'Fallout: New Vegas' ups the ante with downloads

Nov 25, 2010
A screengrab from Bethesda Softworks' Enlarge
Screengrab issued by Bethesda Softworks shows a scene from the videogame "Fallout 3," a post-apocalyptic gaming adventure. The games company is building on the rock star debut of its successful game "Fallout: New Vegas" with the December release of a new chapter of the epic exclusively for play on Xbox 360 consoles.

Bethesda Softworks is building on the rock star debut of "Fallout: New Vegas" with the December release of a new chapter of the epic videogame exclusively for play on Xbox 360 consoles.

"Dead Money" software that builds on post-apocalyptic adventures in "New Vegas" will be available for download at console-maker Microsoft's online service beginning December 21.

"The release of 'Dead Money' illustrates our commitment to creating entertaining add-on content for players to enjoy in already massive games," said Bethesda vice president of marketing Pete Hines.

studios are increasingly selling "downloadable content" that augments game play in titles bought on packaged compact disks.

"New Vegas" predecessor "Fallout 3" was crowned Game of the Year after its release in 2008 and proved so popular that Bethesda expanded the action title with adventures in an array of downloadable software.

A "Broken Steel" addition to "" even modified the end of the original game to resurrect the hero, who had sacrificed himself for the sake of other survivors in the post nuclear war scenario.

"New Vegas" sold more than five million copies in the three weeks following its release on October 19, taking in "well over 300 million dollars," according to Bethesda.

The videogame was ranked by industry tracker NPD Group as the best-selling title for consoles and for personal computers in October.

"We recognize that there are many high-quality games that come out during this time of year," said Bethesda president Vlatko Andonov.

"We couldn't be more pleased at how well the game has been received.

"New Vegas" is the fourth title in a winning franchise launched in 1997.

Explore further: Ecologists warn of overreliance on unvetted computer source code by researchers

add to favorites email to friend print save as pdf

Related Stories

October video game retail sales slide 4 percent

Nov 17, 2010

(AP) -- U.S. retail sales of video game hardware, software and accessories slipped 4 percent in October as demand for most gaming consoles declined from a year earlier, according to data from market researcher NPD Group.

US videogame sales continue downward slide

Sep 10, 2010

US videogame sales slid again in August as the industry hoped that hot titles and new motion-sensing controllers due out in coming months would reverse its fortunes.

Recommended for you

Research finds new channels to trigger mobile malware

May 16, 2013

(Phys.org) —Researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) have uncovered new hard-to-detect methods that criminals may use to trigger mobile device malware that could eventually lead to targeted ...

Fewer Facebook users take a liking to its new Home software

May 16, 2013

It may be too soon to call Facebook Home a flop. But it's clearly not the breakout hit that some expected. One month after its splashy debut, fewer and fewer people are downloading Facebook's new mobile software. It took ...

Google adds player matching to Android

May 15, 2013

Google is adding leaderboards and the ability to match players in online games to its Android operating system for smartphones and tablet computers.

User comments : 3

Adjust slider to filter visible comments by rank

Display comments: newest first

Eikka
not rated yet Nov 25, 2010
The videogame industry is moving towards downloaded content and micropurchases for two reasons:

1) You can chop up a game into tiny pieces and sell them separately at a higher price.

2) The downloaded content is non-transferable, which means that second hand game sales cease to exist, meaning less value for the customer and more profits for the company.

Because of the atomization, the game you get when you buy the DVD is more akin to the shareware games of the 90's where you had couple hours of gameplay for free and then you were required to purchase the game to play further, except now you pay the full price to play the limited version.

Some companies are arrogant enough to include all the data for these "extensions" in the original game DVD, and simply require a bit of code to be downloaded so you could access the data that you already have.

All in all, instead of the game, all you get is a limited lisence to play the game, but you pay as if you did own it as a product.
Eikka
not rated yet Nov 25, 2010
Which is another thing that is strange with the game industry, and the movie and music industries, or the whole copyright and intellectual property regime.

Selling lisences-cum-products is basically printing your own money because you never run out of them and making one more costs you virtually nothing.

That's what makes the "information market" so much different from the real physical product market. You are selling something that is unlimited, and the only reason you can sell it is because you've been granted a monopoly to it by law.

As a consequence, the supply and demand mechanism that determines prices in the real world stops working. With an infinite supply, the price should be zero, but the law creates an artifical scarcity that basically makes it possible to sell sand on a beach by banning everyone from picking it up themselves.

Eikka
not rated yet Nov 25, 2010
Of course, if you sold the real product, the game and its data instead of just the lisence to play it, it would cost a couple million dollars because once you sold one copy, everyone would have it.

Nevertheless, if all was right in the world, that what you should be selling instead of worthless lisences.

More news stories

Morocco to harness the wind in energy hunt

Morocco is ploughing ahead with a programme to boost wind energy production, particularly in the southern Tarfaya region, where Africa's largest wind farm is set to open in 2014.

Galaxy's Ring of Fire

Johnny Cash may have preferred this galaxy's burning ring of fire to the one he sang about falling into in his popular song. The "starburst ring" seen at center in red and yellow hues is not the product of ...

US psychiatry gets makeover in new manual

The latest makeover to a massive psychiatric tome honored by some, reviled by others and even called the "Bible" of mental disorders is being released Saturday with a host of new changes.

US seizes Bitcoin operator accounts

US authorities seized the accounts of a Bitcoin digital currency exchange operator, claiming it was functioning as an "unlicensed money service business," court documents showed Friday.

New case of SARS-like virus in Saudi: ministry

A new case of the deadly coronavirus has been detected in Saudi Arabia where 15 people have already died after contracting it, the health ministry announced on Saturday on its Internet website.