Microsoft’s Xbox One Eighty – a big win for consumers? Not so fast

http://media.edge-online.com/wp-cont...21-610x343.jpgAdrian Chmielarz is a co-founder of The Astronauts and former People Can Fly creative director. Here, he explains what Microsoft’s Xbox One U-turn means for games players and developers.Humans are amazing optimizers. There is a game shop here in Warsaw, where all you have to do is to buy one game, and then from now on for about fifteen dollars you can exchange it for any other new game. In other words, after the initial purchase any new console title costs you fifteen bucks. Is it right? Is it wrong? It doesn’t matter. What matters is that many people are playing off one box of a game, and while this makes the consumers and the shop happy, it’s not making the developers and publishers happy.And, you know, just like salesmen and gamers are great optimizers, so are the developers and publishers. A good few years ago, a mantra was born: “…so they keep the disc in the tray”.That is how the DLC was born. “Don’t sell your copy yet, there’s more to come!” Not all gamers fell for it. But those who did were paying five, ten, fifteen dollars for added content which took only a tiny fraction of developer’s resources and time needed to make the full game, and yet cost these gamers 25 per cent of it. It was often enough to cover the perceived loss from used game sales. Not unlike when ‘whales’ cover the cost of ‘freeloaders’ in free to play games.That is also how filler content was born. Far Cry 3 is not a better game because you need two boar hides to craft a simple rucksack item, but it certainly is longer. For some game players, length equals value. But then somehow the same people often do not finish such a game (industry standard is about 25 per cent). They put it back on the shelf, promising themselves that they will finish it one day. Most of the time, they never do. But the important thing for the publishers is: the gamers hold on to the game, they’re not selling it, all is good.This is how artificial extenders were born. The hardest difficulty is inaccessible on your first play-through not just because the developer wants to stop you from making a mistake. It’s so you replay the game at least one more time and double your play time. And if you don’t care about that? Hey, there are always achievements to collect, right?That is also how microtransactions were born. There will always be people who are ready to pay for a golden saddle or extra ammo in a game they already paid sixty bucks for. The numbers are insane – some triple-A games made tens of millions this way. Again, ‘whales’ were paying for ‘freeloaders’.

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