As I sit here typing up this blog entry, there are a lot of games coming out between last week and this week that I’ve been dying to play. There is only one thing in the world stopping me from running out to the nearest store and blowing a wad of cash on them, and that is the cash. Now for those that have read this blog you should know by now that I’m not the biggest fan of digital distribution, I’m a retail copy kind of guy. Last night a thought occurred to me about a possible use of DD and an interesting way of selling games from now on. I’ve commented negatively on buying games piece by piece, but what if it could be done in a good way?
In my opinion one of the biggest barriers of buying games is the cost of entry, let’s face it games are not cheap and getting more expensive it seems. How many people wait for a sale instead of going out to buy a $60 game new? Many games these days ship with numerous modes that you may not ever play. I own GTA 4 and haven’t once gone online to play multiplayer, now that doesn’t mean I’m against it, just that it wasn’t a big deal for me. What if you could split a $60 title into several parts allowing the person to buy what they want now and buy the rest later? The game would be finished; shipped and could be bought in store, or you could just have access to all the single player content or multiplayer for less money. I can say from experience that it is hard to put down $60 for a game, but it is easy when it is only $30. The one feature that I cannot stress enough is that you may buy whatever content you past over for the game at any time; that you have the same rights with the copy as you would a retail version. Also this is not about splitting up content within the game systems, the developer can’t split the single player content into multiple content.
With the economy in the shape it is in, the games industry is bound to be hit by it soon (or has already started). Any way to make it easier for gamers to get access to game content should be considered.
Josh.
