We shouldn't stand for it anymore! :)

[A Black Falcon]

The next step is to make the first few levels of a game, sell it for 10 bucks, then make a few more and sell that for the same price, and then cancel the game when people, rightfully so, don't BUY incomplete games.

Yes, this has been mentioned... wouldn't it be fun?

Oh right, it kind of happened, with Majestic... we need more of that!

But at any rate, can you really see that not bleeding over into other genres? It's already started. You can pay for additional bits of content for games like Splinter Cell already, or just not GET it. Now the different right now is fair, that's content they made AFTER the game was released. On the other hand, you have something like Jade Empire's special edition. Remember that added content? Well, turns out that extra content is in EVERY SINGLE VERSION of the game, but the special addition buyers get an extra disk that saves an "unlock" file to the hard drive which all the games check for to see if they'll let you get that. And that, is ripping people off. Nintendo isn't immune to this either. Remember all that extra content they locked away unless you used a transfer pack or special cable? It wasn't new content, it was content that was already ON the disk but programmed to only be accessible if you bought more crap and linked it up.

It's something that is so simple to implement, so cheap to do, and such a potentially large moneymaker that I don't think many companies will be able to resist... I'm hopeful, though. Most PC games don't pull such stunts, only MMORPGs... and pay mini-addons never went anywhere. Sure, pay expansions have, but those give you a lot of content... some of the stuff they want to charge you for on X-Box Live sound like things you would be getting free with patches, if it was a PC game. Charging just because you can is wrong... but lucrative. So companies are bound to try it. And they do.

As for Nintendo's connectivity-unlocked stuff, that's a pure marketing tactic to get people to buy GBAs and GBA-GC link cables. Simple as that. It didn't work as well as Nintendo hoped, though... :) But yes, restricting access to parts of the disk unless you buy another product, or releasing "new" versions of the game that change nothing, is wrong. Absolutely.

So basically, a company like Sony saying "hey, let's open up a "sanctioned" online market on our site where people can buy and sell armor, only with REAL money, thus promoting a career of people taking all that stuff in game, depriving the normal players of it, and skyrocketing the in-game economy so the people who don't pay real money for... fake money, are faced with literally paying thousands for second level gear or something.

And don't forget /pizza...