14 DAY TRIAL // How many save games does a player use? It certainly depends on the type of video game he is playing and on the difficulty, on the device he is playing on (there are certain PC titles that can be described as crash happy) and on how worried he is that he will have to redo a part of the game if and when he screws up.
Capcom, the company that published Resident Evil: The Mercenaries 3D, has decided that the average gamer when confronted with its game will only ever need one save slot and, more importantly, will never want to wipe the slate clean by deleting it and starting over.
It's true that Mercenaries is based around going through the same levels in search of a high score, killing zombies using a variety of character, which means that saves are not the most important element included in the game.
Gamers quickly concluded that the “one save, no deletes” concept is designed to eliminate any secondary market for the Nintendo 3DS-based Resident Evil, but Capcom said that this was not its ultimate aim, although it refused to state the reason for the save policy.
The fact that the game only has one save slot might be forgiven, especially if the autosave was nicely tweaked in Mercenaries, but the fact that the save cannot be deleted seems to be a dead giveaway about how Capcom has discovered a new way of boosting first-time sales and limiting second-hand sales.
I would not be surprised to see Capcom offer to sell another save slot or the ability to erase the one they included in the new Resident Evil to those interested at a certain point or even unlock the save process later in the life of the game, when most of the first time sales have happened.
The backlash from gamers probably means that Capcom will not try the same stunt with any follow-up game, but publishers seem to have a deep reservoir of dump ideas about combating second-hand sales so expect someone to come up with the idea of limiting brightness tweaking on used copies of some upcoming game.