The warning lights are blinking, and that can mean only one thing -- another publisher is saying some very worrying things about how the digital age can help them nickel n' dime consumers. Take-Two is doing the honors, suggesting that its "triple A titles" could go the way of the MMO.
After chatting bollocks about how great downloadable content is at the BMO Capital Market's conference, T2 CEO Strauss Zelnick moved onto what he called the "Holy Grail" -- the MMO model that publishers have pathetically tried to grasp at without realizing that they'll never make as much money off it as Blizzard.
"The holy grail is taking a business, already a very large and successful business that's focused on packaged goods that you sell once and then are occasionally resold by others with new benefit to us, and turning that into a subscription business or a semi subscription business where we have an ongoing relationship with consumers, giving them products that they want," Zelnick explained. "Who's better positioned to do that than the company that has the top franchises?
"It's our view that you won't be able to apply a subscription model to mid-tier titles. The triple A titles that people really want to have that are really must have are in the best position for this business model."
The triple A titles? We heard suggestions of a Bioshock MMO once before, and it seems Zelnick and pals are still hypnotized by the lure of subscription-based gaming. Could we be seeing incremental, sustained payment models for BioShock and Grand Theft Auto in the future? As I say, those warning lights are blinking.
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21 comments + 95764 views
I would rather pass on Take Two games than get slapped around by this particular scheme. Thus far the digital age has catered to publishers more so than consumers.
I dare them to even fucking try this.They will get so much consumer backlash it's going to be unprecedented how consumers turned on that company.
Take-two is the new EA in terms of greed, EA pumps out decent original games and nintendo is on top. What is it about this generation that caused everything to go backwards?
I want to see them try this. It'd be hilarious.
I second what Charles said. It's catering far more to publishers.
Microtransactions, subscription fees, etc. What we used to get for free we not get for a fee.
Fuck the digital age.
@eternalplayer2345
I would say Activison took EA's torch and ran light speed with it, Take Two has actually been pretty moderate until now.
dmgi- agreed, Activision is the new EA and EA is... actually doing good this year :D
If Take-Two carries this out it'll blow up in their greedy faces.
Please Take-Two, try this and see how far you get with it. You'd fuck it up so hard noone else would ever do it again.
When will these imbeciles understand that we're not a bunch of complete tools, and will not stand for being ripped off?
This is just sad.
Who said MMO's never hurt anybody?!
These are dark times we live in...
I bet if they do go to this type of thing you are going to see more hacked servers and illegal distros, not to mention death in sales. These moves will hurt companies, sadly i doubt they figure this out.
I can't wait for the day when I finally put down my controller for the last time and go outside to sunny skies. Honestly Take-Two, go ahead and try it.
Dear Take Two, looking for consumer input on this idea? Ready? You can fuck right off. Got it? Good.
I don't see where this says anything about making franchises into "MMOs". I think there's an association being made between "MMO" and "subscription", which, while the two generally go together, are not explicitly related. XBL is also a "subscription" service, and it sounds like he's talking about something closer to that, having a subscription to a publisher in this case. It's hard to tell exactly what that would mean, but it certainly has fuck all to do with MMO's.
However seeing as this is Jim reporting on a Kotaku article, it's easy to see where confusion would arise...
They should do this, and then nobody will buy their game, and then they'll get a dose of reality.
@Wedge
He's talking about the MMO MODEL, not an actual MMO per se. Either way, making people pay a subscription to play "triple-A" titles is a fantastic way to get fucked in the ass by consumers.
Except this has nothing to do with the "MMO model" there isn't even such a thing. MMO's have many "models" and referring to it as such is stupid. There is a clear purpose here to try to bring in the AIM hits by using that word, because of the thoughts it will inspire to a lot of people by seeing it.
Depends on how its done, the content involved ect ect. Though on overall this really scares the bejesus out of me as a gamer on somewhat of a budget. So does the whole used game sales fiasco.
I bought R1 used since I didnt feel the need to buy it new. I enjoyed it alot and decided to buy R2 on release date. If I couldn't get R1 at the price I did I would of never bought R2 since I wouldn't have bothered with R1.
If I understand this right, MMO model = monthly fee to play a game, applied to a single player game like GTAIV?
If the monthly fee is less than 10 bucks, sure. It took me less than a month to beat GTAIV, so why not. Beat the game, cancel subscription, save myself 40-50 bucks and the pain of having to trade it in when I'm done with it.
Definite pass on Bioshock or GTA, not my cup a, but the right game ....Diablo 3 springs to mind.
In this case, N.
I don't give a shit what game it is - if it is not an MMO and there is a subscription for it, I will NEVER buy it.
If anything, I would imagine it more like Gamefly - subscribe to a publisher's set of games and pay a regular fee in order to play a variety of them.
