Popular touch title Parachute Panic recently updated their iPhone and iPod Touch game with an interesting in-store item.
Once updated to the latest version, gamers can choose to spend $1.19 to unlock another five lives.
The more patient can choose to max out their in-game lives by playing the game. You can upgrade for free by reaching scores of 50, 150, 300, 500 and 1000, earning an extra life for every milestone.
But the lazy among us can essentially double the price of the title by paying to skip the work and start out every time with 10 lives.
Good idea or the sign of bad things to come? You decide.
GrizzlyBum
Sunday, October 25, 2009 at 11:54 AM“Good idea or the sign of bad things to come?”
I’d say both!
Riavan
Sunday, October 25, 2009 at 1:35 PMKind of how like burnout paradise has a DLC option for 400ms points to unlock all the campaign cars, which you can just get anyway by doing the campaign if your not lazy.
formulated
Sunday, October 25, 2009 at 4:34 PMthe difference is, this purchase just buys you more of the same, the game doesn’t change.
Joshy206
Sunday, October 25, 2009 at 1:52 PMI like it. It’s an optional thing, and you can just as easily/not easily earn it.
I don’t see the downside, personally.
Michael Cohen
Sunday, October 25, 2009 at 3:09 PMInsert coin to continue?
It’s not a new thing, paying for more lives.
Joshy206
Sunday, October 25, 2009 at 3:32 PMYou just owned all haters-of-this right there. :P
PhatJockey
Monday, October 26, 2009 at 12:14 AMyer… thats the comment to end this…
Andy
Sunday, October 25, 2009 at 10:39 PMI bought the burnout thing, worked my ass of trying to unlock everything, then lots of other good games came out and I had little time, but still wanted to play with the cool stuff. People get so upset about DLC, “shouldn’t have to pay for something on the disk” etc. Well you don’t have to pay for anything, it all comes down to, “is the customer getting perceived value for their money?”.
Monetisation of video game content is still so hard to ascribe because games are so varied. Is TF2 worth the same amount as machinarium? You pay roughly the same price for them, one I’ve played for about 500 hours on and off, the other is a few hours worth. One has 1000′s of hours and a team of hundreds behind it, one has 7 people behind it. I feel there needs to be more freedom to play around with the price of games, everything that comes to retail is so similarly priced with only a variation of $10-30 with widely different experiences. Let the market decide what’s a good price, if it’s too high people wont buy it, if it’s a bargain it’ll sell like crazy (eg. borderlands?).
Brett C
Monday, October 26, 2009 at 12:18 AMYeah but I remeber when unlocking everything used to be a button-press code.
These days it’s IN the game, but not IN the game until you pay to unlock it. If you know what I mean.
Andy
Tuesday, October 27, 2009 at 8:36 AMI remember paying $119.95 for Terminator 2 on the Nintendo Entertainment System in 1992. So taking into account inflation, games have gone down in price.