At their recent Gamefest 2006 game technology conference, Microsoft discussed the future of the Xbox Live Marketplace, and how companies can use it most effectively.

First on the list was the power of demos, with MS pointing out that nine out of the top ten demos downloaded on XBLM were for games that weren't yet released. No surprise there. They said Fight Night Round 3 gained a 40% boost in pre-orders after its demo hit Live. They also warned that a bad demo can be just as powerful as a good one, except it keeps customers away instead of enticing them. Again, no surprise; The N3 demo pretty much cemented my decision that I wasn't going to bother with it. Though that may have been more of a problem with the game itself rather than just the demo.

Microsoft then focused on the importance of add-on content, noting that three games had already made over a million dollars in add-ons alone. One of them was Call of Duty 3, and while they didn't name the others, I'd be willing to bet one was Oblivion. From add-ons they moved to gamerpics and all that other worthless crap they make you pay for.

While Microsoft wants demos and add-ons to be a critical part of the plans for games, they also iterated the importance of other parts of the Marketplace. The personalization options offered by the Gamer Pictures and Themes is something Microsoft will continue to encourage developers to create. However, the notion that these 360-pieces of flair would regularly appear free on the Marketplace should be squashed, for now. Microsoft indicated that they have very strict limitations on free content and that they intend on keeping the gamer pictures and themes pretty consistently priced.

This is a damned stupid idea, if you ask me. It's like making everybody at E3 pay for the t-shirts and other swag they hand out every year. They give that stuff away for a reason. You want to get people excited about your product, and you don't do that by making people pay for what is essentially advertising, especially when it's as insubstantial as a gamerpic or theme. I can understand Microsoft not wanting the market to become flooded with loads of free fluff, but you can control the flow of said content without making everyone pay for it.

Further worrying ideas from Microsoft came in the form of new types of microtransactions:

Microsoft mentioned a new kind of microtransaction at the session, as well, which they are calling "consumables." These purchases would be re-purchasable items i.e. if a game was selling 100 gold pieces, you would be able to rebuy 100 gold pieces when you needed them. The "consumables" tech will be included in this fall's release of the SDK.

Another thing Microsoft intends to add to the Marketplace is the ability for vendors placed in videogames to allow gamers to buy from the Marketplace. Say, there is a vendor in an RPG selling a rare sword and that sword is available on the Marketplace, players will be able to put the sword in a checkout cart and then return to the Marketplace later to complete the download. For now, the in-game Marketplace will bring the Marketplace experience into the gameplay, but the transactions, for now, will still need to be completed on the Marketplace and not in-game.

The whole Marketplace thing was a cute idea, Microsoft, let's not screw this up. I do not ever, ever want to be confronted with an item in a game that I cannot earn. Selling additional content later is one thing, but if it ships with the game, I better damned well be able to get it without having to pay more for it.

Not only that, but this also brings up a problem with game immersion. Many games, and this is especially true of RPGs, are designed to treat you to an experience completely removed from the reality. It's escapism. Intrusions of the real world into this experience ruin the effect. It's why designers have labored for years to find ways to remove the real world from games -- ways to implement tutorials naturally into the game world (such as the beginning of Halo) and the elimination of HUDs and other things that remind you that this is "just a game." These efforts are kicked back to square one when you walk up to a shop keeper and they tell you that if you just drop four US dollars on this sword, log out of the game, complete the checkout, and then come back, it's yours! Besides, I like losing myself for a few hours in a world in which I can get everything I need by hitting rats with sticks and picking up the gold they inexplicably drop instead of being reminded of how poor I really am.

The other issue this brings up is one of accomplishment. For pretty much their entire lifetime, video games have been about applying skill to achieve a goal. Sure, there have always been things like cheat codes and GameSharks, but it's always been fairly understood that that's going outside the parameters of the game. Even the codes, which were obviously put there by the designers themselves, are clearly not part of the "real" game. I think most people understand the difference between, say, a shortcut in a racing game and a cheat code. One is an element of the game you can take advantage of if you're good enough to find it, the other is a way of manipulating the game beyond the way it was intended to be played.

The problem with the implementation of real world sales inside games is that it's of the former "shortcut" variety. It's within the rules of the game, thus it's not cheating. And yet it means skill (and a little luck) are no longer the sole determining factors of one's progress in the game. One could make the argument that this would mean the game is harder if you're poorer.

And on the subject of cheating devices, what if you have an item in the game that can only be bought with microtransactions, then someone comes up with a GameShark code to unlock it. Does that make the GameShark an agent of theft? Would Microsoft start going after them? The whole thing is one big mess. While downloadable demos and video are great, I really don't think whatever minor conveniences the Marketplace affords us in terms of purchasable game items is really worth the overwhelming temptation it presents to developers for abuse.

Source: 1up