Kohato brings word of a new Electronic Arts marketing strategy that aims to start monetizing game demos. According to industry analyst Michael Patcher after an EA investor visit, the publisher will start selling "premium downloadable content" prior to a game's release for $10-$15 that is essentially a longer-than-usual demo. Patcher said, "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." He also made reference to a comment from EA's CEO John Riccitiello that "the line between packaged product sales and digital revenues would soon begin to blur."
(Good Luck With That)
No comment....pirates are us!
At the bottom, there is an update from EA that say's there is no plan to charge for Demos...
Remember... Where ever you go, there you are...
ooo lol didn't see that
So...basically...paid beta?
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Its not a bad idea at all if they do it right. Taken from a steam perspective (whats a 'console'), if I had a BIG desire to play a game, I wouldn't mind paying 10-15 dollars to try it before wasting the whole 60 dollars for the full thing. After trying said paid demo, If I recieved a discout off the price of the full release because I bought the demo, that would be a big incentive for me to go for it: They get the feedback to optimize their game to make full potential profit, while I stop playing dystopia and have a new game(ish).
Rush Retrospective: Its not a bad idea at all if they do it right. Taken from a steam perspective (whats a 'console'), if I had a BIG desire to play a game, I wouldn't mind paying 10-15 dollars to try it before wasting the whole 60 dollars for the full thing. After trying said paid demo, If I recieved a discout off the price of the full release because I bought the demo, that would be a big incentive for me to go for it: They get the feedback to optimize their game to make full potential profit, while I stop playing dystopia and have a new game(ish).
I agree with everything except the $60 price tag... Let's not let the game publishers used to charging that much for a game. $50 is enough...
One thing that the Console gamers have and advantage over on us... When they are bored with the game, Which they will be because of the lack of custom content, they can SELL their old games and recoup some of the money invested. They also have the option of Renting games to see if they like it before they buy it. We can't do either because of the One time use keys that almost all PC games use or they are tied to the account that purchased it, i.e. Steam...
Well Steam does free trial invites as well to allow people who own the game to send an invite to a person who doesn't to test out the game, which i think is a pretty good system. Steam also does those weekend trials as well, but they only do it for the most popular games it seems(TF2, DOD:S, etc. etc). i don't really pay attention much to them.