The drums of doom thunder. Soon the rivers will flow with blood, the moon will turn red, the sun will turn black as night. And by the morning star the four horsemen will ride. Granted, as a non-christian who kind of hopes that God exists, my knowledge of the apocalypse may be limited. This is usually the case if the major part of your knowledge about the bible was acquired from Iron Maiden and Manowar albums. I just know there has to be an antichrist of some sort and possibly a doomsday device manufactured by him. In this case, according to the press, the antichrist is Criterion and the doomsday device is “Burnout: Paradise”.
By now it should be clear that we love “Burnout: Paradise”. Criterion was one of the few racing game developers to realize crashing cars is much more fun than going around in circles with them. It’s a game about cars but not necessarily a racing game in the usual sense. In fact Criterion’s latest online research of player activities reveals that only 10 percent of “Burnout: Paradise” players are racing. This is probably due to the fact that there are a lot of other things to do in “Burnout: Paradise”. It’s a great game with a lot of bold, revolutionary design choices. We truly love “Burnout: Paradise”.
Electronic Arts recently announced that “Burnout: Paradise”, a full featured, retail game, will be available in September on PSN as a downloadable title. The downloadable version will be cheaper than the normal disc based version and will contain every single feature of its older brother. Only now you’ll be able to download it.
This thing is directly against all our preconceptions about downloadable console games. The preconceptions were set by Microsoft when they started this whole downloadable console games thing. Their head start naturally gave them the luxury of creating the rules for the market. According to Microsoft, a downloadable console game has to be small, simple and cheap. Small because they need to fit onto the memory card of an XBOX 360 in case the user has one of those hard drive free consoles. Simple because, well, they are small. And cheap around $10, because they are small and simple.
We are disturbed by anything that moves against the natural order of things. Microsoft’s model was great for many purposes. It allowed them to publish smaller, possibly addictive games through a channel which requires less money to maintain. Consequently the market for small, possibly old school games were reinvigorated, allowing smaller, independent developers to survive. “Geometry Wars” proved there is a huge market for these games.
It also manipulated the press. Normally a game like “Geometry Wars” couldn’t have hoped to achieve the critical success it did had it been released through traditional channels. But for a cheap little downloadable game, expectations are lower.
On top of this, this new market wasn’t a threat for retail publishers either. They still got to sell their disc based big games while Microsoft kept on selling small games through “Live”. There was a sharp and clear line between retail games and downloadable games.
This is why “Burnout: Paradise” is important. What will be released through PSN in September is neither small nor simple. And as far as downloadable games go, it’s very, very expensive. Furthermore it was released before as a disc game and is still on the market in this form. Now there will also be the option to buy the game as a digital download.
You have to understand, if this proves successful, the entire business model of video gaming will be called into question. Retailers, who sell tangible, disc based copies of games, will be pissed off because this model potentially removes them from the equation. Therefore, if from now on games are sold this way, it also means their cut from the profit will be gone. This naturally lowers the costs of publishing a game, which would be fine for publishers and developers. But it has further implications.
See, retailers actually have great power over the market. If you think of the business of selling games as a chain between the developer and the user, retailers are the final link. Normally if you remove that link, the chain will be rendered useless. You cannot touch them. This gives retailers the ability to decide what to sell and therefore to tell the developers indirectly what to make.
Many retailers have set up their business to sell games to male teenagers. This is part of the reason most of them are refusing to put AO rated games on their shelves while there is no real legal reason not to sell AO games. It’s an automatic censoring mechanism forcing the retailers to adjust their games according to the standards of retail partners. This is the reason why “Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas” was removed from the shelves, and why “Fahrenheit” was partly censored in the US.
This also removes the possibility of reselling games, rendering the used game market entirely ineffective. Each and every single game will really be sold and turned into profit for the publisher and developer. No manufacturing costs for printing games on discs. Games will never be sold out. Like in Steam, it will not matter where you live, your speed of getting games will not be dependent on any human transportation systems.
This, for all intents and purposes, is really Armageddon for the retailers.
Now this is not the first time Sony is selling a disc based game on PSN. “Warhawk” and “Siren: Blood Curse” come to mind. But Sony was free to play around with these games. They are Sony’s own games. “Burnout: Paradise”, on the other hand, is the first third party game ever to be published this way.
So is this it? Is this really Armageddon?
No, not really. Sorry. Let me slap you a bit to wake you up from your console dream land. The PC as a platform has had this downloadable games model for quite some time now. Retailers are still alive. Revolutions don’t happen overnight.
This may not be Armageddon, but it’s a small sin paving the path towards Armageddon. Or so I hope.