Seems like gaming is about to go down a very dark road. So far, all the various DRM things and everything, I've learned to live with all the bullcrap, and basically just avoid it.
Now, with these new consoles coming out (PS4 and Infinity), I fully expect free-to-play and microtransactions to seamlessly be built into virtually every single game next-gen. It's going to be a standard "feature". There will be specific "free-to-play" games, and then there will be the big budget $60 or even $70 games. Even though these games will be full priced, they will be loaded with opportunities to spend small amounts of real world money. Everywhere we turn, we're going to be given the opportunity to "upgrade" for a small fee. Yeah, yeah.. I know, we've all seen this before. They're already doing this on current gen systems. What's the big deal?
The big deal, is that on current gen systems, to buy things, they have to take you out of the experience, and you have to go thru a process to get stuff. With the PS4 and the Infinity, the OS is going to be designed to specifically allow for in game purchases to be completely seamless and unobtrusive. Buying things with real world money will be as simple as pushing a button, with no need to leave the game itself.
Then we have the whole free-to-play phenomenon. Free to play is being tried here and there on current gen, but it's going to be a much bigger part of the program on PS4 and Infinity. We already know that if you value your "time", nothing about these games is free. All kinds of various psychological tricks are used to try to get us to part with our hard earned pesos. The idea of punishing the consumer, and irritating the consumer so much, that they will be forced to cough up money, to end the annoyance, it's a strange business model. Seemingly... it works, because tons of publishers and developers are using that technique. When it arrives in full force, with the arrival of next-gen, it's going to get really interesting to see how the huge console based gaming public reacts. Sure, you can say they all have iphones right now, and they've already been exposed to this, but there's something about it happening in full force on the big gaming console that is going to be unique.
Of course, we can also mix in the whole "always-online" requirements, that games, and maybe even consoles themselves... will have. That's a whole nuther ball of wax... We all know what recently happened with Sim City. I don't know man... things are looking kinda of bleak for the future of gaming, at least when it comes to the normal comfort level I used to have when playing games. It used to be, that you would buy a cartridge in the store, you'd get home and plug the thing in, and it would work, and everything was cool. You might say it was...
A elegant method, for a more civilized age