Day-One DLC Files Appear on Mass Effect 3 Discs

[Litfod]

Do you know how hyenas kill a lion? They gather together, and circle the lion. One rushes in, nips at it, then jumps back before the lion can attack.

Soon, the lion gets tired, and that's when the hyenas all rush in for the kill.

EA/Bioware are nothing but jackals.

That's hilarious, until the last line I assumed you were talking about anti-DLC crusaders taking on EA.

Also, this is the most telling quote from you in this thread:

It's nothing more than the same regurgiated tripe you saw in Mass Effect 1 and 2, just probably more dumbed down with a shittier ending.

You have no interest in ME3 anyway, so of course you don't think the game or DLC is "worth" the price.

 

[avatardelta]

This, among other things is why I won't support EA.

Also Origin.

Also piss poor stories of EA support.

Also Origin.

 

[Shalafi]

Nobody is talking about crusades here, just about how stupid people are for buying Day 1 DLC for $10 after paying $60 for what ostensibly should be "the full game".

What this will lead to is.

You will be buying a $60 game, and different endings will be sold to you for $10 each.

Lol?

 

[Solitude]

My question to you is, at what point do you say, "enough's enough" in terms of game price inflation. $80? $100?

By paying $60 and now $70 for a release title you are telling companies they can do whatever the fuck they want. I wonder how many people will be game price apologists when it reaches $100 a game.

seriously??? games have been between $50-70 on day one as long as I can remember. games are one of the least inflated pieces of merchandise you can buy. shit. look at the price of a candy bar, or a car, or gasoline, or a 20 oz bottle of soda. How much was an opening night movie ticket when you were a kid? I bet all these things were much much cheaper back then. They were in my experience. In the meantime games have remained the same price range.

edit: actually, for the most part, companies CAN do whatever the fuck they want.

 

[Solitude]

I fully support the above statement.

Having said that, wealth doesn't come from earning a lot but from consideration on how to spend the money. If you earn more money than the lifestyle you want costs, then you are wealthy already. Part of becoming wealthy is to look at not the absolute value (i.e. game time gained vs cash spent), but at the relative value (pay $70 for one game, or buy X instead or do Y instead with those same $70).

This isn't a matter of not being able to afford it, it's a matter of whether the value provided by the $70 purchase is perceived to be a good value. I loved ME1 and 2, I could easily afford the $70 without having to worry about it, but I don't perceive it as a good value. I paid $5 for ME1 and $10 for ME2, I got totally suckered and paid another $10 for the Shadow Broker DLC for ME2 (which wasn't worth $10 in retrospect, I should have waited).

Likewise I don't see the appeal in paying $60 or $70 for ME3. Yes, I want ME3 (Origin aside), but I am not willing to pay $60 for it even though I want it badly. I have the self control to wait for it to reach a price I can agree with.

I am a bit surprised at how many people feel that $70 is a price worth paying for a video game that has zero resell value (PC).

Gamers don't make purchase decisions based on potential resale value.

 

[Shalafi]

Gamers don't make purchase decisions based on potential resale value.

You know damn well that you do.

http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1670483

Taken literally, your statement is false

I wonder what other falsehoods you've uttered recently

 

[Solitude]

You know damn well that you do.

http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1670483

Taken literally, your statement is false

I wonder what other falsehoods you've uttered recently

Taken out of context, thats totally true. Unfortunately, here in this thread we are talking about buying new games on release day, not used games that are 15 years old or more.

 

[Shalafi]

Taken out of context, thats totally true. Unfortunately, here in this thread we are talking about buying new games on release day, not used games that are 15 years old or more.

I'm spot on. Our mutual friend bought himself Collector's Editions of Blizzard games to resell in the future for a good chunk of profit.

Do you know how much original WoW collector's editions go for? UNOPENED?

http://www.amazon.com/World-Warcraf...10V8/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1331606007&sr=8-1

Didn't you yourself opine how you should buy some modern games on consoles and leave them unopened for their future resale value?

You would have been more correct in saying that the average gamer does not turn thought towards profit when buying games, which would be a correct statement.

 

[Solitude]

I offered up my opinion. Obviously I do not speak for everyone. Of course there are people who do that kind of shit.

 

[Shalafi]

http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1673333&page=22

The comments on that page alone tell you that ME3 is not worth the money.

