Originally Posted By Avykins:
Given the recent blitz of people calling for Dark Souls on PC I thought I would dust off one of my old ideas for another round and see what everyone thinks. Feel free to kick the hades out of my idea.
Lets say Bandai Namco were open to the idea but were a little worried about if it would really sell. They could always do a fund run beforehand.
So say they give us a quote on approximately how much it would cost to port to PC, and for all this I will just pull random figures outta my *** just to give you the idea.
Taking everything into account lets say the end figure to port it was 100k.
They put this quote on their website and open the fund run.
You can sign up and indicate that you will pledge money towards it in advance.
So what happens is they have a progress bar stating their goal. $100,000.
Now they may decide that once 90% of the total ($90,000) has been pledged they will then do a fund run where they actually call in that money. Now they will have to have a margin for error so lets put that at 75% ($75,000 in this case) since people may back out. You will get a email asking you to make payment. Now if that 75% or over is actually contributed then they go ahead with the port.
There would have to be regular updates on approximately how long till completion.
As a bonus to everyone who helps fund the port they could get say a donators version of the game and when they pledged it would have been at a slightly lower price. Say if the standard price is $50 then donator price is $40-45 so they would have slots for $40-45. That way if something unexpected happens and they needed more money later on they could open up more slots.
When it comes out they could ship it direct to you, factory sealed and then release a regular version of the game to the public at the higher price.
Or if shipping it would cost too much then just give it to you directly on Steam.
So as far as I can see everyone wins.
Since most of the porting costs are covered in advance it is extremely low risk to the company and they get profits from the public release. Hell even if the game is pirated to hell as long as it covers their costs then every extra sale is a win and by the time it comes out on PC most people who want it on consoles would have it already.
The developers get additional funds from the licence, additional revenue in royalties for each game sold and additional brand recognition which will greatly help when they release the next spiritual successor.
The users who contributed get the game they wanted on the system they prefer and get it cheaper.
Thoughts? Would you be willing to pony up the cash in advance for this?
Original idea thread in case I mangled it in the rewording.
http://forum.destructoid.com/showthr...dea-on-porting
The Quest For Dark Souls On PC
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Originally Posted by Z!mM3r
