Valve announced they were doing an episodic FPS released via Steam a few months ago.

http://www.valvesoftware.com/news.php?id=427

Quote:More of a continuation of story, but like a book/novel, having clearly defined chapters would be the perfect breaks for episodes.

Charge £20 for the original game, then £15 for episodes. Then after a year of so £25 for 2 or £30 for 3 additional episodes.

People won't buy a game they're not sure if you'll ever finish it. What if you go bust after having released only some of the chapters? They'll have spent all that money and not even had a finished product. If each episode is self contained, that's not an issue - they'll already have had full games.

Quote:However, quick COMPLETE games are something that isn't very comcercially feasible for most genres. In most cases people want more content, longer games, and better graphics or so the polls say

Who answers those polls? People with time to answer them. The same people who have time to spend 40+ hours on a single game, and still go out and buy another one next week. The majority of people don't have that much time, and I would contend that as a result they DON'T want more content and longer games.

Fact: in the UK, more people watch Kim and Aggie clean people's houses for half an hour once a week, than play Halo 2. The computer game market is the ultimate example of a niche, and selling the same games (but longer) to the same people will mean it will remain a minority pasttime. Costs are spiralling. A minority can't sustain this market for much longer.

Why not expand the market, and sell your games to more people, by making games not only for the hardcore but for someone who's lucky to get 4 hours a week to play a game, never mind 40? Episodic content, done properly, is an ideal way to reach BOTH groups. The "hardcore" get their 40 hours, spread over several episodes. The "casuals" get their short sharp hit of fun, and don't spend a lot of money on it or feel like they've missed out as they didn't complete the game.