So, Steam is having another free weekend for Unreal Tournament 3, along with it being 50% off. This post isn’t so much about the game itself but the marketing ploy being used. (I do own UT3, I got it in the last free weekend/half off deal — as I’m sure many others did and will do so this weekend)

Digital distribution is unique in this way. Not the discount — retailers could do that — but in the ability to allow full, free, limited time use of a product. That’s a big seller to me, and a big reason why DD is going to keep growing. (discounts do help — really, really help) 

There are some sales charts floating around somewhere, I think they depicted the sales of Left 4 Dead on Steam, that show some great info on how effective these weekends can be. Having proven results like this makes me wonder, why isn’t this done more often? For more games? I would bet that if a game, at launch, offered a full version of its game to be played free for a weekend’s worth of time that it would sell far better than without the free play time. Typically this is done with demos, but those are usually created before the game is fully finished and can be a bit… buggier or less polished than the actual release. Letting people fully see what they are going to purchase and test drive it first would increase sales significantly — I believe. Digital distribution could offer this easily. Even consoles could do it; they have their online stores. I’d especially want to see it in consoles, considering how much their games cost — honestly, if I’m going to be spending 60 bucks on a game a bit of play time with it first is not only nice but required. 

And there’s today’s rant. I’ll be looking at something with more content for tomorrow. Perhaps find some F2P MMO that’s in beta and do a brief overview of it…