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Originally Posted by mr dave
That's fair but I don't get where DLC rips anyone off. It's a product offered to the public like anything else. You make the claims you don't care about multiplayer or anything besides the base core experience of a game. So why get upset about a facet of the industry that exists solely to expand multiplayer or core experience. It's not like you need to buy DLC in order to finish the main game.
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It's true that I could just as easily ignore it all since it doesn't affect me directly. DLC is obviously not a ripoff to anyone who buys it and is satisfied with it and I don't claim to speak for anyone but myself. But there's no denying that developers go where the money goes, so you get a bunch of people buying MW3 and suddenly the market's going to be flooded with COD ripoff's trying to break off a piece of the customer base. Meanwhile an incredible game like Dark Souls gets a tiny fraction of the sales COD gets, discouraging other developers from making a game of similar depth and detail. So I could just ignore it, but it doesn't change that I don't like the direction that the game industry is headed, and their "nickel-and-dime"ing of customers these days.
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As for free to play that is EXACTLY as it sounds. You go to whatever webpage, create an account, download the launcher, download the game, then play. As much as you want, as often as you want. For no additional cost besides what it normally costs you to check this website. Games like...
Team Fortress2
City of Heroes
Dungeons and Dragons Online
Lord of The Rings Online
Everquest
Age of Conan
Hellgate London
Champions Online
DC Universe
And that's just off the top of my head, any one of those. Free. That's not to say there aren't different levels of service for people with free accounts vs. people with premium accounts but the fact remains, the core game and access to the core game has now started shifting to being free. Every single title in that list has made the announcement that they noticed both an increase in players and an increase in revenue after switching to a free2play model. They make more money off micro-transactions than they did from monthly subscription fees.
The new Mechwarrior and Splinter Cell (or maybe it was Ghost Recon) have also been announced as being F2P releases when they launch later this year.
Really though, outside the AAA / 'hardcore' gamer demographic, there really aren't that many games being launched at $60. Especially not when you factor in mobile and casual gaming into that mix. The next gen consoles are not where it's at for the industry, whoever bridges the gap between casual / portable market and the next gen is. The WiiU is interesting but I really think Nintendo dropped the ball with the original presentation and arbitrary 1 tablet per console limitation.
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Ah ok, it's true that outside of console gaming, I don't pay much attention to the gaming industry so I wouldn't know too much about these free to play games and I consider iphone games and stuff an entirely different industry personally. I'm envious now though that I don't have a good gaming build PC.
