MX Vs. ATV Alive DLC Experiment Failed Says THQ

THQ CEO Brian Farrell has admitted that a recent attempt at experimenting with DLC on MX Vs. ATV Alive was ‘not a success’. The game itself scored fairly well, but the new attempt at handling DLC failed.

In an attempt by THQ to “take some of our learnings from the free-to-play market and apply them to the console world”, they released the game at the budget price of $39.99, with less content on disc than a normal game would have, but with a bigger emphasis on regular and substantial paid DLC packs. These packs would then allow gamers to purchase the elements of the game they wanted.

In a recent earnings call, Farrell said that the reduced entry “gave us good acceleration of sales, it just wasn’t enough to drive the installed base to what we wanted to do”.

Farrell went on to say:

Our takeaway there is it’s not a great model in the console market because with the high fixed cost of goods in the current console model, you can’t get the price point low enough to drive that installed base for the client out there to drive the DLC.

This price model for DLC could still work, but the game must have substantial content on disc for those who don’t want to pay for the DLC. It will be interesting to see how this model would work with some other games on the market, because the idea of picking how you want to play through DLC is indeed interesting.

[Via]

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