Free content
Of course to counter this there are some companies that are providing free downloadable content for their games. Take Epic for example, with Gears of War. Epic and Cliffy B have always said that they will "look after their existing customers" before they try and convert others. Hence the reason why no Gears of War demo has ever appeared. The developers are too busy working on new content for their existing customers. Not long after the launch of Gears, two new maps were released for multiplayer. At the time of writing, another two maps are due, along with a completely new game mode for multiplayer games - again, all free content.
This is another take on how to squeeze customers for their hard earned cash. And in the long run I think it's a good tactic. Epic now has a reputation of providing free post-launch content, so that must increase the appeal of any game they release in the future. But that does raise one last question...
Is content new or "held-back" from the release?
And this is a tricky one. Do game companies purposely hold back content from their main release so that they can charge for it as a piece of downloadable content at a later date? And that's a tricky one to answer unless you work for a games company. I'd like to think that they don't, and certainly Microsoft is trying to push companies away from doing this (as it knows how much discontent this would cause).
So where does that leave us, the paying customer? Well I have to say that I'm quite cautious with what premium content I download. If I don't like the look of it, I steer well clear. If I do like the look of it I ask myself, "will i actually play this?" If the answer is yes, then the game companies have won and a little more of my hard-earned cash becomes theirs ...
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