Four Add-ons Planned For Sins of a Solar Empire

With the first add-on pack for Sins of a Solar Empire arriving in just under a month, publisher Kalypso Media has announced that three more add-ons are on their way as well. Gamespot has an early look at the first add-on, Entrenchment, and a couple of additional screenshots are available at Shacknews. The game's creative director, Craig Frazer, also explained their reasoning for making small expansions rather than large ones: "If PC gaming is to survive, the industry will need to be open to change. We went out on a limb with our anti-DRM stance and it paid off really well. We tried an unusually long beta period and that worked as well. Micro-expansions are just another experiment we are trying out to improve the market. These small expansions give us the opportunity to provide highly focused, high quality content within a reasonable time frame. Micro-expansions also reduce the development risk associated with 1-3 year cycles. With lower risk, we can be far more progressive in terms of gameplay and content."

Comments

Don't tell EA

[Wiarumas]

Uh oh, $15 (approx) "Micro" expansions. Don't let EA find out about this or else Walmarts will have to double in size to handle all those Sims addons.

Re:Don't tell EA

[Wiarumas]

From TFA: £7.99 = $12.91 (hey, maybe I'm taking into consideration the possibility of the USD taking a dive)

Re:Don't tell EA

[mjwx]

Uh oh, $15 (approx)

Stardock have said from the outset that each will have a US$10 price tag, so if you're talking in AUD you'd be correct but seeing as you mentioned Walmart I think that you aren't Australian. Seeing as Stardock is an entirely US company all transactions via Impulse are in USD (8 GBP is just an approximate conversion for our pommy friends), please see here for the actual price.

Don't let EA find out about this or else Walmarts will have to double in size to handle all those Sims addons.

EA already charges A$50 for the same level of content in the Sins expansion packs. Heck, EA would have charged A$50 for the content I've already gotten for free since purchasing Sins of a Solar Empire, which cost me A$77 for the collectors edition and postage which would also defy EA's A$90 minimum price tag.

Re:Don't tell EA

[mjwx]

From TFA: £7.99 = $12.91

OK as I said before Stardock is a US company and all transactions are in USD. 8 British pounds are an approximate conversion of $10 USD. Please refer to the Stardock store for more details.

Periodic add-ons can be great

[MillenneumMan]

I recall the game "Total Annihilation", a popular real time strategy game from the 90s. The publisher, CaveDog, periodically would add new units to the game (something like one a month or so). While I also like it when the publisher includes map editors, it is still good to get new material from the original developers.

Re:Periodic add-ons can be great

[GenP]

Except those new TA units/maps were free.

Micro-price?

[Alex777]

I only hope these micro-expansions also have a micro-price.

What they ought to do is offer one pack of expansions that includes all the expansions released up to that point, with appropriate discounts if you already have a subset of the included content. I can't see a la carte expansions ever working.

Re:Micro-price?

[Raijen]

According to the preview at IGN: "The first micro-expansion is called Entrenchment, and Ironclad plans on selling it for about $10, which is a third of what a typical expansion costs."

So four expansions for fourty dollars sounds fairly inline to me at least.

Re:You can't knock Kalypso Media

[nschubach]

Anti DRM unless you want patches (and maybe addons...) and you can overlook the DRM they include with Stardock Central and Impulse... Other than that, sure. They are TOTALLY anti-DRM. /sarcasm

Re:You can't knock Kalypso Media

[Jephir]

As far as I know, Impulse does not contain any DRM. You can install Sins of a Solar Empire from Impulse, then uninstall Impulse and Sins will continue to work fine.

Re:You can't knock Kalypso Media

[WhatAmIDoingHere]

The only thing I needed to do to download patches was set up an account on their website with my CD key. When I install the game the key is not needed.

What DRM?

If one of the future expansions

[rk]

Includes a good ground combat battle system, I will no longer worry, for I am already dead, and in Heaven.

"If PC gaming is to survive?"

[ElMiguel]

Have WoW's 10+ million subscribers suddenly decided to abandon PC gaming?

Seriously, when has PC gaming been a bigger industry than in the last few years?

Re:"If PC gaming is to survive?"

[Draek]

Have WoW's 10+ million subscribers suddenly decided to abandon PC gaming?

One game does not an industry make.

Seriously, when has PC gaming been a bigger industry than in the last few years?

The issue, I believe, is not about size per se but rather the fact that DRM is pissing off enough customers that the *stability* of it is in question. And once the market is deemed too unstable, the shrinking customer base is almost sure to follow.

They are

[Sycraft-fu]

$10 is the price I see for it on Impulse. Given the normal expansion price of $30-40 (for example Wrath of the Lich King is $40) that seems pretty reasonable.

"Blizzard gaming" is not in any danger

[Scott Kevill]

PC gaming is.

If anything, WoW harms the PC gaming market more than it supports it. Gamers spending all their time (and money) on WoW are less likely to buy other PC games.

Re:You can't knock Kalypso Media

[Asm-Coder]

I don't know if it has a sig.bin file, but I do remeber installing it. I didn't need to enter a cd key or anything else. I just popped in the cd, clicked next a few times, took the disk out and started playing. No hassle whatsoever.

Brad Wardell, the author of "Sins" is partly responsible for the "Gamer's bill of Rights" that keeps getting posted on /., and has a nice article explaining why he chose to forgo drm in "Sins", which I can't find right now, but I'm sure someone will post a link to.

Re:Micro Expansions

[Dutch Gun]

Sounds like an attempt to milk the cash cow to me.

"Sins of a Solar Empire", while moderately successful, is hardly a "cash cow". I believe you've mistaken this article for the one in which EA is selling an expansion to Spore almost immediately after its launch, with another shortly to follow.

I suspect the only way these micro expansions will work out is if they also come with a micro price.

$9.95 micro enough for you?

Re:You can't knock Kalypso Media

[mjwx]

Does Sins have a sig.bin file like GalCiv? I'm 99.999% sure it does....if so, it has DRM. That file is a hardware ID that will de-activate the software if any significant hardware changes, or you copy the files to another machine without running the install to "activate" the program again. You cannot play it if you alter this signature file in any way. Try renaming it and see how fast it asks you to activate it. That is the definition of DRM by every standard. The only difference is that they hide it from you and tell you it's not there.

For the absolute last time, Gal Civ and Sins do not have DRM, they can be run, moved and installed independently of Impulse. The activations programs are called up by Impulse (Stardock Central) when updating and not by the game and if it queries to see what hardware it runs on before the game runs then that is a serious failure because I've moved a GalCiv installation from my Gaming rig (AMD X2) to my laptop (Intel Pentium M) and shock horror, it didn't stop me from starting the game (as DRM would). The only problem I had was that my laptop did not have the 1600x1200 resolution I was playing it at on my gaming box. Did you consider that it has the hardware information written a less nefarious purpose? perhaps to let the game know the maximum resolution of my monitor is perhaps? As sceptical as EA and their ilk have made me about PC gaming I cant find what Stardock are doing wrong here?

Also I can install Gal Civ and Sins from the optical media without installing StarDock Central or Impulse and play them, I just cant update the games.