The Shrine

Guess not enough people were willing to pony up the retarded price of $20 per episode, huh?

http://www.gamespot.com/news/6254256.ht ... p;title;19

It'd be retarded if this business model actually worked. I'm all for creativity but it's not like the first 1/3rd of the game costs 1/3 of the development cost. I'd bet first 1/3 of the game probably cost 90% of the development cost, especially if you throw out graphic assets.

Don wrote:It'd be retarded if this business model actually worked. I'm all for creativity but it's not like the first 1/3rd of the game costs 1/3 of the development cost. I'd bet first 1/3 of the game probably cost 90% of the development cost, especially if you throw out graphic assets.

Isnt that why you would think they WOULD be pumping these games out? They already have all the graphics and crap they need. A new episode only needs some new backgrounds and story... I'm surprised they dont churn one out every 2 months. Why give up when 90% of the game is done?

Yes, that's why they would be pumping them out (read: MM9/10), but that's also why they aren't successful (exception: MM9/10).

Of course you can churn out these games in mass numbers but people aren't stupid either. I think even MM10 sold less than MM9 and it's hard to find a more dedicated fanbase. I'm assuming the two games are of equivalent quality since it's hard for me to imagine Capcom actually have any meaningful variation in quality for something they produced 50 times.

Episodic game by their nature implies that the game runs on one system. Not that I think designing a new combat system or whatever is a huge investment of resources, but it's hard to convince people to pay $20X3 for what could easily be one game. A more appropriate price might be like $20, $5, $5, assuming that the first game was actually worth $20, and rest of the episodes are of equivalent quality.