The Best Laid Plans Of The Gaming Industry

What magical scapegoat will game companies point to when no one buys their $70 games on owner-proof, piracy-free systems?
@ThiefOfHearts

ThiefOfHearts has a point there – a lot of what we’re seeing in the console and game market points to more and more restrictions on games that keep costing a pretty penny.  We can expect no backwards compatibility on the PS4, I’m not particularly confident on the Xbox 720 (or whatever), prices seem to keep going up for AAA titles that are repetitious,  though there’s a few signs of hope game companies don’t want to piss people off.

But in general, in gaming, there’s the sense of wanting to make more limits and more restrictions, at least in the console market, and with some concern in the PC market.  Of course this exists to preserve and expand profits, unless someone in the security divisions of various companies has some weird bet going on how many people they can annoy.

At the same time, with game prices going up and budgets going up, there’s the need to make, well, a lot of money.  As the next generation of consoles at least looks like it’s going to fail to impress, I’m wondering just how much is going to get made. There’s a reason I’m moving to PC.

Are these security changes going to cure the larger market problems?  Well, no.

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Further Freemium Thoughts

Freemium is a term I see thrown around a lot this day.  It's sunk into the vocabulary of media producers, programmers, and marketers quickly – so quickly I don't think we've really analyzed the repercussions of it.  As I've seen the term used more and more, as I've played Freemium games, I think we've gotten so used to it we don't think about it.

This of course gets me thinking.  Not that it's not hard to do that . . .

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