In 2005 when Microsoft decided that all major games
on its Xbox 360 console would be priced at $59.99 USD instead of the previous
standard, $49.99, the gaming community reacted with major uproar. Some gamers decided to hold out for Sony’s
next system, the PlayStation 3, which came a year later alongside Nintendo’s
Wii. In the end, Sony followed
Microsoft’s lead and has been charging $59.99 for most of their new disc-based
games while the Wii, with much more limited hardware specs, remained the only
console producer to stay with a $49.99 model.
It took until 2012 when Nintendo launched the Wii U, joining the high-definition
console race nearly six years after its closest competitor, that they too
introduced the $60 price point.
On Microsoft’s and Sony’s current-generation
systems, not only did the games cost more, but they were the first generation
of home consoles to boast internet connectivity for global multiplayer, social
networking and digital entertainment purchasing. The Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Store
sell games, music, subscriptions to TV and video services like Netflix and
Hulu, desktop themes, avatars for user profiles and add-on content for existing
games. To keep long-term interest in
some games, developers will continue to work on new content for the game after
its release then charge a fee for players to download and play it. Additional content has seen its share of
controversy throughout the current generation of consoles and has even become a
business model in and of itself.
Collector’s Edition versions of Bioware’s Mass Effect 3 came with a code to
download some bonus story content in a package called “From Ashes.” Without the code, the content was priced at
$10. Over the next year, three more
short adventures were planned and released by Bioware, with price tags between
$10 and $15 each. This means that for
players to experience every mission and story available within Mass Effect 3, the price tag was $60 for
the game and $50 for the story add-ons.
There are also weapon and costume packs for Mass Effect 3, totaling at $6.
The complete package for all Mass
Effect 3 reached $116. Mass Effect 3, which is an award-winning
AAA title, isn’t alone. In fact, this
amount of extra content and extra payment is entirely common in the gaming
economy. Injustice: Gods Among Us, a fighting game boasting all DC Comics
characters, already has over 20 pieces of additional content totaling in over
$60 extra as well, for a price tag of $120.
The popular music/rhythm series Rock
Band released new songs every week for players to purchase a la carte or in
bundles, priced at a dollar or two per song.
Over the course of five years or so, more than 2,000 songs were
officially released by Rock Band developer
Harmonix to purchase, which would set a price tag for the entire song library
near $3,000.
To alleviate the cost of this add-on content,
publishers started offering “season passes” for select new games: if a player
bought a season pass within a certain window of the game’s release, usually
priced around $15, they would receive most or all future released content for
free. This $15 is certainly a relief to
players who would buy characters, weapon packs, new levels and more for up to
the cost of another game, but there’s no way to tell which content will be
announced and released or if a player would want it. The $15 season pass became a leap of faith
almost immediately, even besides that it encouraged game makers to continue
withholding content at release in order to charge players later. In the above example of Injustice, the additionally-released characters have included
Martian Manhunter, General Zod, Lobo, Scorpion (of Mortal Kombat fame) and Batgirl.
If a fan had bought the $15 season pass hoping for more characters from
The Flash’s oeuvre, or maybe Red Robin, Plastic Man or the countless other DC
heroes and villains, they seem to have rolled the dice and – so far – lost. Individual characters for Injustice are available for purchase for
$4.99 apiece, so players are clearly hedging their bets when the time comes to
decide whether a $15 investment would be worth potentially only receiving one
$5 character of their interest alongside several others that aren’t.
Additional content on home consoles also paved the
way for a trend in mobile gaming, on smartphones like the iPhone and Android
and tablets like the iPad. On the mobile
platforms, developers often give away games for free and then charge as little
as 99 cents within the game for bonus content.
This bonus content includes character costumes, power-ups, additional
levels or premium currency which can be traded for those things. Players often end up spending more on in-app
purchases than they would have on a mobile game in total. Games that rely heavily on in-app purchases
are known as “freemium” titles, since they’re technically free-to-play but
gamers will almost inevitably make a purchase on a premium item to expedite
their adventure. Otherwise, the free
route takes an unimaginably longer time to acquire premium items and
currency.
In the popular freemium title The Simpsons: Tapped Out – essentially a casual city-building game
like Farmville – the premium currency
is the donut. Some buildings and
characters are only unlockable to populate players’ cities by paying for them
with donuts, which are rarely acquired for free. Donuts are sold in the app at discounted bulk
rates. Taking a quick browse through the
game’s store of buyable buildings, my city would need 2,295 donuts to buy and
build every available premium building.
A cache of 2,400 donuts costs $99.99.
There are always other buildings to construct, tasks to assign and funny
text conversations to have for free, but missing out on classic Simpsons
locations like Lard Lad Donuts, Scorpio’s Volcano Lair and Frink’s Laboratory
is difficult for any die-hard Simpsons fan.
