This week’s episode was delayed in publication thanks to real life intruding on the videogame podcast.
The week’s news items include:
All that and listener feedback.
For those that haven’t posted on the forum or send us an e-mail about our Peggle Nights contest, it’s time to get in the action! The free Peggle Nights game giveaway will expire soon and we want as many contestants as possible.
We’ve got many great entries, we’ll be reading off some of the e-mails we received about our podcast contest this week along with some of the great forum posts. Those that love Peggle have a passion and desire for the title, so the next one is sure to be a hit.
For those that have already written in, sent e-mails or otherwise contacted us, we appreciate your efforts. Make sure you listen to the gaming podcast for all the details on the contest.
No really, we’re on hiatus — the next podcast will be recorded at E3, and published on June 18. See you in two weeks!
Once upon a time the folks at Blizzard Entertainment thought they could support the entire world of World of Wacraft by ad revenue. This would have created an MMO experience which would cost you nothing but a bit of annoyance by ad providers; what would the total audience be if the game was free?
Had WoW launched free of charge they would probably have significantly more users playing the game, but the ad revenue from the sheer amount of people would be nothing compared to a monthly charge for eight million subscribers.
Although only a small number of those subscribers are US based, they’re still raking in the cash compared to an ad-based model, even if they were to have triple the subscribers.
However, the Blizzard exec noted: “We didn’t want to charge a subscription, but as we researched market conditions, we realized that wouldn’t support us.”
It’s possible, perhaps, that Blizzard would have fallen under its own weight had they created a world where anyone could play for no charge. Imagine the server utilization, the volume of traffic and the support calls they would get for triple or quadrupal the player base with only ads paying the checks.
Granted, a free system would be excellent in theory, but in practice, making us pay is the only way to throttle our addictions. Sad, but true.
(Thanks, gamasutra)
