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Topic: The new "Subscription" model

With Elite Dangerous, i am playing a game that has a similar payment model as Guildwars, but delivers differently.

Guildwars, you pay for the game, and expansions, but the server is free to play.
Elite Dangerous looks like the same at the first glimpse, but there is one major difference:

"Expansions" are not full content upgrade upon release. You basicly pay for the next year of development and content patches, like a subscription, just yearly, instead of monthly.

is this a trend in the gaming industry ontop of the kickstarter investment system, or just a unique thing?

*Disclaimer: This post can contain strong sarcasm or cynical remarks. keep that in mind!
Whining - It's amazing how fast your trivial concerns will disappear

2 Reply by Kayin Prime (edited by Kayin Prime 2015-08-30 21:09:46)

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Re: The new "Subscription" model

I think it's a more unique thing.   Elite Dangerous rushed itself to market to beat out Star Citizen and Valkyrie. (and others but mainly those)  Frontier needs to pump out these features like planetary landing to stay competitive as the development of their competition continues.  But the huge influx of capital from a game release has already come through and basically blowing their 'in development' status.  They've already paid back their investors via release and so future investment HAS to come in the form of expansion packs. Invest cash -> output content = expansion pack.  Since elite has no content,  competitive features make sense to release in XP form.    If this were any other game with an actual story line  they would piggy back competitive features with new story content.

Subscription games already offer yearly subscriptions in the form of discounted month bundles.  Buy 1 month for $20 or 6 months fro $110.  That sort of thing.  Since the primary demographic is people with low amounts of expendable cash nobody wants to make the barrier to entry too high.   Monthly just works better.

$0.02

-K