Comments on: Games Trail Music in iTunes style Revenue Model

By: r4 ds

r4 ds — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 13:55:26 +0000

Thanks for the article and Adrian thanks for the link

By: The Songnumbers Team

The Songnumbers Team — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 17:58:03 +0000

We really liked your blog and this info on the ad-supported model…we believe in it enough to have just pushed out BETA 2 of our site!

Sincerely,
The Songnumbers Team

By: Adrian Crook

Adrian Crook — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 21:03:10 +0000

Here’s an article on A World of My Own and their Rent To Own (i.e. iTunes) system.

http://steamreview.org/posts/awomo-rto/

By: Adrian Crook

Adrian Crook — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 23:40:56 +0000

Hi Chris,

1) You wouldn’t need constant access to the web to implement a pay per play scheme. It could check periodically and update your billing, perhaps. Or you could pre-purchase credits that could be debited in an offline scenario.

2) Pirates will always find a way to beat any scheme, but if you can make it as easy or easier to purchase a product at the right psychological price point, I believe most people will choose to be on the right side of the law.

Speaking only from personal experience, I went from being a massive music pirater in the late 90s (thousands upon thousands of tracks) to buying all my music via iTunes today. And that’s pretty much solely because the price is low enough and iTunes is the easiest way for me to get consistently high quality, error-free music.

By: Chris

Chris — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 21:23:59 +0000

You bring up an interesting idea, but currently, most free to play games have to have a constant internet connection to keep tabs on how long you play and if you are using any hacking software. I like to play my Nintendo DS on the plane and bus, but won’t have access to the net there… Also, changing the revenue model for single player games like puzzle quest or touch darts won’t stop piracy. If pirates have the capabilities to rip and load games, they certainly can uncap the pay to play restrictions on the game, assuming the entire game is on the disc.

By: ZG

ZG — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 03:09:29 +0000

Good writeup, but if there’s one thing the currently incredibly successful gaming industry doesn’t need to do is to adopt business models from the currently crashing-and-burning record industry.

The introduction of the ‘iTunes model’ hasn’t stopped the bleeding for the record industry, far from it. One could even argue that by changing the emphasis the way it has (singles and ringtones) it’s devalued the product and hurt the industry even more.

I agree that Steam and episodic content are a great way to go, but the games industry is making money hand over foot so I don’t think any comparison to iTunes and the record industry fits.

By: steve

steve — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 02:25:10 +0000

W0rd – thanks for expressing this. Remember back in the days of shareware games? Like, Doom, Quake, Duke Nukem 3D. You paid about $15 for the first third of the game, then $40 for everything else (usually, the first third was given away for free, but these days, that’d be tough to justify). I liked those days.

This is all about minimizing consumer risk. I recently bought 2 games for $40 (I won’t name which…) and ended up hating both of them (..but..one of them was BioShock). This sucks, and because of those experiences, I’m a lot less likely to buy full-priced games now. If I could just pay $15 for the first third of BioShock (OVERRATED!!!), and found out that I didn’t really like it, then fine – I lost $15. No biggie. Low risk.

But these days, publishers expect people to pay $60…maybe I’m just getting jaded, but that’s a sizable investment for something I’ll probably end up not liking (if I can dislike BioShock..the possibilities are endless). So, I’m a lot more wary about buying full games these days. Why not make that $15 off of me – and maybe I’ll go for your $40 deal afterwards – rather than letting me spend that $15 on drinks (something I know I’ll enjoy)?

Bite-sizing. A lot more friendly to the frugal, and jaded (read: older, has more spending power), consumer.

By: Jojo

Jojo — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 00:24:30 +0000

and do you REALLY want to be paying to play? I would hate to have to pay on a time based system, it wouldn’t give people the chance to enjoy their games, imagine getting a book from the library with a charge by hour on it….

By: Jojo

Jojo — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 00:22:06 +0000

I think your logic is flawed, Music and games are not comparable in that sense. I think it would be fairer to compare games to movies, name a service that sells you portions of a movie at a time. Episodic games are comparable to tv shows, to provide an itunes like service for games would not be possible its like selling portions of a song.
Sorry your whole argument is illogical, who goes out and samples a section of the song they like ‘oh id like from 1:35 to 1:45 i love that chorus’
and most likely people but music on itunes and other services after hearing the song (on radio or word of mouth etc) how are people going to buy the “portions of games they like” unless they’ve played it before in which case…they have bought it? if u want a bite size version of games they are available as ‘demos’
piracy….piracy will exist, people will find a way to get around it, and until the industry realises that the price is the major reason for piracy (i think a lot more people would get legit versions of games if they could pick one up for half the price they are available atm)

By: blog free online game » Blog Archive » Why Don’t Games Come In Smaller Portions? [Alternative Nation]

Mon, 19 Nov 2007 23:21:11 +0000

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