THQ: Console Gaming May Switch to Free-To-Play

[xerroz]

This format is good for the companies...very very bad for the consumers. You get even more crappy rushed games and you end up pay double of what you would pay now

 

[jrnyfan]

The problem has been mentioned multiple times, the problem is that games don't have replay value and don't take that long to finish.

Anyone remember Zelda or Link on the NES? Final Fantasy 1? You remember how long they took to beat? Months! You could shave it down to weeks if you knew the game but then you still took months because there was replay value there.

There is no replay value in anything anymore. The last game I had replay value in was Battlefield 2 and Battlefield Bad Company 2 but that's multiplayer, the single player either didn't exist or was 5 hours long.

Design a game worth $60 and I will pay it.

 

[wonspur]

People buy games from THQ still? damn.. news to me.

 

[thechief73]

^+1 THQ has been making bad games for a while and ruining once good ones. Not surprised they came up with this BS idea.

If all forms gaming comes to this I'm done, thats the last straw. DLC and Ripp-off launch prices have almost broke the camels back anyhow.

 

[Supertrek32]

This is a great business model for the consumer, which means it'll never catch on. People will realize a game's crap before spending the money which means less money for the vast majority of developers out there.

Sad, but true.

 

[Guest]

You guys are complaining about games costing $60, we here in Australia are paying $109 for a new release, considering the exchange rate atm is around 0.95C. They are ripping us blind here!

 

[teknomedic]

THQ games already drop to that price pretty quickly

 

[shanky887614]

this reminds me of heavenly sword

a mate of my stepdads told us its not a game you buy
its one you rent

bassically long story short he finished it in under 8 hours

 

[Kahless01]

this is a good idea. woulda saved me a ton of money on cod:MW2. that game is absolute garbage. 60$ was way too much for it. if it was in the 20$ bin i might have been happier. would be great for so many games. if you have to give your shit away free and rely on microtransactions to bring in the cash as people fall in love with your game and want to play more then youll make better games, hopefully. there is way too much fluff on the market now. especially for the Wii. other than new super mario brothers, SMG:2 and metroid other M there hasnt been anything on that thing for damn near a year.

 

[fyend]

THQ needs to read their own statement, its clear... switch to being a budget game company and your sales will spike. Your games aren't worth $60. Drop them to $19.99 across the board and you'll be a lot more successful. Stop trying to compete with the big boys, you're wasting your time and sending your company into bankruptcy.

 

[Kryan]

so what they are doing is practically selling us a slightly longer demo version of the game for upwards of 20 dollars?

weren't demos free up until now?

 

[danglang23]

I'd like to think that Brian Farrel is underestimating gamers and that people will realize they are being scammed. But when Xbox live avatar items (like costumes and the little RC warthog) are selling like hot cakes I have to admit people probably won't wise up. They'll buy up all his overpriced down loadable content as if they had real value.

Speaking of value, when are we going to be able to sell our download able content? You can sell and trade in used games but downloaded content is literally worthless.

 

[decrypted]

Sooo what I originally paid $60 for, I can now pay $40 and an additional $40 - $60 for the rest of the same game, such a great deal. Glad we're saving money. Not to mention being pretty much forced to buy the extra content just so you can play online with friends. I just hate paying $60 for a game I can beat in 6 hours. Also, if the main focus of the game is MP, then make the game just that, instead of cutting the SP short (MW2 a great example).

 

[Glacier]

It looks like DLC is about to become much worse.

 

[demonhorde665]

this sounds just absolutely terrible, i don't want to pay 60bucks for the crap many companies call afulklgametoday , why on earth would i pay 20-30 for 1 4th or half a game only to turn around and pay more than 100 to get the "full"game, THQ can piss off

 

[f-14]

$40-$60 is robbery, unless it hits me right in the heart at the store on the display, i wait until it's $30 or less in a year or two to buy. kind of like movies and going to see them at a theater, it has to be one of the best out there that year to make me pay over priced rates. and this type of game structure is more like blizzards new plan in taking a game, and breaking it into small chunks and selling it piece by piece, instead of selling the whole game, and the fans love it so much they want you to extend it with new units, maps and missions. this is 20th century television marketing scheme on keeping people enlisted by using episodes of a tv show series, but that was free and advertising is what paid for that marketing role model. how many games can developers afford to make then scrap just because the user base didn't pay the interest on the loan they took out to make the game? ya i don't see game developers surviving this marketing scheme as NBC has scrapped more shows in the last 20 years in 1-3 episodes then any game developer could hope to afford. a prime example is the software market, thousands upon thousands of programs and the majority of them cost 1.99 and suck.

