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BioWare Goes Episodic With New Games
The word from the site Computer and Videogames is that BioWare will be offering episodic content for all of its upcoming games. This includes Mass Effect, Dragon Age, and Jade Empire: Special Edition. CEO Ray Muzyka, in an interview with CVG, talks about this and many other elements of the coming year in PC gaming. From the article: "The videogame market is very cyclical and PC and console gaming have an uneasy alliance - as new console systems are released, early adopter fans move over to check those games out and as PC systems reach and surpass console systems at the end of a console life cycle, a good number of those early adopter fans move back over to PC gaming. Console gaming is huge of course, especially when you add in hardware sales, but it's hard to quantify the enormous impact of online gaming on the overall PC market - retail sales just don't capture the revenues from the increasingly successful PC MMOs as well as digital distribution and episodic gaming (which are both gaining strength year after year)."
I have no problem waiting a few extra months, even a year, and paying more upfront for a lengthier, complete game. Besides, I don't like games that intentionally leave you hanging so you'll buy the imminent next episode. Before this episodic content craze, games would at least offer some degree of conclusion because the next installment would be a few years away.
Maybe I'm being too cynical, but why else would publishers push for episodic gaming if not for more profit? Selling less content for more money is all this is about.