By Laith Salama / Staff Writer

Changing times (Allison Perez / Photo Editor)
By Laith Salama / Staff Writer
Nobody has money anymore, but somehow kids find enough money to afford video games, the ability to play online with their friends, and downloadable content.
Gaming has always been expensive, but now that it’s more popular than ever. The corporate money-making wizards have invented new ways to take gamers’ money.
Downloadable content is a system of online marketing that lets you purchase extra material for games you’ve already bought.
It also consists of entirely downloadable games and avatar accessories.
When it all adds up, it’s a lot of money going into a single game.
“Mortal Kombat,” for instance, is $60 if you buy it new and the online season pass is $30.
All together fans end up spending $90 for one game, and that’s assuming they bought the online pass and didn’t buy it all separately.
“Gears of War 3” is along the same lines. However, it could cost much more. “Gears of War 3’s” first downloadable content was released about a month after the game came out.
That’s hardly enough time to even get to know the original game and that means that it was planned before the game was released.
That’s content that could have, and should have been released with the game for the overpriced retail of $59.99 plus tax and convenience fees.
The idea of downloadable add-ons was not only a genius way to make money, but also a great way to keep old games fresh.
For example, “Resident Evil 4” was released on the Gamecube and then re-released on the PlayStation 2 with more content in it.
Had downloadable content been around back then, fans wouldn’t have had to buy the game twice to play these extra missions.
Downloadable content is a good thing, but it’s being abused and can only get worse.
Recent rumors have stated that the next generation consoles will be exclusively downloadable and will no longer have disc-based games.
This puts a lot of emphasis on the systems’ capabilities and will allow for simpler shopping.
However, there is no real sense of ownership as the physical copy is no longer distributed.
In addition, games that are not hard-coded onto a disk may be more susceptible to glitches and corrupt data.
The only real pro is that it would be cheaper for them to make and distribute and should therefore be sold at a cheaper rate.
However, gaming companies know gamers are willing to pay $60 to play a game, and that’s exactly what they’ll charge.
Their corporate greed for money will continue to require gamers to dish out needless amounts of cash for a game that has very little production cost to the companies.
A world of entirely digital gaming is only beneficial to the developers.
Gamers should get their money’s worth in return, or at least feel that the relationship between them and developers is mutual.