ORIGINAL: littleike
The idea of create addons for simulation programs (tipically fligt simulation programs) is
not new. If someone has played MS Flight simulator he will surely know the amount of
specifically aircraft mods and cockpits on the market with prices much more than 8 dollars
each.
Obviously many of theese aircraft addons were true simulations in the simulation, with real
instruments, check lists, flight models,and superdetailed components,for real training.
Recently Digital combat simulator seems to have inaugurated this sell policy with their
simulator Black shark and the announce of subsequent integrations to the program with new
jets (A10, Flanker ...) to purchase separately.
Well, right, the basic idea is not new. Quite some of the products you probably had in mind (like the 3rd-party MS FlightSim add-ons, additional huge airports for FS versions before FSX, scenery disks using sat images, new flight models + missions, etc.) rather resemble expansions, as the creation of the content required many man-hours and/or acquisition of licenses or digital images.
If actual developers, or 3rd-party devs, then decide to charge for such "add-ons", I'd be with them.
I'm not with them if it comes to "booster packs", where such approaches rather look like the devs just attempt to put their greedy hands in your wallet, even though you put out enough money for the (main) product, already.
Said that i seem that sell new aircraft also for few dollars in a program like that is a commercial way to gain more money from the user..
Well, yes it is. But with the case above (Add-ons for MS FlightSim), it's justified to charge for such an add-on, as it involves major efforts from the developers. You can't compare that to the game mentioned by Slick.
Also, I wouldn't feel like buying such a game (with limited content), as I'd rather expect FULL (a variety of content, different planes, worlds, missions, whatever) content along with a full-price tag, without being "forced" to invest money in numerous add-ons which may add up to way over 100 bucks, or maybe even more. There are enough publishers who offer FULL content for some 30-60 bucks, so I'll stick with them.
Falcon4, F15 strike eagle, F18, European air war (that i can no more play on my nvidia pc), DID for who know that F22 simulation.
I'd also add DI's Tornado, a true simulation and a gem. I still have European Air War, but I never liked the terrain textures, due to the pretty pixelated ground textures, which made ground strikes less enjoyable for me, let alone the difficulty to estimate your plane's altitude during low level flights - without you having to check the instrument every few secs.
You can still play EAW on NVIDIA cards, check this out:
http://eaw.wikispaces.com/7217+Error-a+fix
http://eaw.wikispaces.com/EAW+7217+erro ... +solutions
You can also "downgrade" to a somewhat older NVIDIA driver, in order to play EAW with an NVIDIA card:
http://eaw.wikispaces.com/nVidia+driver ... ility+list
The only thing i could never bear is the delivery of software protected by internet activation mechanisms or starforce like drivers.
The method of Matrix with the choice of digital download and/or copy expedition with a user code is without doubt the best for me.
I own one game with online activation, as I really liked the demo - so I couldn't hold my horses. This game features an online activation system, where you have to license the game online, and you have to unlicense (and uninstall) it before you can install it on another computer (IIRC, you can obtain an offline license too (email?)). There was never a working illegal copy of this particular game floating around, until several DD distributors started to sell them and offer somewhat different versions of patches for the game, which made it possible to mix the versions and ship around the protection. I'd consider this to be a rather rare and embarrassing accident (for the publisher) or coincidence, though. Still, these protection schemes are less effective than you might think.
Outside of niche-markets, widely popular games attract a whole army of crackers (well, they are not hackers, right? [:)]) who try to beat a protection scheme. So, in fact, such online-activations only secure games (thus sales) that focus on online-multiplayer content, as single-player games usually either don't need an activation or can be cracked by good crackers (even steam-games had been cracked), or games targeting a niche market - because these don't attract top-crackers. These guys' egos demand large audiences.
I could accept online activations, if there were NO limitations regarding the number of installs (eg. some schemes allow for 5 installations only, if you change your hardware and reformat several times, you'll have used up the allowed amount of activations quickly), means if some of these activations wouldn't turn your game into a rental game, actually.
I decided not to buy any game from the publisher using that activation scheme I mentioned above, solely because of the lack of game content (too few missions, some bugs, AI misbehabiours), not because of the online-activation, as this particular one is a less restrictive one, afaik.
Except for publishers like Matrix, you'll see the online-activation thing growing each year, and you'll also see more and more online-content offered for offline games (which won't be for free), as the publishers THINK that is the only effective way to keep a certain level of sales figures and/or to keep people interested in the base game.
I could see one tiny benefit there, let's get back to EA as example:
EA (and let's say UBIsoft) might be willing to move away from their strict patch policies (usually 1-2 patches only, sometimes even none for titles with rather low sales)