Rare Still Leery of Downloadable Content

GamesIndustry.biz reports on comments by Rare lead designer Gregg Mayles, who has gone on record saying that Rare will only do downloadable content if there is a need. The popularity of their Viva Piñata title notwithstanding, the company has no interest in making content if there is no interest. From the article: "'We've got plenty of ideas for what we can do with downloadable content because Piñata is such a unique game ... But the jury is still out.' However, the team does still see the potential of Xbox Live and the push for downloadable content, with Viva Piñata offering interaction between players over the service. 'That vision of sending Piñata to each other was around before Xbox Live even existed. That's why [Viva Piñata] began life on a handheld PDA device because we wanted one machine that could communicate with another,' revealed Mayles."

Comments

Re:Oh come on.

[twistedsymphony]

It think it's important to note that with the exception of sports games (which generally have gamer pics for every team) Kameo and PDZ both rank in the top 5 for games with the most number of items available for download. Kameo has 38 items available for download. From strategy videos to gamer pics, themes, and even skin packs that are worth less then horse armor and perfect Dark Zero has 15 items.

You'd think they'd be all over offering content for for a game where it actually makes sense. Perhaps they're soured by poor sales of Seasonally themed Kameo skins...

Protip: maybe people don't want to buy insignificant chachkis for a mediocre game that only takes a few hours to complete. Maybe, just maybe, you'd have more success selling downloads of things that, I don't know, improve, extend, or refresh the gamplay?