@eternalplayer2345 on the generation failing
I think the problem with this generation is that people will buy anything.
If they make shovel ware on the Wii/DS people will buy it by the truckload. If they nickle and dime you to death people will buy the characters in a heartbeat (Yoda and Vader come to mind immediately)
What happened to the days of when you had to struggle to get a game to sell? Now adays it seems that companies spend more money on advertisement than they do on making the actual game.
Fucking rich assholes. Can't settle for the gold toilet - need the platinum one instead. Fuckers.
this is the first year where i can *barely* afford to buy all the games i want this holiday season, i don't understand how gamers who don't make as much as me can afford to keep up with this hobby (because that's what it is, a hobby)... even the youngins who don't have jobs..
oh yeah, wait, yes i do, it's called PIRACY, and that's what you'll get if you try to rape us for subscription based games and ridiculous DLC... just look to the music industry and to a lesser extent the movies for a hint of what's to come.
@thebza
Good point. Screwing customers so much that we'll reing company ever made.sort to piracy. I don't even understand how this would work if you don't have an internet connection or a gold subscription. If this ever goes through Take Two it will go down as the stupidest business move a gaming company ever made.
How to make this work: Don't charge full price up front. Charge the same total price (say, $60 for console games; $50 for retail games) and charge it in increments per chapter, with the first chapter being free. This way you can avoid (or lessen) the resale and piracy losses; make generally the same amount of money in total; increase the number of people paying for it ('cause, hey, what's $3 to keep playing if you like the game?); and give a cost-efficiency bonus to those of us who only play the first half of any given title. This might also cause a decrease in the out-of-season game price slump. (see: 2-year-old $10 games)
How not to do it: Subscription charges for multiplayer. Learn from Microsoft's GFWL example. Charging for free stuff doesn't go over well.
F#$K THAT!
Wow, I couldn't afford to be a gamer if they do this. I rarely buy new games for $60, I usually wait til they drop in price or pick them up used. Also, I might buy a few and not get around to playing them for a couple months.
What if you had to pay a subscription for every game you own? I probably have at least 60+ games, say at $5 a month per game, that's $300 a month.
Maybe Wii Music is not so bad!!
no parrothead, wii music is that bad.
I'm kind of curious if everybody is on the same page as the T2 guy. I'm also wondering how many customers would blindly go along with all of this just because they want to be able to play the next GTA. Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups with a low understanding of value.
I think this is kind of taken out of context in to exactly what he means. I believe what he is getting at is that providing major DLC content patches that add way more content in comparison to regular DLC expansions. It's hard to say what their intentions truly are but, I think it's wrong to pidgeon hole a company on what was said by one person, and not actually what they are doing.
I would like to see an era of all digital downloads, which I guess fits with a subscription model.
But if you have to buy the disk and it has a limited time span, then they're obviously just robbing us of our right to own the game, to play it years later. I still sometimes play old carts I have around, but I can't play WoW, because I no longer have a subscription. This is a bad direction for things to travel, if it is as it appears. Especially as we enter recession.
This would never pass in any other medium.
@ Altered Beets
Yeah like a book that after you read it for so long, a man comes and demands some money so you can keep reading. If you can't pay up he tears out the remaining pages and gives you the adress to send a cheque if you want them back. Trains would be a nightmare in rush hour. =P
I've never played an MMO past the 1 month free provided. I usually get enough out of the game to realise it's going to be repeated every bloody month. No thanks.
MMOs have to have a lot of generic crap about them to appeal to the masses, which is not what titles like BioShock do well. Sure it was successful, but FIFA, Madden, CoD... or how about City of Heroes, or EVE successful?
SHENANIGANS! I call shenanigans!
What a dickhead. They had the chance to do this with GTA DLC but fucked it. If they had released a new, long mission line with a couple of new characters every month or so, I'm willing to bet people would still be playing it.
Nothing good will come of this.
The gaming world is sinking into a rogue, money-milking state.
Uggg, merge with Activision already.
SHENANIGANS?!? Well let me go grab my broom!
I knew this kinda stuff would happen. They're testing the water. Seeing how we react. I talk about this in my blog
PLUGPLUGPLUGPLUGPLUG
thanks to DLC the end of the video game era is coming soon. thank god the earth wont be around much longer.
the day I have to pay to play my console games is the day I die a little inside
i'm not going to contribute to this crap if it happens... ewww
Need an online connection to play a single game, paying monthly for multiplayer... People will hack whatever they set up so it may be circumvented. Taxation=regular payments for nothing is not a more substantial relationship. Bioshock 2 will be the first single-player monthly pay-to-pay game. The ideal model is to sell good games folks want and profit enough from the beloved product to make more products.
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