Sony releases arcade-style 'pay-as-you-go' version of Trash Panic

if they just make demos compulsory then we dont have to waste our hard earned on below par games like punisher

Sony has a bad habit of not having demos for every one of their PSN games. Probably because they realize you wouldn't buy them if you tried them.

There are no demos for Flow and Flower, but both were hyped up, so for the cheap price I purchased both. Big mistake. Two of the most boring pieces of crap I've ever played.

Criticizing Flower for being boring just means you've *completely* missed the point of the game. It's an amazing piece of interactive art and well worth the $10.

I'm glad this will give me a chance to try Trash Panic though, it looks fun but I've heard a lot of mixed reviews.

@Elranzer
Congratulations on being a failure.

would you recommend it?

I'm on the edge of buying it, and damn that edge is starting to hurt. TELL ME!

@Swarley
"It'd definitely be a good idea in terms of trying games out."

Does PSN have demos/trials for games?

@Swarley

Off topic, but your avatar owns all. NPH (finally) got nominated for Best Supporting Actor this year too.

A good idea certaintly, and what a cash grab for Sony too....this was one of the most difficult and addictive games I've played in a long time. Based on my experience, if I choose pay-as-you-go as opposed to buying it outright I would have been $30 in the hole by my third hour in :O

@Psychofemm

PSN has demoes and trials for some games, but not for all of them. It's basically on a case by case basis.

As far as I can remember, Trash Panic doesn't have a demo.

Yeah, i should have clarified. Not all have demos and some demos are lacking the features in a game.

If you're looking for a fun, challenging puzzle game, then yeah I would definitely recommend this game. Big downside is that you can't save your main game mode. I spent a few hours playing Main Dish and could not complete the last level. Ended up quitting. I find myself yelling at and demeaning my television. If you're looking for easy trophies, look else where.

@hashbrown
haha thank you. And yes it's about time NPH got some recognition.

Trash Panic has a demo in Europe. Just downloading it now.

THIS GAME MAKES ME SO ANGRY

dont buy

swarley is right, its super super hard

clearly for the japanese insane gamer audience

I'm in the same boat, it looks like a lot of fun but it sounds like the difficulty might end up ruining it.

I'm also wondering whose going to end up paying a dollar per play more than five times? It's not quite a demo, but at least it will let people try the game before buying the "full" version. I hope this doesn't end up being a slippery slope towards charging people for demos. (Though I suppose GT Prologue has already covered that one XD).

The more I think about this, the more I realize this has the potential to be an EXCELLENT business model with a few tweaks.

First, make this apply to ALL games, not just online games.

Then, make all games cost only $10 and include x number of free plays.

Add an upper limit to how much you can pay to play. So, if the upper limit is $60, once you've invested an additional $50 after purchase, you no longer have to pay to play.

Now, if you walked into Target and all the video games were $10, you'd be more likely to pick up titles you were on the fence about. That's a win for the developers and publishers. The $10 has at least covered the cost of packaging, promotion, etc. If the game is GOOD, they're going to make that other $50 from you playing the game. That's a win for the consumers, because this model gives developers even MORE incentive to make great games. It creates more competition (and competition is always good for the consumer). Think about it, if you buy 3 games, even AFTER the purchase, those 3 games are still competing for your dollars. Additionally, you still can't pay more for a game. You can only pay LESS. If of those 3 games, only one of them is awesome, then you end up paying $60 for unlimited play of that one game, and you've only spent $20 on the other two.

Another benefit for the games industry, is it cuts out the used game market. If the game is tied to how many credits you've bought for it on your PSN/Xbox Live account, publishers won't care if the game is re-sold. Whoever buys it used, still has to pay per play.

Shit, this is full of potential.

Scenario: 3 games you're really anticipating are coming out this month, but you only have $60 to spare. Currently, you'd have to choose one, and wait on the other two. And if 3 great games come out the following month, now you've got 5 to choose from. But, with the other model, you buy all 3. It's like lay-away, but you get all 3 games.

