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Gears of War 2 was one of the first titles to include a one-time use code for customers who purchased new copies of the game – now a common part of the games industry – but Epic has revealed this initiative wasn’t as successful as the developer wanted.
Speaking to VideoGamer.com at a recent Gears of War 3 preview event in London, executive producer Rod Fergusson said “the Flashback Map Pack was trying a new way of dealing with used sales – if you bought it new you got five free maps, if you bought it used you didn’t get them. It didn’t have the impact we wanted. I think part of it is that 5×5 codes are challenging, that people don’t necessarily know that insert does something, they don’t want to take the time.”
“It wasn’t as successful as we’d like, so we’re not going to have that kind of program in Gears of War 3,” Fergusson added. “It doesn’t mean we won’t be doing interesting things with maps down the road, and revisiting popular ones from the past, but there won’t be that idea of like, hey, here’s this extra content to deal with used sales.”
What does Fergusson think about all the other publishers using one-time codes and online passes at the moment, then?
“I think the online pass is another way – EA has really taken to that, and I think they’re having success. At least in the States I haven’t heard a major outcry, whereas maybe here it’s a little less popular.”
“For new players it doesn’t affect them, so it only affects the people who are buying used copies,” said Fergusson. “Part of that is education. I don’t think people necessarily recognise that when they buy a used copy to save £5 they’re not actually giving it to the people who made the game, they’re giving it to the retailer. I don’t think they necessarily recognise that.”
Is Epic going to use an online pass, then? “For us there’s two ways to look at the used situation,” said Fergusson. “One way is to deal with demand where we try and reduce people wanting the used version – which is sort of what the Flashback map pack was all about. Now it’s really about ‘can we affect supply?'”
“If we can create a game that has so much content when you look at it – arcade, arcade campaign, horde, and beast, and competitive multiplayer across dedicated servers – we feel like if we can keep the player’s disc-on-tray, we can keep people holding onto the game, they won’t be turning it in and therefore there won’t be as much availability for used copies.”
“I’m hoping just through the success of the game, and people wanting to hold onto it, we won’t run into the same problem.”
VideoGamer.com has gone hands-on with both the single-player and multiplayer parts of Gears of War 3, but we haven’t been able to play Horde 2.0. Yet. Don’t panic, however, as there’s a trailer for the latter.
Gears of War 3 will be released for Xbox 360 on September 20.
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