The Rise Of Limited Edition Games

John Callaham wrote to mention a piece on Gamecloud discussing the emphasis on 'special' editions of new game titles. From the article: "Games that have some extras in limited releases have been a part of the industry for a few years now. Just last year limited collector's versions of the MMORPGs Everquest 2 and World of Warcraft were released that were packed with extra stuff, from art books to extra DVDs and more. Electronic Arts released a special edition of Medal of Honor Pacific Assault last fall with lots of behind-the-scenes material and an extra weapon not in the regular edition. Midway released a special edition of Mortal Kombat: Deception last fall with extra content as well as the full version of the first Mortal Kombat game. This fall, however, game publishers are releasing more special editions of games than ever before alongside the 'regular' versions of games and they typically cost at least $10 more and in a couple of cases even more than that."

Comments

What's wrong?

[Walker_Boh_Druid]

I see nothing wrong with this. Is someone wants to pay extra so that they can have some artwork, demos, developers notes, previews or "The making of:" videos, let them. If someone wants to leave all that stuff out, and just enjoy a game, that's fine.

Re:What's wrong?

[toad3k]

Yeah I agree with this. Extras are one thing. But when you change the gameplay...

Supposedly black and white 2 is going to have extra creatures for people who buy the special editions. If that is the case, I'm not sure I want to buy a crippled version for the normal price. What if I like it, I'm not going to go out and buy the special version afterwards to get the full experience.

And I definitely don't want to risk paying above and beyond the normal for a game that may not live up to its hype in the first place.

When I see stuff like this happening, it kind of makes me want to sit on the sidelines and see where it all goes before I act.