It seems the main idea I keep coming back to is, are they selling us a product or a service and perhaps the service is where all the revenue is.

You have to be careful.

If you look at the box office results year by year for movies, you will see that adjusted for inflation the trend is that the movie industry is making more money year after year.

If you look at the stats for music recording, we see a sharp decline around 2000 and a leveling off. This is unadjusted for inflation, making it worse.

What happened in 2000? Napster? Is Piracy to blame? You can pirate movies too. So why do movies make more money year after year?

Apple put a price on a song of $.99. When it's that low, I think it gives the impression that it's not of value. And so people feel okay about stealing it. Especially when you pay virtually nothing now with streaming sites. Music has little value. It's always 'there'. When was the last time you sat and listened to an album (that wasn't MotS), devoting all your attention to it? Or do you listen to music like most people now - while you work, while you're in the car, or at parties? There are so many you just go through them from song to song as soon as a new one comes. Disposable.

Movies are making more money because there is still value to them. First of all, ticket prices are going up. This thing is worth your 10-15 bucks. Secondly, movies are not as ubiquitous as music. You don't see movies unless you sit and devote time to them. This is changing a bit too, as you can always have one on Netflix or the TV in the background, but for the most part movies are treated as, and priced as, a thing of value worth your time, money, and full attention.

Games benefit from this the most. A game requires your attention basically at all times. But when you charge 99 cents for a shitty mobile game, or give your game away for free, what are you really saying? Your game doesn't have the value to sustain someone's attention for long periods. There's so many shitty mobile games, almost nobody makes money and there's not a lot of loyalty. I am not shocked most free to play games are ghost towns.

But if you charge full price up front, not only are you saying that your game is worth that, but players will go into the game expecting the same. They'll put it in and play nothing else. They will willingly give themselves over because they made that investment. And if it does live up to that, they'll play it far longer.

Cheap games make people think they are disposable. We should be making bigger and better games. And charge MORE for them.

I've had this idea for a while of a console that only charges you when you want to play. Not much, just like $.25 per game, with the option of extending your time with another $.25 if you run out of lives. And I could boost it as keeping kids more active by requiring them to stand up in front of it to play. Maybe even open up a storefront with a bunch of these in the same room so kids could get together and play.

All joking aside, there is a bar that just opened in my town that is an +21 arcade. Craft beer and dorm room food, like chips, soft pretzels and Totinos pizzas. A line of pinball machines that are pay-per-play and a bunch of arcade machines that are free. The sitting tables have various consoles also for free. The place is going gangbusters!

(They are offering a good product and service.)

It's really tough to say, but I was having a conversation with Malagate (or Galvan_Eyes, depending on your platform) last night about the future of games in a "post Destiny 2 screwup" world, and we came to the conclusion that a "piece-meal feature" world where things such as maps are free, but optional features (such as a photo mode) are bought and supported straight from the devs themselves, was the ideal solution. An extreme example of this already exists: players wanted DE to sell a Premium cosmetics bundle in Warframe, so DE posed the question to the community: What do you guys want in the bundle, and how much should it cost?
Seriously. Even Jim Sterling was taken aback. So yeah, the developer put the power in the players' hands, and it's all in the name of supporting a free game.

Can you see that working with traditional story based games? Like Horizon: Zero Dawn or The Witcher 3 for example? I just don’t know how it would work and still feel like a pleasant and seamless experience. Or do those just stay as traditional pay $60 and then you get the whole game?

I mean, the $60 experiences have been at a bit of an odd spot, though games like Nier: Automata and Persona 5 have shown that even a seemingly niche title can find huge success here in the states if the game itself is good (and look at the Yakuza series, which has borderline zero marketing in the US).

HZD is a game that provided a great and complete experience, but they decided to include Photo Mode at launch, then continued to build on it for free. It was great, but if they had decided to charge for the Photo Mode improvements, I wouldn't have hesitated to pay. I'd happily pay if I knew that I was directly supporting future features for the photo mode, and I'd be using my wallet to show Guerilla that yes, more Photo Mode content is something that players are willing to pay for.

I look at games like Gravity Rush 2, where small experiments and side projects lead to that game's photo mode, where you can place objects in the game world, set up your shot, then upload your image to be reviewed by other players, which rewards you with in-game unlocks if people give your photo a thumb's up. They were going to disable this feature in January, but so many people bought the game during the holiday sale, that they decided to extend the social services until July of this year.

I'd like to see something like this in more $60 games. If Bungie decided to make and sell a Photo Mode in Destiny 2, they could let the sales of it speak for themselves. They'd possibly see "hey, we sold ten thousand copies of the Photo Mode, leading to $x amount of profit, so we should/shouldn't invest more into this optional feature!
And it's not just photo mode. How about instead of Loot Boxes, you sell individual emotes. How about instead of Random Ghosts, they sell a variety of designs, from the original, to the bulbous, to something like Sagira, and let players decide which one they want, to see what designs are the most popular. Same for Ships, Sparrows, and even shader collections. What if Bluerunner could just buy a "Bluestreak Shader Bundle" that included a few different Blue + Silver styles, so that he could mix and match them for his gear?

