Microsoft put through that damnable Windows 10 reminder on my tray. That’s just rude. Also, it’s a waste of time I’m my case as I never go bleeding edge. From what little I know, and I do know little, Microsoft is changing their model much like many other software companies.
Back in the day, when we complied with style off the time by wearing onions on or belts, you bought a program that came on disks; done.
Then came game subscriptions. You bought a game and payed a monthly subscription to access the content you bought. I’m looking at you World of Watercraft.
There were then day one patches. You bought an offline game. Installed it, and watched it patch everything for the next two days. I can’t remember the last time that happened to me, bit I do remember I was annoyed.
From patches we got to DLC. I’m cool with DLC. Assuming that any paid DLC isn’t required to unbreak gameplay. Enemy Within made Enemy Unknown into a totally different game of awesome. This DLC which augmented Enemy Unknown made me excited to see what the next X-Com have is adding to the mix. Europa Universalis just adds more content and more gameplay options. It adds more depth to an intensely challenging and large game. Awesome. But. But then there’s Civilization. Every Civilization have ships broken. The fix is in the DLC. The fix you pay money for when it’s things that should have been fixed day one. I have a co-worker who won’t buy any Civilization game until is been out long enough to have a GOTY edition. I totally concur.
Traditional Free-to-Pay is equally terribad. I play game. I have to pay money to access content that’s thrown at me constantly. Guild Wars Two and your freaking Chests. Since I’m not paying for keys, would you stop clogging my inventory with this “loot”.
Now we have Software as a Service. I can now pay Adobe something like $49.99 a month. This gives me compatibility breaking updates where it has to download whole programs. It provides me fonts, that no one uses. It provides me a way to pay for the right to have the worst memory management this side of supply side economics.
Here’s the kicker. For gaming, I do pay regularly for a game or two. I don’t mind paying. The thing is, I’m paying for something. In the Secret World, on a monthly basis, I see what the new comment of the month is and pay if I want it. I can go back and add it later. I pay for them to make the game better. In Eve, they add content constantly. I’ll pay for that. At some point I’ll get bored and stop paying. Later I resubscribe and catch up on all the new to me content. A whole gaggle of ships in this last case.
While Microsoft isn’t making money off of a subscription, I’m going to assume they plan to make money somehow. I figure the devil will be in the details, and there are always details.
Peter's stuff.