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@jams: Speaking plainly, removing features from games for profits' sake would more likely harm the single-player and cooperative-multiplayer more than it is likely to remove completely unwarranted multiplayer.

At the end of the day, it's far easier to build a sub-par or just-par multiplayer map than it is to construct an appealing single-player story scenario or do motion- and acting-capturing. Also far less costly.

@mellotronrules: True, pricing is part of the business model, which is why I suggested an alternative of a price "spectrum" if you will. With that there is even room for 80 or 90 dollar games to try their luck. The key to making a good market is competition not only in creating a better product, but at creating a proper value proposition for the product. I would buy Asura's wrath at 30-35 Dollars. Not at $60, though.

Allowing the market to lower the price of a game post release by half of it's initial recommended value is a problematic methodology to make your standard, because that's psychologically and financially devaluing the product and making more and more customers wait for a price drop.

By the time the price drop comes, they've already been swayed by a AAA release with an immense advertisement budget. Overpricing your games at launch results in lesser initial sales from the non-pre-comitted consumers, and decreased over-time sales because games earn significantly less money in post-release weeks than they do on launch weeks.

@mellotronrules: Well, from everything I've been reading about the next generation, Unreal Engine 4 stuff in particular, the focus of many developers is creating a cheaper pipeline and methodology to manufacturing content, so as to reduce production costs versus this generation.

Also consider that a more uniform development environment (unless Microsoft does something crazy and doesn't come out with a near-PC-standard architecture) will result in much-decreased financial efforts being necessary to make multiplatform games and doubling or tripling your target market.

This next generation will rise and fall on smart business modelling and intelligent engineering system design much more than pricing models and the like.

@jdh5153: The problem with your argument is that of the industries you put forth, one is and has been for a while in financial limbo (a lot of money being put into projects, and many times not being recouped).

The other is an institutional monopoly with no competitors. At the end of the day, one gas company has no reason to lower their price significantly, because ALL of their direct competition is at around the same price. Although you should note that the rising price of gasoline has resulted in increased sales of Hybrid and fully-electric vehicles, as well as an increase in car pooling and Mass Transit use among people with a standard daily route.

Traditional games, however, are in direct competition against iPhone, Android, and F2P games, at least insofar as the casual market is concerned. True, you and I, as people who frequent gaming sites, are likely to see the Traditional game experience as important enough that we'll assent to paying $10 more per game, but many people will just shrug and go play LoL, or buy one less game per year, or only buy used games, or won't buy DLC, or at the furthest edge simply pirate all of their games.

All said and done, the point is that there is no real good long-term consideration which makes increasing game prices a viable strategy for the industry as a whole, and console manufacturers in specific. Whether we as core consumers are willing to pick up the tab is eventually irrelevant. We're not where the big money is, and making the cost of entry higher only shrinks the potential market.

I actually felt really disappointed about the lack of cause-and-effect in episode 3. Regardless of the fact that I took a liking to Carley's character after episode 1, I think her death was really well done (I haven't had a playthrough with Doug).

But I was really disappointed at the fact that no decision I made actually mattered. The only choice that affected anything was who would kill Duck. Nothing else I did throughout the episode felt like it had any consequence, except maybe for training Clem, but that's just supposition, since they might just ignore it for the next episode, for all I know.

Overall, though this episode had some of the best story moments up to now, I still think it's the weakest of the series so far because of its lack of interactivity. The story here, sadly, hasn't been able to match a game like To The Moon for emotional involvement, and so its effectiveness lay mostly with its interactivity.

And this episode may as well have been on rails.

Sorry about this, but BUMP.

Hello, people, sorry for interrupting your day, but I'd really appreciate it if you'd take a look at a podcast me and some friends have been making for a few months.

We'd really appreciate it if you gave us a listen, though I know I stand in the shadow of great people even on this site alone. Here's a link to our page for this week's episode (Don't worry about ads, we have none): http://criticalpath.zapto.org/2012/06/24/critical-path-podcast-episode-011-lollipop-paynesaw/

We'd really appreciate a listen and feedback, and if you enjoyed this episode, we have a good few episodes from before, and we plan on continuing.

Also, anyone and everyone who wants to participate can write in to us at criticalpathpodcast@gmail.com or PM me or @stephenage here at Giant Bomb. We'll do our level best to read your mail, address issues you find interesting and even bring you onto the podcast.

Also, for your convenience, here is an HTML5 player that you can access most of our episodes on. Our hosting service is fickle at times, but I'm assured Episode 011 should appear there shortly, if it isn't there already.

Oh, cool, you made a blog post.

I hate to pander, but anyone reading this, please help us - we need feedback to get better. Also, we really want some new blood, so if you have opinions, contact me or stephenage and we'll try to get you on,

@SuicidalSnowman: Thanks for the input. I have to say, regarding gold farming, etc, is that I recognize why Activision-Blizzard had to make the choices it made. Even if they are entirely innocent, I would expect the same systems to crop up anyway.

By the way, I've heard somewhere that the real money AH is going to have a flat $1 commission to Blizzard, instead of 15% like they charge at the gold AH. If this is indeed the case, I believe we have nothing to worry about. If the amount of money Blizzard gets for transactions isn't dependant on the object's price, then AB will have no need to manipulate the markets.

Even though they probably still could.

@happypup70: Fair enough. :)