Picture it – a new installment of your favorite gaming series will soon be released. You want all the cars, characters, costumes and weapons to enjoy the full game experience. The publisher is offering a day-one pass that provides the game and exclusive content. Do you buy the day-one pass or wait and hope to purchase the desired content one at a time?
It’s a question that’s becoming more salient for gamers as publishers find new and different ways to monetize their games. You get the game and content that will be available later as microtransactions. It saves you on up-front costs rather than purchasing future content as its released, but you can never be absolutely sure just how much the content will add to the enjoyment of the game or even if some of it turns out to be things you wouldn’t buy anyway.
Day-one passes are promoted much in the same way that season passes to sports games are sold. However, you may discover it’s more akin to buying a boxed season of a TV show. There are different ways in which the passes are offered. Typically offered before a game’s release, a day-one pass gives you access to the game, along with content that the publisher is often
planning to release at a later date and sell through microtransactions.
A day-one pass may also be offered after the game has been released. For the one-time purchase, you’ll be able to access all the content that’s been offered since the game’s original release.
In some instances, unless you purchase a day-one pass, you’ll never have access to the extra content. It will remain an exclusive benefit to those that hold a day-one pass. On the other hand, as each new incarnation of the game progresses, content formerly only offered under day-one passes is often integrated in new games of the series.
By the time you pay $60 for game and $20 for a day-one pass, you’ll have $80 invested in a single game that you’ve never even played yet. It’s not an exorbitant price to pay for a game, but the real problem arises from the fact that you’re paying for “extra” content and you have no idea what’s in it. You’re hoping that it will be something really good, but you can never be sure.
If you’re eager to play a particular game and it will be the only one you plan to play for the next few months, a day-one pass can be a real bargain. However, if you enjoy playing a wide variety of games, by the time the content becomes available through microtransactions you may have moved on to new titles or decide it’s not worth the money.
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