Namco Bandai: Games Should be Cheaper, we Need New Business Models
Namco Bandai’s Vice President Olivier Conte has said that game companies should diversify videogame selling in the future. He even went as far as saying that videogames are ‘œtoo expensive for the audience’ and that ‘œa good price of a game should be around £20.’
In an interview with MCV, Conte said that ‘œbig video game companies need to join together in a worldwide summit to discuss the future of our industry’ because of the threat of falling software sales.
He suggested making games cheaper by shortening them to around ‘œfour or five hours’ and using additional DLC to increase revenue from the titles. ‘œGames just have one model, the sale of the product either as a box or a digital download. So we need to think about how we can develop a secondary business model’, said Conte. He continued: ‘œFrom September to December there are three new blockbusters every week, and consumers just can’t afford to buy all that.’
Despite his consumer friendly approach, if games are selling for cheap it seems unlikely that developers could fund huge Red Dead Redemption style games. Conte suggests we’d see more short and sweet games, but in my opinion they’d be ultimately unfulfilling, Metro 2033 sticks out as one example for me. Cheaper games would certianly be nice, but can you really say you’d rather pay half the price but only get half the game?
As for DLC, the add-on sale is also a contentious issue and EA’s Online Pass seems the ultimate middle finger to gamers. However, if we were buying games for £20, we’d see that in almost every game and it’d be harder to protest against. You’d no longer be buying a disc full of content; you’d be buying a gateway to micro-transactions, something which would surely be more costly in the long-run.
To me, his comments seem like a double-edged sword. We’d get a short term gain at the checkout, but is having to pay to unlock multiplayer or having games with no depth worth it?
News Tags: DLC, industry, Namco Bandai
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One hundred percent agreed. I’m all for cheaper, shorter games. I don’t have the money to buy every new release that slightly piques my interest, and in waiting for the price to drop and almost exclusively buying preowned, publishers aren’t seeing my money. What’s more, I don’t have the patience to play a game for 20 – 40 hours any more unless the experience is light and accessible, like Fallout 3 or L4D.
I don’t want to see a complete deviation from the huge, epic, “go anywhere do anything” games like GTA and RDR, but more games like Portal and Captain Forever and Raptor Safari and Zeno Clash are very much welcome, especially if it gives them the space to truely explore a single mechanic. Although Namco Bandai are probably not the best publishers to be spearheading that incentive.