Mystery Code Included with Darksiders Gets You...

A free game?!  Damn, that was worth waiting for.  It was just announced on the Darksider's community website.  Yeah, a brand new copy of Red Faction Guerrilla.  If that doesn't say thank you to your customers, I don't know what does.

On the topic of generous updates, I have to remark on the work being done by iPhone app developers.  I just recently received updates for Angry Birds and Moto X Mayhem that nearly doubled the original content I paid for, for free.  I figured bug fixes would be common updates, but I've been pleasantly surprised by the number of enhancements and content updates without asking you to pay for a whole new game.

Buying Games in Parts?

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.