This could be the future.

@WINterfang

No, not like free demo at all, because with a free demo, you get one level or some otherwise gimped game. And some demos don't really give you a good idea of what the game will be like. I didn't like the demo for inFamous too much, but I'm completely addicted to the game.

And demos could still live happily alongside this model. You like the demo? Cool. Maybe you'll pony up the 10 bucks to play the game. It's almost a middle-ground. Again, all you can do is SAVE money. I've got plenty of games that I've paid $60 for, but I haven't played them 60 times. What if you only had to pay $30 for a game that you only got $30 worth of play out of?

Well, at this point, I'm not talking about the actual game mentioned in the article, but about the potential of the business model it's using. If there is no limit to how much you can eventually spend playing a game, then that sucks. It should top out at some point, and from that point forward you should be able to play as much as you want without paying any more.

my problem with the idea of bringing it to disc-based games is.... say I pay $10 for a game and play the hell out of it and pay $50 online. once I get sick of it I can only sell that game for $10 or less.

every dollar spent online has no resell value. this isn't a terrible idea for PSN games but I would have to stop playing games if this model was extended to disc based games.

if I buy a game for $60 I can play it until I get sick of it and then sell it for like $50 that is the only reason I can afford to buy games.

@Paul

Yes, it does pretty much kill the used game market, but that's what publishers have been looking to do anyway. They want a way to put that money into their own coffers instead of GameStop's.

There are pluses and minuses on both sides of the board. You lose the ability to sell back your games, but you gain the ability to buy more games for less. Publishers lose ability to get $60 whether the game gets a lot of play or not, but they gain the dollars that were going to GameStop for used game sales.

Anywayz, I doubt many games are re-selling for $50, even if they're re-sold on the same day they're released. How much are GameStop and Amazon buying back used games for?

Let's say you manage to sell a game back to GS while you can still get $40 for it. You've effectively spent $20 on that game. That would be the same as buying it for $10, playing it for however long that initial purchase allows, then buying another $10 of play. In addition, you don't have to go through the hassle of selling it back to GS, and you've still got the disk on your shelf if you decide to give it another go somewhere down the line. You don't have to rush through it in order to get the best re-sell price.

Well I see it as more of a really cheap, limited rental.
In some cases, I really think I'd rather pay a small amount to play a full game for a little while than to have a free demo that might not give me a good idea of how I'll like the rest of the game.

If what's offered is the full version +1 (at a pay-to-play), what's the problem?

Gomibako by itself would be silly to think of as being significant in any way, but if Sony piles up more of the same kind of garbage for players to rummage through, you'll have a true arcade-at-home experience that goes beyond 5 bucks to play through something you'll get tired of in an hour. And besides, games get more intense even if it's just 25 cents (or 33.3cents in this case I suppose) on the line.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L940yIeVZzE

Except you're actually playing the full game in this situation. I'm not saying I approve of this business model, but it's pretty clearly quite a bit different from a demo.

No, it's not. You could actually finish these games whereas in a demo you cannot. These are no more demos than are arcade games. To put it another way, you're basically trying to argue that a trailer for a movie is the same thing as a movie rental.

Ugh...reply button fail....this was @ Jesus

i love that game too

That defeats the point, and really is just paying for a demo.

Think of it this way:

SF4 came out at $60. I am not a HUGE fighting fan, but if I could download it from the PS Store for $1 and play, say, four matches, then I'd be content. A week or two later, I wanna play some more, I pop in some more "virtual quarters" and play four more rounds.

Over time, I might end up paying only $10 worth of matches. But if I get hooked, I might end up paying $100 in matches, and either way, I'm fine with that. But I get the advantage of paying and playing at me leisure, and not forced to pay $60 up-front, and the company gets the advantage of - if their game is good enough - hooking me in and making more than the $60 retail price.

It's the future of micro-transactions.