Individual premium buildings usually cost between 100 and 200 donuts;
they can be obtained for about $10 per building.
The dependence on post-release commerce in mobile
gaming is now a major factor in the industry.
According to a March 2013 study by Hendrik Koekkoek at Distimo, “In-app
purchases generated a record 76% of all revenue in the Apple App Store for iPhone
in the US in February 2013. At least 90%
of all revenue was generated by in-app purchases in the Asian markets, which
include Hong Kong, Japan, China and South Korea.” The study is based on apps released since
January 2012 and shows that in-app purchases are now the dominant force in App
Store revenue. The average revenue per
download, or ARPD, for the top 250 apps in the United States App Store is $0.99
overall; the ARPD for the top 250 apps in Japan is $3.12. In the United States, users with an iPad were
more likely to spend more on in-app purchases than iPhone users: the study
shows an ARPD of freemium games at $2.26 on iPad versus the iPhone’s 93
cents. In-app purchases are even
climbing in terms of popularity. Just a
year prior to this study, in-app purchases were only responsible for 53% of the
App Store’s full revenue, shooting up to 76% this year – 71% from freemium
games, another 5% from paid games with in-app purchases. This leaves a paltry 24% of total revenue in
the App Store coming from purchases of paid games that have no in-app
purchases.
Unfortunately, between the success of season
passes and the rise in market share of in-app purchases, costly add-ons for
games are becoming more regular and more encouraged. Perhaps the biggest controversy of additional
content for a game is what’s known as “Day One DLC” – downloadable content
that’s released online for download on the day of a game’s launch. On the one hand, publishers strike deals with
game retailers like GameStop, Best Buy, Amazon and GAME to provide exclusive
content within a game to those retailers’ customers who pre-order the title
before its release. For example, for the
recently released Ubisoft title Splinter
Cell: Blacklist, Ubisoft offers in-game assets to all customers called the
“Upper Echelon Pack.” The Upper Echelon
Pack includes an exclusive co-operative gameplay mission, a variant outfit for
the protagonist Sam Fisher, and a gold-tinted pair of SONAR goggles. Then, depending on the retailer from which
gamers reserve their copy of Blacklist,
they can receive different in-game weapons to assist them. Wal-Mart customers receive a specialized
shotgun and boots for Sam; GameStop customers receive a tactical crossbow,
sniper rifle and additional specialized suit.
Other content is allotted to different retailers.
Publishers have long encouraged customers to
pre-order games since having a gauged interest in a title helps them allocate
different amounts of that game to any given store. In addition, when a customer buys a used game
from a store, the money spent on the used game goes back to the retailer, not
the developer or publisher. Since most
pre-order bonuses come in the format of lengthy alphanumeric codes to redeem
for their content, that code will be used and invalid for used game customers,
hence devaluing the used title over a new one.
Publishers and developers have even stated explicitly that they offer
day-one DLC as a reward to customers for their advanced interest in a game, and
for buying a new copy.
The idea of rewarding customers for purchasing new
games over used ones extended famously to online play, most notably with EA
Games. To entice customers to buy new
games instead of used ones, EA began distributing unique, one-time redeemable
codes inside game cases that unlocked online play for gamers. Once a player has bought a new game and
redeemed the code, it is no longer valid for subsequent redemption. To avoid the image of outright punishing used
game customers, EA sells the online passes digitally within their games,
usually for $10. Why $10? The difference in price between a new game
and a used one is usually between $5 and $10.
As new games go on sale, their used counterparts are discounted as
well. If a gamer buys a used game,
usually to save money, then cancels out that savings by the necessitated
purchase of an online pass, gamers have little incentive to buy used. EA hoped to turn pre-owned business back into
new business. However, game makers’
relationships with customers often become strained when policies like these
permeate their business model. So much
so, in fact, that EA decided to abandon the online pass in May 2013.
Another test of publishers’ and developers’
reputations among their customers occurs when a game is revealed to have locked
on-disc content. Locked on-disc content
is exactly what it sounds like: in-game bonus content that is already
programmed onto the disc customers have paid for, but customers must pay an
extra fee to “unlock” the content for use.
Capcom earned gamers’ ire when they charged customers to buy a
multiplayer mode for their action-horror title Resident Evil 5 and players found the download to be a miniscule 2
megabytes. This 2mb file was determined
to be an unlock code for the multiplayer mode that was already on the disc, and
many customers asked why they were paying extra for something that was already
a part of the full game release, for which they’d already paid $60. Unlike the extended game life striven for by
developers who re-enter their studios to produce new content after the release,
as was the case with Injustice and Mass Effect 3, Resident Evil 5’s
multiplayer was finished and ready to go at launch. It was even included in the package, but, as
many gamers saw it, held for ransom.