 

[drako]

Any argument you can make about protheans being 'essential' I can make about the Shadow Broker because an encounter with him was so heavily foreshadowed.

You keep making these comparisons that don't make any sense. The two situations are clearly quite different.

It's not a matter of it being essential to the plot. It's a matter of it being essential to the plot AND obviously being deliberately cut from the content that was being designed for the main single player campaign in order to sell as a day 1 surcharge for those who didn't want to pony up for the deluxe edition. It was quite simply a crafty way for EA/Bioware to make ME3 a $70 game without it showing up as such in the main price tag. If you have any evidence that they cut the Shadow Broker content and then sat on it for all those months to sell as DLC, then you can try and compare the situations.

Though since you bring it up, from what I've heard from people here on Hard, it sounds like this prothean DLC has a paltry amount of content compared to Shadow Broker while costing the same. So not only is it a shoddy cash grab, but a poor value at that.

 

[Thuleman]

Gamers don't make purchase decisions based on potential resale value.

Regardless of what Fail linked, your statement is still questionable.
Console gamers resell their games all the time, that's one of the reasons why they can stomach $60 per game because they know that if they are reasonably fast playing it through they can at the very least recover 50% of that price. Heck I sold my PS3 copy of GTA4 for $15 this year (years after it was released).

Publishers of PC games do their best to prevent you from being able to resell your game even though you are paying the same price as console gamers. So not only do publishers pocket the $10 that goes to Sony/Nintendo/Microsoft when you buy a console game, but they also shaft you into not being able to resell the game.

Enter Valve/Steam where deep discounted PC games (even AAA titles) make up for the fact that you can't resell the game. Disciplined buyers are able to simply wait for one of the numerous sales to grab a game at a 50% or higher discount.

Obviously I can't speak for others, but as a gamer I very much consider the cost of my hobby. Not because I can't afford it but because I work hard for my money and would like to keep as much of it as possible for whatever there is to do with money. To me no predominantly single player game is worth $60 primarily because I know for a fact that I will be able to buy this game at $30, or $20, or $10 in due time and I am in no rush to play any of the dozens of great titles that I have in my to-be-played queue.

 

[Tudz]

Enter Valve/Steam where deep discounted PC games (even AAA titles) make up for the fact that you can't resell the game. Disciplined buyers are able to simply wait for one of the numerous sales to grab a game at a 50% or higher discount.

Obviously I can't speak for others, but as a gamer I very much consider the cost of my hobby. Not because I can't afford it but because I work hard for my money and would like to keep as much of it as possible for whatever there is to do with money. To me no predominantly single player game is worth $60 primarily because I know for a fact that I will be able to buy this game at $30, or $20, or $10 in due time and I am in no rush to play any of the dozens of great titles that I have in my to-be-played queue.

If that's how you feel that's fine, but if everyone felt that way, there'd be sweet fuck all money to be made in gaming and even big name publishers would not be willing to invest more than what currently goes into most indie games.

If everyone had your attachment to their money, single player games would be dead. You can look at sales figures for most games and see that the majority of the sales are when the game is new and expensive, I don't think its an exaggeration to say more than 90% of profits are made from the people willing to buy the games when new (there may be some exceptions to that, but I think it is a reasonable statement to make). If all those people dried up, so would the development money. Personally I think you can already see that happening, people love to bash COD, but the fact of the matter is, that's where people are happy to dump their money and we'll have to live with COD until people decide to dump their money in other games as well or stop dumping it in COD. Sure, you get some games like Skyrim which are singleplayer and give COD a whooping (at least on PC, don't know about consoles), but that's an exception more than anything.

Personally I have no problem paying full price for a game at launch if I think its worth it for the entertainment I'll get out of it. I know it'll go down in price later, but gaming is my hobby and a cheap one at that, so if I'm interested in playing a game at launch I have no problem paying the few bucks extra to do it. That's not to say I buy all my games at launch, far from it, but if there's a game I want to play I have no problem paying launch prices for it (maybe with a bit of a discount that you can normally pick up on or around launch anyway). Especially when it costs me more to fill my gas tank each week just to get to work.

 

[Shalafi]

*snip*

CoD MW 2 cost $50 million to make, Activision spent $200 million on ADVERTISING.

Games are not expensive to make. Games are expensive to advertise.

Really, MW2 didn't cost $50 million to make, why would it cost 50 million to make the same damn game as MW1?

I bet it cost less than 20 million to make.

