Pachter Says Next-Gen Games Will Remain $60, But DLC To Become Rampant

So, you could say that games technically won't be $60 (due to the DLC prices), and also that selling people an incomplete product will become rampant.

I'm being a huge cynic here, but this is starting to annoy me.

Friends of mine and myself have been known to protest buying a game for leaving out important story missions , having on disc day 1 dlc, and overly invasive always online drm. Now where I do think the marketing for these items has been done correctly is with the example of BF3 premium. DLCs are worked on after the game, you get them early, you get premium servers, premium assignments, and all for a lower cost one time payment.

This doesn't surprise me one bit. Folks have swallowed DLC this generation, why not step it up, and push the boundaries next generation.

If folks are willing to pay for an inferior product, and then pay some more to upgrade that product; what do the devs have to lose?

I don't agree with this at all, but apparently consumers do.

I blame everyone who buys Call of Duty.

Do I get a free pass if I stopped buying them after CoD W@W?

I've always felt that despite how formulaic and short the CoD single-player experience is, at least is complete, never needing DLC to be full, unlike travesties like Asura's Wrath.

The real question here is are consumers going to put up with it if it gets really bad? If they managed to get the ending in Mass Effect 3 to change, then maybe there's still a bit of hope if they direct their anger properly.

Please, enter your credit card number. A $1.25 service fee will charged per 15 minutes of game time.

And it charges you while in lobby too

If they subsidized game cost by showing/playing adverts during loading times or lobbies, hell even 30 minute intervals so I can piss or grab another beer, I'd be ok with it.

I'm not generally a believer in slippery slope arguments, but in this case, I think that's a ****ing awful idea. Well, the idea is good, but how far it would be pushed is terrifying... just look at cable TV.

Remember back in the day, when cable first came out, and you paid for it so that there were no commercials? Yeah, me neither.

The average runtime of TV shows has gone down by over two minutes over the last twenty years, to make room for ads. Professional sports (and even nationally televised college games) have TV timeouts that stop the game for commercial breaks. It's a little more ridiculous.

Well it's already happening, at least in largely in the mobile market (not much console wise, you can find it in some f2p pc games too). Almost every free app has popups and/or a monetized store with powerups/pointless crap. If you pay for the game, the store is still there w/ pay to win/cosmetic/etc items but the ads go away. It's not that bad and it gives me a chance to try out the (in some cases) full game without the risk of my money.

Perhaps it's different with mobile market and the dev costs being substantially lower to a AAA console title, but if ad revenue is based on traffic and a franchise like CoD has millions (hundreds of millions?) of players every month it should pay for itself.

I would support it if the revenue from advertising completely paid for DLC, but otherwise I think it would quickly get out of hand, or become incredibly annoying.

Pachter might be right. His prediction hardly lacks precedent - it's called cutting and the packaged goods businesses have been doing it for years. A pack of Chips Ahoy might go for two dollars for the longest time but the package keeps getting smaller and smaller. This is intended to avoid irritating a particular type of customer - one disinclined or otherwise unable to do unit/rate calculations on purchases.

Ive rarely bought brand new games, sales and goty editions at lower costs have been my main purchases. Thats why I love you Steam. With additional dlcs Id asume most next gen games will be nearly $100 when all is said and done. The veil of the dark side has fallen.

I'm pretty certain that if this happens, there'll be an even bigger Kickstarter explosion.