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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."
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.
DVD "special editions" have always raked in the cash, so it's not surprising the game industry is copying this formula. Every industry copies things from another. I'm just worried that special editions may start containing too much extra stuff and the regular editions of games may end up being half-assed.
Thing is, which one is the limited edition? The new one or the old one? :)
One time I was browsing through the bargain bin at the local electronics store and I saw a copy of Deus Ex. This was a few years after it had come out, and I hadn't played it still, but I had heard it was pretty good so I figured I could spring $10 for it. Better still, it was a "Limited edition."
So I bring it home and fire it up, only to discover that what is "limited" about it isn't the number of copies they published, but the amount of the actual game that was on the CDs. It was essentially a 1-level demo version. I was pretty pissed that they would use the phrase "limited edition" like that.
At least the story has a happy ending, because I just threw away the CD and downloaded the full version over p2p.
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