For the last month or so, Electronic Arts, and game retailers have been encouraging consumers to pre-order the Dragon Age 2 Signature Edition, by promising “$20 of Additional Value”. The nature of this extra content has been vague, only saying it will include a bonus character and missions. Today EA explained just who this new character will be and what the additional missions will involve.
As we enter the first weekend of 2011, the new year is off to an unpromising start in terms of online game sales. The worst sale of the week has to be GamesForWindows.com who are offering a sale on Where’s Waldo The Fantastic Journey. If, for some reason, you wish to purchase it, it’s 75% off, which makes it $3.75. Lucky us, it’s on sale all week.
Sony Online Entertainment is known for its huge cache of MMORPGs, with titles that stretch all the way back to the great-granddaddy of the genre, Everquest. With such a library, SOE has shown no sign of stopping as the latest game, DC Universe Online, is set to be released next week. It hopefully will reveal itself as a game that takes in the lessons of its elders and contemporaries; it has trumpeted several innovations to the genre that is supposed to shake up the online landscape.
Razer, a company which has previously been known for making gaming peripherals like mice and keyboards, has unveiled their new concept gaming netbook, codenamed: Switchblade. In a video which is positively riddled with hyperbole, Razer CEO Min Liang Tan describes it as “Phenomenal” and a work of “Sheer Genius”, while Razer President Robert Krackoff then goes on to explain that it “Magically” adapts its OLED keyboard to suit whatever game you’re playing.
How do you quantify whether or not a game is worth playing? When developers boast that their new RPG has “Over 300 hours of gameplay” and “Over thirty possible endings”, their goal is to boost sales by promising a large amount of Fun-Per-Dollar. Role-Playing enthusiasts will be quick to point out that getting a hundred hours of entertainment from a sixty dollar game is a good deal. They’re correct on that, but my question is: Can we get the same amount of enjoyment, but concentrated in a much shorter experience? In short: What about the amount of fun players have per hour?
Just because the Holidays are finally over doesn’t mean that PC Gamers can quit shopping for games, and actually sit down to play with all of our loot. Oh no, the online stores and digital distributors refuse to let us rest and actually enjoy our games. Rather the internet is still full of game sales, even if they aren’t quite as impressive as they were over the Holidays.
I like my games how I like my women: Cheap. The current generation of games costs sixty dollars a pop if you buy on launch day, and publishers have all sorts of pre-buy bonuses to justify jumping on early, yet I still rarely buy games when they first come out. It’s much too easy to predict the pricing cycle, and just wait two months for the first online sales to roll around, or wait a year until the “Game of the year edition” is in the bargain bin at Best Buy. The bonuses for buying early don’t outweigh the 40 dollars I can save if I’m patience and frugal.