History repeated itself in 2012 when Capcom
released a fighting game, Street Fighter
X Tekken. 12 additional fighters
were ready to be played on the game disc but Capcom released them at later
dates as paid downloadable content. In
an official statement released by Capcom, the company inexplicably defended the
model as a way to avoid the temptation of re-releasing an ultimate/all-encompassing
version of the game that would include the characters released in the
future. The trouble with this defense is
the same as Resident Evil 5 – Capcom
wasn’t going to continue to produce and release future content; it was
completed at Street Fighter X Tekken’s launch.
The final expanded version of a retail game, with
its downloadable content included, isn’t an unheard-of model. Game makers know that some players will pay
for a $60 title and its add-ons as they go live for sale. However, many gamers will pass on a title
until it’s cheaper. For these gamers, publishers
will wait until the content has been released and the fervor for the title has
died down, then offer the title with the add-ons bundled on the disc for a
discounted rate. The early adopters of
the game are paying in part for the privileges of playing sooner and some
conversational or community experience, like going to a movie in the theaters
for $10 instead of waiting two years to see it for free on TV. Latecomers get the experience later, but for
a lower cost of money and hard drive space.
For example, a “Director’s Cut” disc of Heavy Rain was released that featured functionality for the motion
controller PlayStation Move, which developer Quantic Dream worked on for many
months after Heavy Rain’s release. The Move update for Heavy Rain took up several gigabytes of storage on the hard drives
of those who purchased the original release.
It also included an additional scene called Heavy Rain Chronicles that had been released as add-on content from
the original.
In Street
Fighter X Tekken’s case, saving hard drive space was also part of Capcom’s
defense, claiming they were doing customers a favor by only requiring a small
unlock file to be purchased and downloaded to a hard drive instead of a large
file containing all character assets like the model, skins, sounds etc. However, this argument is again invalid
because the content was on the disc to begin with – with no full character
downloads planned, from what was Capcom alleviating its customers? Since the content is already on the disc
ready to be played, a subsequent, more comprehensive version isn’t saving any
customer the additional hard drive space or hassle of obtaining the characters
on his or her own schedule and expense.
Perhaps the final bridge built between add-on
content and real-world commerce is when publishers offer DLC codes with the
purchase of completely unrelated products.
In early 2013, EA teamed up with Slim Jim to offer exclusive content in
its games Medal of Honor: Warfighter,
Need for Speed: Most Wanted and Dead
Space 3. Alphanumeric codes were
printed on the inside of the wrapper of specially-marked Slim Jims. These codes could be redeemed at a joint
EA/Slim Jim website in exchange for one DLC code of the customer’s choice. Dead
Space 3 offered unique weapons to give gamers an edge in combat, for
instance. Rocksteady and WB Games ran a
similar promo with NOS energy drinks when they released the smash hit Batman: Arkham City. Players could redeem codes under can tabs for
an in-game costume that made Batman look like his character in the animated TV
show Batman Beyond.
In light of these new factors – the Distimo study,
season passes, in-app purchases, pre-order bonuses, online passes, “ultimate
editions” and day-one DLC – add-ons are clearly as much a part of the games
industry as the release of a main title itself.
In-app purchases and their rise in popularity may lead to more freemium
games with awkward and repetitive pacing, but Capcom has stated that after the Street Fighter X Tekken incident,
they’re re-thinking their policy on downloadable content for future
titles. Also, as previously stated, EA
has left behind its online pass model and is starting to grant free online
access to its older titles. As the
community continues to evolve in light of recent technological advances like
console internet connectivity and virtual arcades, consumer demand and public
response will keep shaping the future of bonus content. As of late 2013, the industry is still
acclimating to the idea of additional content, but like most other invented
features, a balance should eventually strike.
Capcom.
“Street Fighter X Tekken: 12 new characters coming to consoles, PC this
fall.” Web. 2 August 2013. http://www.capcom-unity.com/brelston/blog/2012/03/05/street_fighter_x_tekken:_12_new_characters_coming_to_consoles,_pc_this_fall
Heavy
Rain. Dev. Quantic Dream. 2009.
PlayStation 3 Game Disc. Sony
Computer Entertainment, 2009.
Koekkoek, Hendrik. “How the Most Successful Apps Monetize Their
User Base.” Distimo March 2013: 4-7.
Web. 2 August 2013. http://www.distimo.com/publications
Sony Computer Entertainment. “Injustice: Gods Among Us,” “Mass Effect 3,” “Resident
Evil 5,” “Rock Band.” PlayStation Store. 2008-2013.
PlayStation Store. 3 August 2013.
Splinter Cell Blacklist. “Pre-Order.”
Splinter Cell Blacklist. 2013: n. pag.
Web. 2 August 2013. http://splintercell.ubi.com/blacklist/en-us/home/index.aspx
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