Sam & Max will be $9/episode, $35/season

by Christopher Grant { Oct 4th 2006 at 2:15PM }

Telltale has finally announced the pricing of their upcoming episodic adventure series, Sam & Max. Though the series will debut Oct. 17th on Gametap, as part of their $10/month subscription service, gamers will be able to download individual episodes from Telltale directly for $9 per episode or $35 per season (six episodes).

The season pass will save you nearly $20 off the individual price and earn you the option of ordering a CD of the entire season when it's all wrapped up for just the cost of shipping. That's all the benefits of episodic distribution, with none of the non-physical hangups our retail-addicted brains insist are so important.

So what they're saying is that if you want to play Sam & Max you can either foot the $10 Gametap subscription fee, or buy the whole thing en masse. If the S&M release schedule -- designed to be shorter and more frequent -- maintains it's once-a-month goal, who's going to get individual episodes for $9 when Gametap is offering their entire library for just a buck more?

More on Sam & Max:
Joystiq interviews Dan Connors and Emily Morganti of Telltale
Sam & Max "season premiere" Oct. 17 on GameTap

An aptly titled treat for you, courtesy of fr34kystyley's Sam & Max repository on YouTube.

Tags: Gametap

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

otakucode @ Oct 4th 2006 2:22PM

Heh.

You said S&M.

Touch My Box @ Oct 4th 2006 2:30PM

Umm, Canadians such as I am willing to pay $9 per episode, as Gametap only offers it's service to The United States.

rockintom99 @ Oct 4th 2006 2:48PM

Or, you know, if you pay the $35, which is cheaper than getting gametap for the length of Sam and Max.

Very nice pricepoint, anyway. 6 episodes of Sam & Max cheaper than two HL2 episodes!

(Then again, HL2 episodes have a bit more work put in them)

Trogdor @ Oct 4th 2006 2:58PM

what if you wait until all the episodes are out, couldn't you just pay $10 and play all six episodes in one month??

Tetranitrocubane @ Oct 4th 2006 3:03PM

I'm not sure who would want to suffer the bloatware scourge of GameTap in the face of reasonable alternatives. Ugh.

Rallion @ Oct 4th 2006 3:04PM

That's actually some excellent pricing, if you ask me. (By that I mean the $9 and $35, not the GameTap thing.) I've been worried about episodic games being more expensive in the long run than traditional games, but that discount on purchasing the whole season is a great idea. You get the best of both worlds that way (or better in this case, since most games cost more than $35.)

pandlcg @ Oct 4th 2006 3:08PM

What type of bloatware is on Gametap? I was considering this until that little comment from Tetranitrocubane.

watership @ Oct 4th 2006 3:13PM

All the hype.. all the constant talking and posting about it, all of it, will crash and burn and will make everyone HATE episodic content if this game isn't any good. Episode Content so far is Bone, 1 half-life episode, and 1 Sin episodes. Months ago. The promise of episodic content is not worth the wait/quantity/quality return.

Tom @ Oct 4th 2006 3:23PM

I'm kind of annoyed that GameTap isn't offered in Canada. I want to get Sam & Max and Uru Live, but it would be so much nicer to pay one monthly fee and get access to all the other games.

playclever @ Oct 4th 2006 3:46PM

I downloaded the Gametap software around launch, and was just about starting to see past the needlessly overblown 3D interface when it told me I was in the UK and could I please f*** off.

Of course, these days, they let us foreigners down far more quickly, which is nice.

Colon D @ Oct 4th 2006 3:49PM

Sign me up for a whole season; less than twenty quid for 6 episodes sounds like a very good deal to me.

Just hope they offer the same pricing structure and system in Europe.

LaughingTarget @ Oct 4th 2006 3:55PM

As much as I want to play it right away, looks like I'll be holding out for the Season 1 Box Set.

Colon D @ Oct 4th 2006 4:04PM

LaughingTarget:
It looks like if you sign up for the entire first season they'll send you the discs when they've finished and released all of the episodes - so surely you could just do that and they send you the stuff when they're done?

