What do you call it when a video game is full of items or services that you can buy with real money? Is it “games as a service”? “Recurrent consumer spending opportunities”? Or maybe PRI (Player Recurring Investment)?

There was once a time when video game developers would make a game, release it, and then move onto the next big thing. That time has long since passed. These days, you’re more likely to see a new Metroid than you are to buy an AAA game that’s never updated, patched, or enhanced in some way. Today’s big video games…

Last week at E3, Beyond Good & Evil 2 once again made headlines thanks to a comment by Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot. “Beyond Good & Evil 2 is still happening,” gaming sites declared.

Destiny, a video game in which players travel through the galaxy and battle against random loot tables, is by most accounts a commercial success. But over a year after release, publisher Activision still won’t say how many copies they’ve actually sold.

Here is a coded message from Activision, sent via press release this morning:

This week in Japan, Nintendo boss Satoru Iwata made some lofty promises about the company’s plan to make mobile games.