 

[Tudz]

Advertising costs aside, that's still a pretty penny to make a game.

The Witcher 2 sold 1.1 million in the first year, and most of those sales wouldn't have been at the full $50 as you could get it cheaper than that even at launch, and a huge portion of their sales are in Russia, where I believe the release price was $30 and you can pick it up now for about $16. There has also been a few chances to get it on sale in that first year.

So you're looking well under $50 million in revenue, maybe closer to $30 million, that's not even taking into account the money that goes to the retailers, the cut Valve takes, etc. I believe TW2 cost less to make than most games because the wages in Poland are far lower (I could be wrong on that, can't remember where I heard it), but none the less, making games is an expensive proposition which is paid for by the people who are willing to pay close to launch prices. Its great when you hear a game sold half a million copies at $5, but that's still not coming close to paying for the average development costs for big budget games.

Point being, if everyone waited for the price to come down, there wouldn't be nearly as much money left over for developers to, ya know, develop. Even advertising, COD is blown out of proportion of course, but any game that you pump money into making you also are going to pump money into advertising, you can't just write off the costs associated with it as unnecessary.

 

[mas]

Advertising costs aside, that's still a pretty penny to make a game.

The Witcher 2 sold 1.1 million in the first year, and most of those sales wouldn't have been at the full $50 as you could get it cheaper than that even at launch, and a huge portion of their sales are in Russia, where I believe the release price was $30 and you can pick it up now for about $16. There has also been a few chances to get it on sale in that first year.

So you're looking well under $50 million in revenue, maybe closer to $30 million, that's not even taking into account the money that goes to the retailers, the cut Valve takes, etc. I believe TW2 cost less to make than most games because the wages in Poland are far lower (I could be wrong on that, can't remember where I heard it), but none the less, making games is an expensive proposition which is paid for by the people who are willing to pay close to launch prices. Its great when you hear a game sold half a million copies at $5, but that's still not coming close to paying for the average development costs for big budget games.

Point being, if everyone waited for the price to come down, there wouldn't be nearly as much money left over for developers to, ya know, develop. Even advertising, COD is blown out of proportion of course, but any game that you pump money into making you also are going to pump money into advertising, you can't just write off the costs associated with it as unnecessary.

and this makes it ok to shave off all your new content exclusively for promotion, is that what you're saying? even the apologists are losing track of what to defend at this point, when the game has digressed into one big marketing engine and your initial purchase only gets you a commercial for more gear, so much that you couldn't quantify without extensive documentation from the community. you could not even find a way to experience the entire thing without cross referencing 25 different dlc packs (that's a real number, no exaggeration or guesstimation) from previous games, which results in 17 different endings (also a real number, and all actually the same) based on "war assets" that are in large part pooled from the amount of time and money you dumped into their existing franchise, outside of the game itself.

if you compare the amount of new assets you get in the base game, it actually comes out to a small fraction of what is offered as exclusive promotional items you can only get through previous titles, collectors editions, pre orders, and the various retail outlets. there is virtually nothing new being used here outside of (shitty) level design, animation, and va. they didn't even have the decency to make us a final boss for fucks sake, this feature has been relegated to quicktime events involving bigass lasers on giant reapers, overpowered ninja phantoms, and "kitchen sink" fights that you just grind through until they decide it's time to launch the javelins.

how much of their "development cost" do you think is being recouped through version premiums and retail partnerships? besides steam of course, which they will not be making any money from since ea has decided they no longer want to play with valve in any of their new games. anyone else see something wrong with this, or do we have some more excuses to make?

 

[Tudz]

and this makes it ok to shave off all your new content exclusively for promotion, is that what you're saying?

Did I say that? Point me to where I said that, go on, I dare ya. I was replying to the parts of the post I quoted and the post directly above mine, related to not purchasing games at full price. Sorry if that was unclear.

My post doesn't extrapolate to support for the breaking down of a game into DLC components. When it comes to that, I am against it.

how much of their "development cost" do you think is being recouped through version premiums and retail partnerships?

Money doesn't materalise out of no where. Whatever agreements and partnerships are made, at the end of the day the money going in comes from sales of the game, of which the retailer takes a cut. I have no idea of the flow of money between publisher and retailer, the publisher might be giving money in exchange for better advertising and positioning in store, the retailer might be giving money for exclusive content or mentions in advertising (when you see an ad on TV and it says "now available from blah and blah and blah"). Whatever the flow of money might be, at the end of the day, all the money the retailer and publisher gets comes from sales, and depending on agreements that might cause it to be split differently, but the money doesn't just appear out of no where. If a game costs 30 million to make another 30 million to advertise, it better be making it back in sales + whatever distribution costs are involved, doesn't matter what version premiums or retailer partnerships are in place.

