figmentPez
Staff member
From Gamasutra via Slashdot:
Analyst: EA To Release Paid DLC Prior To Packaged Game Launches
"The PDLC would be sold for $10 or $15 through Xbox Live and PlayStation Network, and would essentially be a very long game demo,"
"I think that the plan is to release PDLC at $15 that has 3-4 hours of gameplay, so [it has] a very high perceived value, then [EA will] take the feedback from the community (press and players) to tweak the follow-on full game that will be released at a normal packaged price point."
""EA’s view is that the PDLC costs a lot less to develop (essentially, it’s the first few levels of the full-blown game), and they have the opportunity to fix whatever needs to be fixed in the packaged product that is released a few months later, whether that entails doing more of what people like or doing less of what they don’t like."
In an update to the story an EA VP spouted a lot of marketing speak for "we want to charge you as much as we can, without having you think we're nickel and diming you to death" and concluded with "None of the proposals call for charging consumers for traditionally free game demos."
Does this whole thing strike anyone else as monumentally stupid? Sadly, I think that it will probably succeed, at least for a while, but good gravy. The major game companies want us to pay to be part of a beta test / demo, pay again (full price) for the game, and then pay again for "DLC" which is already on the disc! What really gets me is that they call the paid demo a "low-cost marketing tool". Is that low-cost to the company or to the consumer? I'd say it's a new low for people to pay for a chance to be a marketing tool, but T-shirts and athletic shoes have been doing that for quite a while. Maybe I should be surprised it's taken the video game industry this long to catch on that people are willing to pay money to help sell a company's product.
Analyst: EA To Release Paid DLC Prior To Packaged Game Launches
"The PDLC would be sold for $10 or $15 through Xbox Live and PlayStation Network, and would essentially be a very long game demo,"
"I think that the plan is to release PDLC at $15 that has 3-4 hours of gameplay, so [it has] a very high perceived value, then [EA will] take the feedback from the community (press and players) to tweak the follow-on full game that will be released at a normal packaged price point."
""EA’s view is that the PDLC costs a lot less to develop (essentially, it’s the first few levels of the full-blown game), and they have the opportunity to fix whatever needs to be fixed in the packaged product that is released a few months later, whether that entails doing more of what people like or doing less of what they don’t like."
In an update to the story an EA VP spouted a lot of marketing speak for "we want to charge you as much as we can, without having you think we're nickel and diming you to death" and concluded with "None of the proposals call for charging consumers for traditionally free game demos."
Does this whole thing strike anyone else as monumentally stupid? Sadly, I think that it will probably succeed, at least for a while, but good gravy. The major game companies want us to pay to be part of a beta test / demo, pay again (full price) for the game, and then pay again for "DLC" which is already on the disc! What really gets me is that they call the paid demo a "low-cost marketing tool". Is that low-cost to the company or to the consumer? I'd say it's a new low for people to pay for a chance to be a marketing tool, but T-shirts and athletic shoes have been doing that for quite a while. Maybe I should be surprised it's taken the video game industry this long to catch on that people are willing to pay money to help sell a company's product.
), but even big daddy Blizzard isn't immune to it's siren call it seems.
