Welp, it’s another week and here are the Deals with Gold. As you can tell, Xbox One backwards compatibility has laid another goose egg. Tales of Vesperia is a nice deal this week (I have it on disc and I’m keeping it that way), but at this point we have no idea if it will make BC. Also on the Xbox One side, Oddworld is having a good sale, and including the DLC but I’ll probably pass. Also, Gears of War 2 is free right now due to Games with Gold. But I don’t understand why Xbox and publishers (the more likely culprit) are playing this game of sorts and not understanding how sales and BC should work side by side. More inside.
When the first backwards compatible list came out, we had a large list of over a hundred titles to play with. It was not a perfect list, but it brought out some interesting candidates that I was willing to buy. The Call of Juarez title, Gunslinger was heralded as an excellent western title, and one I was willing to buy to fill the void of Red Dead Redemption or Gun not being backwards compatible. Since then, NO sale. It has remained a $15 title, and the bucks have stayed in my wallet.
More examples, Sega Vintage Classics, I own the Golden Axe and Monster World ones, and since I missed them the first time around, I’m more than willing to buy the Alex Kidd & Streets of Rage ones. Complete the collection, I love old Sega games. Have we seen a sale since this BC thing started? Heck no.
Now, it’s a little early, but the same can be said of the worst offender, the Sam & Max series. These games are $20 a pop. Very few people probably expected them to make backwards compatibility, but they did. The price, still $20 a title. For a digital game. A digital game that is merely eating up space on a Microsoft server somewhere. If they reduced it to $10, I would buy both tomorrow. At $20 a piece, they get zero.
You are probably saying, we need an example where a sale worked….that you bought into that involves backwards compatibility. Well, I can think of two easily. I re-bought Peggle on BC since I couldn’t find my disc, and I’ve probably owned Peggle on a couple of discs by now (and then sold to somebody I’m guessing). I wouldn’t have rebought it if it wasn’t BC. I’d just go without Peggle, which might be better for my psyche, but that’s another discussion.
The second example and a bigger one in my opinion is Phantom Breaker: Battlegrounds. They put this on sale a few weeks after it was announced BC and after reading a couple of reviews, I quickly bought it despite never even hearing of it prior to the sale. I bought the dlc too, completely blind. After that, I’ve enjoyed the game immensely and might (with a little luck) 100% (including DLC) complete the game. If they never put it on sale, I would have never bought it or in this case even heard of it.
The point is that these BC additions can be great sources of revenue for these publishers. When Red Dead got accidentally leaked to BC, sales for the physical copies went through the roof. That was without a sale which I’m sure is what some of these publishers are counting on. But that’s for Red Dead, #3 on the most requested BC titles. They can get away with that. Sam & Max? Raise of hands, besides myself (who is in love with everything Sam & Max), who knew they had those two games for Xbox 360 until you read the announcement about backwards compatibility? That’s what I thought, nobody. And for those who went to the Xbox store or their console and took a look after the announcement, how many saw the $20 price tag and were like….WTF? Okay, that’s a lot more hands.
The point is, that there was probably very little revenue generated by this BC announcement, but I guarantee that if Sam & Max got a sale in the next month, it would certainly get a boost of revenue. I got a $20 bill right here (50% sale)with its name on it. I also have another $20 that I will spend on the Sega Games and Call of Juarez. But without sales, I’ll play what I have (finishing out Phantom Breaker sounds nice). Microsoft, Publishers, and others…the choice is yours.
