Call of Duty and FIFA’s annual release model, good for the industry bad for the gamer?
The gamers of today live in a world where technology changes at an exponentially increasing rate almost on a daily basis and where there is more choice now than there has ever been before. Be it in terms of content, media, entertainment and even in games.
If one was to look at the market for first-person shooters alone, there is an abundance of titles each offering more of the same, yet something completely different at the same time.
The more popular series such as Activision’s Call of Duty franchise and Electronic Arts’ FIFA series have an annual release schedule which means that every year gamers can expect a new instalment in the series to cry out for their hard earned cash, or in
most case, their parent’s hard earned cash.
Yet, who benefits from this and is there a solid reason for studios to release full-fledged games on such a regular basis apart from sales revenue?
Firstly, if one was to look at the FIFA series, it had slowly become very stale before Mark Rutter took the helm. Every year a new FIFA game was released which was essentially the same game as the previous year but had a handful of new features which apparently
justified a release as a full title.
Fans quickly became sick of it and Pro Evolution Soccer ruled the roost, however, since then FIFA has come a long way and FIFA 12 has to be one of the best football simulation games to ever grace a console.
It is worth pointing out though that the physical impact engine, which has earned the game so much praise was in development for two years. This means that it was in development when FIFA 10 came out and was still in development when FIFA 11 was released.
If anyone played either of the two games they would note that there was not much difference between the two games.
So the question remains, should EA have scrapped FIFA 11 and focused more on FIFA 12? The answer could be yes for some, but no for many. FIFA 11 sold remarkably well and the changes were received positively by a majority of fans, as minor as they were.
The lessons learnt with FIFA 11 translated into a more complete sequel as FIFA 12 learnt from its predecessor’s short comings.
At the same time however, an argument springs to mind, what if FIFA 11 was released as an update? It brought in the changes to the engine and could cost half the price of a full-fledged game. The rosters could be updated and through a series of updates the
entire game could have undergone the changes the developers wanted with FIFA 11.
The update could be fairly heavy in size, that is what Hard Drives in consoles these days are there for with some boasting over 100GB of memory.
It may be impractical but it is just a thought, if developers designed their games this way then a new instalment could come out every two years, with a host of updates in between. The lessons that need learning would be learnt and gamers would pay for games
that are truly different from the predecessors.
Then again this is an industry that is here to make money and as long as there is demand there will be supply.
Disclaimer: the views and opinions expressed in this article are the writer’s own and do not reflect the editorial policy of Bettor.com
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