14 DAY TRIAL // This week, the people at Beautiful Game Studio, Eidos’s arm in charge of the creation of the Championship Manager franchise after the very public and rather nasty split with Sports Interactive, has announced that until September 10, when the game is set to officially launch, all those who are interested in it can log into a store, pay any amount of money they wish and get the game on September 11 at midnight.
There is a minimum charge of 2.50 Pounds, which covers the cost of the digital distribution and there a 1 pence minimum feed needed for the transaction but other than that, players can get their hands on a full football management game for less than one can pay for a really good cup of coffee. The offer has been so good that the servers powering the scheme were brought down, although, at the moment, they seem to be working fine, processing orders without a hitch.
The interesting thing about the deal offered for Championship Manager 2010 is that it brings a business model, which seems to have already been adopted by part of the music industry to videogaming. “Pay What You Want” relies on players valuing an experience on their own and paying to keep the band, or in this case, the developer going.
Of course, Eidos and Beautiful Game Studios have an alternate revenue stream in CM Season Live, a service that updates stats for teams and players every month for a six-month fee of 5 Pounds. And the two companies have likely launched their ground breaking offer because their game, while benefiting from name recognition, is seen as a second best to the Sports Interactive-created Football Manager series. A “Pay What You Want” model will likely get the title into the hands of a lot of gamers who could experience the improvements that otherwise they might never see.
Will the model catch on? It would be nice to all the underdogs in a particular genre to be released for lower prices than the front runner, in an effort to gain more of a following. But that would mean that all games involving shooting, which are not Modern Warfare 2, need to get a price cut for the next month, which will not happen. The Championship Manager 2010 strategy will work in a narrow market, like that of football management, where there are only a few contenders and the underdogs are clearly defined. Still, the power of the word “free” might lead to some interesting changes in the world of videogames and their pricing.