While chatting with a co-worker, we got into the discussion about how today’s games, at a cost of $60 each before you even add on the price of DLC, is a bit much.  Its amazing that the $60 price point hasn’t imploded in the gaming industry yet, but I guess when you have every man woman and child spend that kind of money without question on today’s games, its no wonder the price has not budged.

We thought though, what about those of us that enjoy say just the single player campaign of a game?  Or maybe there are some of you out there that ONLY play the multiplayer portion of a game?  For example I’m currently in the middle of playing the single player campaign in Modern Warfare 3, and while its been fun to play, I will probably finish in 10 to 12 hours and have ZERO interest in playing the multiplayer thanks to its sub-par style of play in this gamers opinion.  For $60 bucks, a 10 to 12 hour campaign is a lot of money to ask someone to fork over.  The developers response, if ever asked, will more than likely explain how today’s games have multiple aspects beyond the campaign, such as co-op missions and multiplayer.

Good enough, but its still not fair to ask for that kind of money when some gamers enjoy only half of the game.  I have to ask than, why not charge half to buy the game and carry it out the door of your local store upon purchase?  You pay say $29 for the game.  You bring it home, pop it into your favorite console, power up, and get your campaign gaming on.  For today’s campaigns I think $29 is a fair price.  But say you enjoy the other 50% that the title offers, such as co-op missions or multiplayer?  It can still be on the disk, and all you have to do is pony up the extra $29 bucks.  Its as easy as popping in a code and entering your credit card, or maybe using Microsoft points if your on the Xbox 360 console, paypal, I mean there are a number of ways to pay for something digital today.

Developers, please consider this.  No one would expect a complete industry wide change on the dime to help gamers pay for games.  I can not begin to stress enough how many more titles you would all sell.  Selling 1 million copies of a title today on one platform is considered a success, but what if that only accounts for 2% or 3% of the total amount of console owners?  You are missing out on 97% of your audience!  Would you not want to find a way to get your game in their hands?  This is not a hard one to fix, and its as easy as marketing.  All it takes is for one dev to make a change, the rest will follow.  Who would be first?