Four Add-ons Planned For Sins of a Solar Empire 68
With the first add-on pack for Sins of a Solar Empire arriving in just under a month, publisher Kalypso Media has announced that three more add-ons are on their way as well. Gamespot has an early look at the first add-on, Entrenchment, and a couple of additional screenshots are available at Shacknews. The game's creative director, Craig Frazer, also explained their reasoning for making small expansions rather than large ones: "If PC gaming is to survive, the industry will need to be open to change. We went out on a limb with our anti-DRM stance and it paid off really well. We tried an unusually long beta period and that worked as well. Micro-expansions are just another experiment we are trying out to improve the market. These small expansions give us the opportunity to provide highly focused, high quality content within a reasonable time frame. Micro-expansions also reduce the development risk associated with 1-3 year cycles. With lower risk, we can be far more progressive in terms of gameplay and content."
Periodic add-ons can be great (Score:4, Interesting)
I recall the game "Total Annihilation", a popular real time strategy game from the 90s. The publisher, CaveDog, periodically would add new units to the game (something like one a month or so). While I also like it when the publisher includes map editors, it is still good to get new material from the original developers.
Re:You can't knock Kalypso Media (Score:1, Interesting)
Does Sins have a sig.bin file like GalCiv? I'm 99.999% sure it does....if so, it has DRM. That file is a hardware ID that will de-activate the software if any significant hardware changes, or you copy the files to another machine without running the install to "activate" the program again. You cannot play it if you alter this signature file in any way. Try renaming it and see how fast it asks you to activate it. That is the definition of DRM by every standard. The only difference is that they hide it from you and tell you it's not there.
Re:Don't tell EA (Score:3, Interesting)
Stardock have said from the outset that each will have a US$10 price tag, so if you're talking in AUD you'd be correct but seeing as you mentioned Walmart I think that you aren't Australian. Seeing as Stardock is an entirely US company all transactions via Impulse are in USD (8 GBP is just an approximate conversion for our pommy friends), please see here [stardock.com] for the actual price.
EA already charges A$50 for the same level of content in the Sins expansion packs. Heck, EA would have charged A$50 for the content I've already gotten for free since purchasing Sins of a Solar Empire, which cost me A$77 for the collectors edition and postage which would also defy EA's A$90 minimum price tag.