Positive Ways to Encourage Buying New Games

[Will Chandler]

Alright guys. I'm pretty tired of hearing about developers and their methods of encouraging people to buy new games. What's more frustrating is hearing people gripe about how outrageous it is or how they're going to pirate it. So I want to hear some things that would encourage people to buy new games in a positive way.

Keep it semi-serious. I'm genuinely looking for real solutions that developers could use.

 

[PlasmaFrog]

Well, a great incentive would to release a promising appearing game that actually catches my eye.

 

[Vonnis]

Making an original copy of the game less of a pain in the ass to get running than a pirated version would be a great start. I'm looking at you, GFWL.

 

[Stormz]

For PC. That simple solution for me would be to stop using DRM. That includes stuff like Steam and GFWL.

Consoles. I almost always buy new so I really don't know. Oh yeah, less focus on DLC. Especially ones that are critical to the story. I'm looking at you bioware.

 

[chaosfalling]

Releasing a game which isn't Shenmue 3 is probably the culprit.

But in all seriousness - make it worth the £40/$60, i.e. not some game that can be rushed through in 4 hours with no replay value. Adding multiplayer doesn't excuse it either....I'm looking at YOU Activision.

Did I mention to release Shenmue III?

 

[Lilani]

I take it "lower the damn price" isn't an acceptable answer?

How about developers offering breaks to players who buy more than one game for them? Like buy one get one 50% off, or some sort of credit system--you know, like a preferred customer thing. If you put one-time-use registration codes in each game to do this, that will both encourage buying new games and buying physical copies of them. Plenty of developers have big enough libraries now for a system like this to be appealing to players.

Oh, and make the system easy to use. Not some half-assed, unstable mess that players will have to spend all sorts of time setting up and fiddling with.