and here's another thing, these poor console gamers have tiny hard drives that are priced like ipods with 15 year old hard drives in them, these people play more then 10 games, and their hard drives are full, how you going to make them give up a good full game over your chunk of junk mod expansion?
also the games are not transferable, when i get sick of the game i can't give it to younger relatives or friends after i'm done with it.you can walk in to any video game store and get old or used games, heck even the flea markets have games from today all the way to 40 years ago and for dirt cheap.

 

[Raidur]

Sounds like an excuse to charge MORE for the SAME content.

 

[fyend]

Just a desperate ploy by THQ to try and draw attention to itself. Nice try losers, you'll be out of business in under 2 years.

 

[Blessedman]

stack em deep and sell em cheap. I mean say you spent 20 million on development of a AAA game @ a $20 price point you need only sell 1 million copies to recoup your funds and another 1 million to pay everyone not involved directly with the game (advertising, manufacturing, executives). Then it's another million units to fund the next project (at minimum). This is just getting to retail, now retail is going to mark up this $20 game by at least 50-75% if not 100%. So retail you are looking at $30-40. If they knew that they could generate 1 million sales out of the gate then they could double their asking price to $40 ($60-80 retail) and pay for all cost up front. Then over the course of the next year lowering the price of the game (at any percentage really) to fund the next project. So a $60-80 game isn't that hard to understand (at retail), but to sell the game through a digital distribution model for that same price point (where there is minimal retail markup and a lowered manufacturing cost) is complete BS.

 

[sincreator]

The biggest problem that I can see, is that alot of companies will just hold back alot more of the final product.(Like they allready do) Take Transformers: War for cybertron for example. The game came out with ONLY 8 stock maps, and cost $60. Then about a month later they released a 2 map map pack a few skins and a couple of maps for co-op players VS. bots. Then about a month later they released another map pack with 5 multiplayer maps. Both packs cost $10 each, and you HAVE to have them to play online resonably. They put these DL packs right into the ranked list, so if you refuse to DL the packs and one of those maps comes up you get kicked. Basically forceing people to have to buy them to get no hassle. Also think about Gamefly customers, and people that only want to rent games. In order to play the full thing they have to DL the content and then once they bring the game back it's the same as they lit the money on fire. BS IMO, when those maps/content were most likely done before the game even released, but they decide to hold them back for the extra $$$.

Now this is only the tip of the iceburg. Before these map packs came out, there was 20,000 players. After the first map pack those numbers dropped to 8,000. lol. Then when the second map pack came out it dropped to 2,000. Am I missing something here? I thought that map/content packs were supposed to be introduced the help keep a player base and draw in new players/sales for the full game. Obviously not in this case. Basically they are killing the game. On the PC it's even worse. They have released NOTHING at all for the PC version. No patch, no maps, NO CONTENT PERIOD. This stuff for free could of added alot more players and sales, but they can't figure out how to deliver the content. HAHA. Make a filefront account, and put it up on your site. Gee hard stuff that is...oh wait they can't charge money that way. So they decide to not do anything at all.(Activision/Highmoonstudios BTW)

A few years ago most games came with atleast 12-15 maps for multiplayer right out of the box. Now the games get released with 8/9 maps, and they hold the others back to make extra off the content down the road. Even Halo Reach only came with 9 maps. lol. The bungie/Halo fanboys will end up having paid $60-$70 for the not-so-full game and then have to dish out another $40-$50 to get the maps they left on a flash drive somewhere. So in the end they end up paying $100-$120 for the "full" game. I'm glad that I hate Halo BTW.

The way I see it, game developers need to start releasing single player games for $30, and if they want extra money release expansions that are almost as big as the original game itself for $10 bucks. No game that has only 5-10 hours gameplay is worth $60 anyway IMO. Then have multiplayer+single player games cost $60 still and release with all the content in one shot. If down the road they want to release a map pack/content pack do it for free to help the community survive and also help to drive the sales for the game up by adding more value.

I understand this is a business, but this is getting ridiculous.