary release format as "episodes." The first episode is free to let you jump into the action and see if you like the game. I consider this to be a demo which maybe all games should have. Again another issue is just buying a game based off of screenshots maybe only on the back of the box and when you get home to play it, it's a turd.
The reality is that lots of people are heading towards digital distribution (see PSP GO) and you will see different distribution methods because of this. Episodic (console) games would never have happend if they were disc-based. This is the new future and companies are just testing the waters. As far as the little guy on the Appstore, he just wants to trick people out of as much money as quickly as possible.
Agreed. This only works in digital distribution, which I'm not fully on board with anyway.
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