Some Players Want Day-1 DLC, Says BioWare 357
An anonymous reader writes "Speaking at GDC Europe this week, BioWare Montreal's Fernando Melo spoke about how the oft-disparaged first-day downloadable content for video games is actually something a significant amount of players want. 'Melo argued that on the occasions when BioWare hasn't provided DLC from day one, those players who complete the game quickly then complained that there was nothing more to play and asked for extra content. If DLC isn't provided for these players, they may well move on to a different game and never come back to play DLC later on. As proof that day one DLC also works in terms of sales, Melo said that 53 percent of all sales for the first Dragon Age: Origins DLC pack — which was released on the same day as the full game — were made on release day."
Re:Ugh, not this again. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:DLC? really? (Score:4, Informative)
Exactly. It's interesting that the Bioware drone mentions Dragon Age, since the DLC was advertised IN the game. You reached a quest giver, and he told you that you had to buy his quest!
And that is the reason I never completed the game, I got sick to death of having the suspension of disbelief ruined by its blatant attempts to nickle-and-dime me.
Okay, so I was kind of pissed that I wasn't going to get the Werewolf Army I'd hoped for to battle the undead, but what pushed me to breaking point was finding someone on the way to the Dwarf City who was desperate to have their Significant Other rescued or somesuch. I figured it would help me get over losing the wolf army, so I agreed - and he demanded money for the privilege of having his beloved back. So I played System Shock instead.
Re:X-Com (Score:4, Informative)
Ditto, except MOO 1 not MOO 2 (I play it some but it's just not as good as the original).
Speaking of not as good as the original, I also still play TFTD. Tacky and unoriginal as the story may be, it has some elements I like.
BTW have you seen XComUtil? (ironically, the guy's now at BioWare): https://sites.google.com/site/stjones/xcomutil [google.com] Speaking of DLC...
Also http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/69341191/xenonauts/ [kickstarter.com] and http://ufoai.org/wiki/index.php/News [ufoai.org] (I've played the latter, it's excellent).
Re:Are you serious? (Score:4, Informative)
> Valve pointed out when they sold L4D 2 at some crazy low price like $10 their profits for that game went up something like 1700%
Actually L4D1 was 3000% more sales ;-)
You're probably thinking of the 1600% new steam customers.
i.e.
"Newell also mentioned that new Steam customers jumped 1600% over the same weekend, according to G4TV. Retail sales remained constant."
They also revealed gamers are extremely sensitive to pricing. (Digressing slightly, Hell most of my steam friends don't buy new games until they go one sale for $10. We already got a big backlog of great games to play, we'll get all the patches, plus we'll have better hardware to run a 2-year old game on.)
"The massive Steam holiday sale was also a big win for Valve and its partners. The following holiday sales data was released, showing the sales breakdown organized by price reduction:"
10% sale = 35% increase in sales (real dollars, not units shipped)
25% sale = 245% increase in sales
50% sale = 320% increase in sales
75% sale = 1470% increase in sales
References:
http://www.joystiq.com/2009/02/20/steams-left-4-dead-sale-increased-purchase-infection-by-3000/ [joystiq.com]
http://www.shacknews.com/article/57308/valve-left-4-dead-half [shacknews.com]