I’m playing a lot of Elite: Dangerous still, and the way that game does it still bugs me. It’s $60 to get the base game plus the expansion. That’s fair, there’s a ton of content there, and it’s supported well. They offer tons of cosmetics that you can only get with actual money. There’s no way to earn anything in game (with the exception of a small set of ship decals based on your current rank). Each ship has what are essentially body kits you can buy, there’s clothes and accessories for your pilot, and then ship paint jobs. Hell, you even have to pay to be able to put the name of your ship on the side. I don’t mind them charging for shiny things, but there is literally zero customization of you don’t give them more money after the initial $60 purchase. There’s not even a basic color selectionbfir your ship—even single colors are sold in packs. And you have to buy them individually per ship. It’s really sleazy.

Yeah, that's pretty weak. They could have at least done something like this:

It's really tough to say, but I was having a conversation with Malagate (or Galvan_Eyes, depending on your platform) last night about the future of games in a "post Destiny 2 screwup" world, and we came to the conclusion that a "piece-meal feature" world where things such as maps are free, but optional features (such as a photo mode) are bought and supported straight from the devs themselves, was the ideal solution. An extreme example of this already exists: players wanted DE to sell a Premium cosmetics bundle in Warframe, so DE posed the question to the community: What do you guys want in the bundle, and how much should it cost?
Seriously. Even Jim Sterling was taken aback. So yeah, the developer put the power in the players' hands, and it's all in the name of supporting a free game.

I think this is the worst way to dress it up. To 'put the power in the player's hands' is simply a ravaging of the art.

Everyone at the theatre is seeing the same musical. Everyone at the cinema is seeing the same movie. Everyone who buys the records hears the same song. Yet not everybody playing a game has the same game.

Sure, some people might pay more for a better experience. You might pay more to get great seats at the concert. You might pay more for a better sound system to listen to your music. But those are just things on your end to enable you to experience the art the best way possible. The art itself is still the same.

This piece meal world will be one in which nobody has the same game. I'd hope by this point everyone agrees games are art. So why would the artist be okay with having an incomplete version of their work not only existing, but being the DEFAULT that players see when they first install the game?!

I think you miss the idea (and not just because of your erroneous belief that games are inherently art). I tried to point out you're not paying for certain weapons, levels, multiplayer maps, or anything that would cause you to miss the core experience. I think that's important, and not something negotiable (because it is integral to the experience that you want to give your audience). But optional features such as Photo Mode, color pallets, skins, etc. That's non-essential work that devs often leave on the cutting floor, or things that end up not being as fleshed out as they could be, because they don't consider it worth the time and resources to implement, since the experience is fine without them. And while they are right, don't people shell out more for Blu-Rays that have extra features?
Don't you enjoy watching Deleted Scenes, Director Commentary, extended cuts, etc?

Case in point, the "Deluxe" brand of cosmetic skins in Warframe are the product of individual DE artists making them in their spare time, and releasing them whenever they are done. The "Tennogen" brand of cosmetic skins are entirely player made, so have no real part in the developer's "vision" besides getting their approval. Both of these cosmetic things are a solid source of income for DE (and actual content creators), and help build better communication and understanding between them and the playerbase, without taking away from the product that DE wants to put out.

Everyone at the theatre is seeing the same musical. Everyone at the cinema is seeing the same movie. Everyone who buys the records hears the same song. Yet not everybody playing a game has the same game.

Not the person behind a column, not the people sitting in the front, not the people who can't afford quality headphones...

With everything now becoming on-demand with live updates and content, the business model will transition to subscriptions and limited time access. I think the era of "buying" a game is coming to an end.

As much as I prefer your method, it probably won't be around much longer.

I don't think so. 2017 taught us that great single player games are still in demand.

That model never really existed. You can have the one-time physical media purchase, but the actual game content is still only available to you as a license. Until the advent of networked games it didn’t really matter because no one was enforcing a TOS on you or anything that would violate your access to that content via your license.

In the context of a one-time-purchase is “best for consumers” I find all of those assessments pretty much unprovable. Valuation between individuals and benefits of different models have always been a thing, they are just broader now. Has everyone forgot about renting games as part of these equations? Sure, in some distant crystal towered utopia everyone could get the whole product in one go, but that itsef would have to be economically reasonable to the major consumer base. But the reluctance to charge 70-100 for the base version of a game is met with violent push back.

I think the market has moved past individual purchases, and in many cases more consumers experience real benefit from additional monetization even if they aren’t personally spending that money.