Or am I getting the wrong end of the stick?

masterpug @ Oct 4th 2006 4:05PM

In what way is Gametap bloatware? Sounds like a pretty knee-jerk reaction to me. On top of which, the $10 for Gametap also gets you every other single game they have, including Uru whenever that comes out.

Satertek @ Oct 4th 2006 4:20PM

The only problem I had with Gametap was canceling it. In order to cancel, you have to call them up, wait on hold for ~30 minutes, then run though the "Why do you want to cancel? How could we improve our service?" routine.

Other than that, tons of old DOS and console games that bring back lots of memories, and a few decent games that are few years old.

The $10/mo will be a bargain when Sam and Max hits it.

ninja @ Oct 4th 2006 4:46PM

Episodic Gaming... end of television

This is going to appeal to a very small select crowd of older gamers (the ones with full-time jobs). I have enough of a hard time just trying to keep up with every Final Fantasy game made, along with all the other games that catch my interest. I still have yet to finish, FFVIII, FFX-2, FFXI, FFI & II remakes and there is FFXII and 3 versions of FFXIII on the way! If the only game I ever played was Final Fantasy, then maybe I would not have such a difficult time keeping up.

Yes, we've had games already have similar episodic content (such as .hack for PS2) over a span of years which is more reasonable (for me at least). Shortening the gap between the episodes to a mere few weeks, only steers my interest away. With my full-time job, family life, friends, my current games (Socom, FFXI & others) and my favorite shows on TV (which I rarely watch anyways)... I just won't have the time to show any interest in Episodic Games.

On another note; When I purchase a game new, I want to know about replayability. Will I want to play this game even after I beat it? Does the price justify the number of hours I will invest? - in other words - For $40 will it take up at least 40-60 hours of my life? NO? Then not interested.

With Episodic Games, where is the replayability and where is estimated game play time? And how exactly will the reviews work, if it is episodic, we can't just give away the endings... now can we?

It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

LaughingTarget @ Oct 4th 2006 7:54PM

Colon -

Ah, I see how they're doing it. You're right. If I fork over $35 from the start, I get them as they come, and I get all of the first season.

Gary @ Oct 5th 2006 10:46AM

As an example of my philosophy I'll give the following example: Last week I bought Smuggler's Run for the PS2. It's been around since the launch days of the PS2. I find that its a simple but fun game that garnered good reviews and I'm enjoying it.

It cost me $3.99. I have a physical complete game that I may use on multiple iterations of the console and may resell, give away, prop open my window with at my leisure.

Episodic games, new games, Xbox Live games / premium content are all marketed squarely at a demographic with mucho disposable income and a feverish interest in getting rid of it for the sake of staying fashionably current in their gaming.

Those gamers ought to do themselves a favor and take a breather from gaming for a year.

When they return on the scene and start from where they left off, they'll be playing the very same games while slashing their gaming cost by more than 50%.

If the games are what really matters to them and not the trendiness, then their enjoyment of gaming wont be diminished by the passage of time.

Dwango @ Oct 5th 2006 12:55PM

But there is the problem with episodic content being only online. You can take a year off and physical games will be cheaper, but online content will have the same price, most likely. And, it will be hard to find used, as most people won't get the CD.

This is the new gaming future. Pay full price all the time. There is no inventory to get rid of online.

LaughingTarget @ Oct 5th 2006 1:41PM

Dwango -

On the flip side of the coin, a price drop is far easier in an online distribution channel because various factors like producution plants to make packaging doesn't exist. Recouperation of expenses comes faster and because of the minimal cost involved to provide the product to the customer, there is a greater incentive to drop the price over time to generate more sales as after those costs recouperate, the future sales are almost pure profit (less bandwidth costs).

Dark Jaguar @ Oct 6th 2006 5:21AM

Episodic content. Hmm. Well, cheap small games vs more costly big games. Seems like a reasonable tradeoff to me, but here's the real deal. Episodic content is nothing all that new. Megaman. There, I said it.

That said, I hate the very idea of paying a monthly fee to access a product that otherwise has no reason to have a fee. An MMO? Sure I understand why that would have a fee, as I would any online server service. There's something that needs to be run and maintained. If I have a single player game though, or only local multiplayer, I BETTER only need to pay for it once, or at least have that option. In other words, Gametap is not for me.