MS: Paid DLC Causes Games to Sell $21M More, Overall Xbox Live Marketplace Sales Total $240M
According to Gamasutra, the manager stipulated that the boost in sales typically required the content to be launched within a 30-day "sweet spot." The data reflects growing industry trends in which more and more games are arriving to retailers with DLC already available, or with content planned well in advance of release.
"Right now we have over 12 million users in over 26 countries, with $240 million in [Xbox Live Marketplace] transactions revenue so far, with $180 million in the last 12 months alone," Salcedo added.
Downloadable content also keeps consumers hanging onto titles longer than those titles which are not supported by content updates.
"On average, titles that have downloadable content on XBL marketplace have seen a 16 percent [longer] period of people holding onto that title, which keeps them from selling to secondhand stores," he said.
In addition to extending the shelf-life of a game, downloadable content can prove a viable marketing tool for titles already on the shelves. Originally planned for the early fall, the first piece of content for Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto IV was recently delayed to publisher Take-Two's 2009 fiscal year first quarter.
The publisher said the content was delayed "in order to provide a better balance in Take-Two's release schedule," suggesting that the content was pushed back for marketing reasons rather than development hiccups. The availability of new downloadable content could possibly boost holiday sales for the open-world shooter, originally released this past April.
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thebigbeefsandwich
replyMS exec: Hey check this out you can hold back content to milk the idiot dollar.
Game dev exec: Niiiiiiiiice.-
Pretty much. Hold back content and you can sell more games! See we have evidence.
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I dunno, most of the 360 titles I bought planning to get future DLC were games that out of the box are very complete titles: Rock Band, GTA4, Mass Effect.
Admittedly some companies have sold some very stupid stuff as DLC (horse armor FTW!) but for the most part I think the games that are adding true addon content rather then 'ha ha, we didn't sell you 1/4 of the game, want to buy it?'
I can't see how otherwise that would end up resulting in more sales.-
I won't deny a lot of games are doing DLC right I'm just worried a big press release like this is going to start a bad trend with other companies trying to make the money hats by abusing DLC in order to continue such a positive trend.
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"true" add-on content? What is that? Does that mean its "good" by your standards? They make this stuff in the original devleopement time, chop it off the game, and sell it later. Thats a scam someone thught of to milk gamers, period.
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