Do you pay for the extra episodes Woz ?
If so, how much are they ?

'bout time they got their act together on this issue - it's probably one of the most important to affect on-line gaming.

Read a good article a couple of years back on episodic gaming - the general gist of this was that people are getting more & more pixxed off with paying £30 - £40 for cr@p games.
So the suggestion was that a smaller game would be developed for retail sale (say with 5 to 10 levels); and sold at a more reasonable cost (£20).
The developers would put more effort into making it playable and developing engaging characters and plot-lines.
If it's any good then the cost of initial development could be covered (assuming they didn't invest in a new gfx engine, etc...).

Then they would release episodic content regularly, and continue to develop the storyline and characters.

Sounds like a good idea to me - put the effort into actually making an engaging and playable game, get people interested and then release extra levels every 3-6 months. They predicted that some games would become as eagerly awaited as the next episode of Eastenders (or "24" if you're of sound mind like wot I am ).

Mind you - there are very few recent games that come to mind that have engaged me in the story and characters enough for me to be interested in playing on an ongoing basis and pay for the episodic content (Halo and Deus Ex come to mind as obvious exceptions).

Anyway...just some more ramblings from someone who was woken up by his cats too early

It's free if you subscribe to Xbox Live

You're right about the episodic gaming thing - my company is closely linked to the games industry and one of our marketing guys was telling me about it....