Early access periods should ideally be around six months, research suggests  - AUTOMATON WEST
automaton-media.com
A prolonged early access period can dampen post-launch sales, statistical data from 2021 to 2024 suggests.
  • renegadespork@lemmy.jelliefrontier.netEnglish
    9·
    14 hours ago

    Intuitively it always seemed like there was a sweet spot. Too short a period and there’s not enough time to build hype or (more importantly) fix the issues revealed by Early Access. Too long a period and people forget about your game, and EA players got everything they wanted out of it before launch, so have little reason to come back and boost visibility w/ player numbers.

    It’s nice to have some hard data to back this up and put an objective measure on where that sweet spot is.

    • Zahille7@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3·
      13 hours ago

      I feel like Abiotic Factor did a really good job with this. It released last summer into EA, then over that next year they released chunks of the game, sort of like as the story was unfolding, until the full game was finally done back in June. Then they upped the price by $10, but not before putting it on sale again for the 1.0 release.

  • edgemaster72@lemmy.worldEnglish
    3·
    13 hours ago

    Makes sense to me, I’ve long believed that games shouldn’t be announced more than 6 months from release