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DRM vs. Unfinished Games
Rod Cousens is the CEO of Codemasters, and he recently spoke with CVG about how he thinks DRM is the wrong way to fight piracy. Instead, he suggests that the games industry increase its reliance on downloadable content and microtransactions. Quoting:
"The video games industry has to learn to operate in a different way. My answer is for us as publishers to actually sell unfinished games — and to offer the consumer multiple micro-payments to buy elements of the full experience. That would create an offering that is affordable at retail — but over a period of time may also generate more revenue for the publishers to reinvest in our games. If these games are pirated, those who get their hands on them won't be able to complete the experience. There will be technology, coding aspects, that will come to bear that will unlock some aspects. Some people will want them and some won't. When it comes to piracy, I think you have to make the experience the answer to the issue — rather than respond the other way round and risk damaging that experience for the user."
CmdrTaco is a cheap hooker. He sucked my dick, and swallowed, last night and I only had to pay him a nickel! Getting to fuck his ass was only a quarter more!
Damn, I really wish I had some modpoints...
A lot of games simply don't lend themselves well to multiple replays - I find FPS titles *especially* difficult for this - Halo, etc. Once you've gone through "Campaign" mode, it's pretty goddamned boring playing through it again more than once or twice. At that point, with no DLC or online multiplayer component... how are they at all interesting? That $50-60 game disc might as well be a beer coaster at that point if the game studio says, "And that's it... no more stuff at all ever."
And even many networked games would get boring as hell if you were playing the SAME game on the SAME maps that you've always played on.
$60 is WAY too much for a console game.
That'd be true if PC games offered a multiplayer mode designed for gamepads and an HDTV or even just spawn installations. But most PC games require a copy of the game for each player. Say you have four gamers at home. Are you more willing to pay $60 for one copy of a console game or $140 for four copies of a PC game at $35 each?
or another $10-20 for functional multiplayer.
They already do: you have to buy a separate copy for each player in your household. PC games supporting multiple gamepads (like Street Fighter IV) or spawn installations (like the original Starcraft) are few and far between.
Most of my games are now on the Wii
So if a developer has finished a PC game, how do you recommend that the developer find a publisher to make a Wii port?