Here is a short review of costs that spends a player to indulge in his favorite pleasure for Xbox 360. I wish to clarify that the sources take into account prices in the United States, and they can change in France.
First, a player can connect to online gaming with Xbox Live, he must pay $ 50 per year. About 3 million people are subscribers. You should know that games usually have optional content, such as maps, new characters, new missions and so on. Most large content (especially packs of cards) cost about $ 10 each. Next games, a player can spend in all, Thursday and optional content from 80 to 100 dollars. "They (the packs of cards) are very profitable for us," said Tony Key, vice president of marketing at Ubisoft. Remember that games Rainbow Six Vegas and GRAW 2 are from the top 10 most played games on Xbox Live. Key then adds: "If you're an avid Rainbow and you do not have maps, you can not play (in speaking competitions)," I doubt that there is now a game without Tom Clancy mode Xbox Live. It is now a major component of the heart of the game. "
Rainbox games like Ubisoft Six Vegas or Call of Duty 3 from Activision can cost up to $ 25 million in development. However, the cards are really not expensive to produce compared to the final game. They require only 10 people from the development team in the game
It turns out that the cards are also very beneficial to Microsoft. An analyst with Wedbush Morgan, Michael Patcher, said that Microsoft takes 30% for most downloads. Therefore, a content charged $ 10 to the end user, Microsoft charges $ 3, and the publisher 7. The analyst believes that the market for downloaded content amounts to nearly $ 200 million last year, against 19 billion dollars for global sales of video games.
This practice of billing may take action against the publishers. For example, the game Gears of War, which sold more than 3.7 million copies in the world, has benefited from several cards, all for free. This pack was downloaded more than 1.5 million copies on Xbox Live. But there shortly, a new pack made its appearance on Xbox Live, including maps and new game modes. Unlike the first pack, which was free, this one is paying players to pay no less than $ 10 to download. Mark Rein, the president of Epic Games, developer of Gears of War, has said it will make this package public, but that Microsoft opposed it, preferring the charge for a while, then make it free in September.
The product manager of Xbox Live group, Aaron Greeberg said that the players were disappointed that this package does is not free, but these servaint are available to develop games and maintain a very expensive Xbox Live , But quality: "We are like the complaints department, we mean the small minority who is not happy" he says.
Note that the income of the third quarter of the entertainment division of Microsoft fell by 18.7% to 947 million, with an operating deficit of $ 330 million, compared with $ 438 million of the year earlier. Robbie Bach said that the division would be in the green at the next fiscal year.
Hoping that you will have a little information about the downloadable content!
