The Game OverThinker Overbytes - A La Carte

Something needs to be established: The idea that game manufacturers are going to lower the price of something just because it is download only, is a delusion. Taking out the manufacturing costs of a retail hard copy does NOT mean it will cost less for the gamer to buy, it just means a higher margin for the game developer.

Sorry if this breaks the hearts of some people acting as if GameStop is the problem in this equation, but this is all download distribution has ever and will ever be for gaming: You will still be paying the same price for the game as a download as you would for a retail title, even if it is broken into its component parts.

This would benefit gamers.

I've never thought of it that way before. It's not a bad idea.

I agree that it makes sense to sell the games in parts and make the price for the individual parts add up to more than if you bought the whole game outright. Gamers win because they could potentially buy more games. Publishers win because more people would buy at least part of their games and those who end up buying the whole thing in pieces would pay more than if they bought the game outright to begin with. This kind of reminds me of Walking Dead. A gamer could by a season pass or buy each episode individually. I think any new pricing model takes time, but this seems like it will become a predominant pricing model in the future.

Kind of the reason I like Playstation Plus, I can download a free full 1 hour trial, and if I want the game all I have to do is throw down the cash and "BOOM!" Game unlocked. But yea I do like the idea of buying just the multiplayer portion of "Call of Duty" or "Battlefield" because to be honest, the single player sucks.

I think you've been talking about this before this episode. Definitely remembering it in an episode of TGO, though can't remember the exact episode. Quite frankly, I'm puzzled as to how a vast majority of game companies have not jumped on this idea.

Yep, I'm going to stick to over-bytes for now on.

i'd like to see this happen too. i mean seriously most of the time i do only want the single player for games and i don't need all the rest tacked on so it'd be nice to only pay for what i want.

I don't know about this, if this became the standard for the game industry games like CoD (just an example) wouldn't sell it's single-player story, potentially making it online only. Why bother making a single player story if nobody buys it? Games like Spec Ops wouldn't sell it's online at all, leaving the studio with a massive hit.

I saw you discussing this on twitter the other day, and you are right: there is no downside. Lots of times if I play a shooter or whatever I'll play the single player and be done with it. Sure, the multiplayer is there if I want it, but if I don't want it it's just wasted space on my hard drive and money wasted buying the whole game when I just wanted the singleplayer. I hope in the next gen they do this, it would get me to buy a lot more games.