Of course, I don't think that justifies the breaking down of a game into numerous convoluted DLC packs, so lets keep my statements in context

 

[XvMMvX]

CoD MW 2 cost $50 million to make, Activision spent $200 million on ADVERTISING.

Games are not expensive to make. Games are expensive to advertise.

Really, MW2 didn't cost $50 million to make, why would it cost 50 million to make the same damn game as MW1?

I bet it cost less than 20 million to make.

Please keep talking, your ignorance about how business and companies work is getting more and more comical and I have a slow day at work and would like to be entertained.

You know what would really piss you off...MW1/MW2 (your most hated games) and BFBC2/BF3 are probably worth $100-$200 A PIECE to me as I play(ed) the SHIT out of them. At $60-$100 (if you take into account map packs) is a STEAL for the amount of hours I put into multiplayer....pwning 12 years olds after they have done their homework is great cheap fun. $15 a map pack is NOTHING to me.... I own BF3 TWICE...once on PC and on PS3.

ME3 (and most single player games) are not my thing...don't like them but it is easy to see that if you do like them it is still good value for your entertainment dollar at $70. If it is a 30 hour game then that is $2.30/hr.... 15 movies at $7.50 a ticket would cost $112.50 by comparision....

You are just ignorant about business or LOL poor....

 

[TwistedAegis]

You are just ignorant about business or LOL poor....

This.

 

[Shalafi]

Please keep talking, your ignorance about how business and companies work is getting more and more comical and I have a slow day at work and would like to be entertained.

You know what would really piss you off...MW1/MW2 (your most hated games) and BFBC2/BF3 are probably worth $100-$200 A PIECE to me as I play(ed) the SHIT out of them. At $60-$100 (if you take into account map packs) is a STEAL for the amount of hours I put into multiplayer....pwning 12 years olds after they have done their homework is great cheap fun. $15 a map pack is NOTHING to me.... I own BF3 TWICE...once on PC and on PS3.

ME3 (and most single player games) are not my thing...don't like them but it is easy to see that if you do like them it is still good value for your entertainment dollar at $70. If it is a 30 hour game then that is $2.30/hr.... 15 movies at $7.50 a ticket would cost $112.50 by comparision....

You are just ignorant about business or LOL poor....

I don't go to the theaters, theaters are the biggest rip off there is.

There's other ways to watch movies that come out for pennies on the dollar.

You could say I'm penny wise, and pound wise.

I'm not poor bro, too bad you don't have GenMay access, you could see my gun collection accumulated over the last month

I could put it to you this way, my best friend has a theory that there are an average of 10 good games released every year that are worth buying at full price. So, $60 x 10 = $600.

Steam sales and Origin sales can cut that figure down, to, let's be generous, and say $20 apiece (even though it's more like $5-10 during the sales), $20 x 10 = $200.

So with that $400 saved, I can buy an AK-47 or use that extra $400 to buy a higher quality firearm, or a scope

PENNY WISE, POUND WISE.

Video games aren't something you have to spend top dollar on anymore.

Hell, you don't even need a top of the line rig to enjoy games these days. What, with the amount of consolitis and consolization and all.

 

[Tudz]

Cinemas have their place, I don't see the point in comparing their value to that of games. Its not the same experience, why should it be the same monetary value.

Its like saying a joy flight in a jet fighter plane is a rip off compared to a joy flight of equal length in an old WW2 Warbird, and the joyflight in the warbird is a rip off compared to a joyflight in a Cessna 172, and a joy flight in a Cessna 172 is a rip off compared to buying MS Flight Simulator. Its not the same experience so there's little point trying to compare them. Different forms of entertainment aiming to achieve different results and appealing to different groups of people.

I occasionally go to see a movie at a theater. I don't do it to emulate the same enjoyment I get from playing a game, that'd be stupid, I already have a backlog of games.

If you can't see the value in other forms of entertainment I feel sorry for you, whether or not you actually enjoy them yourself is another matter, but if you can't even SEE how it could be enjoyable, you clearly lack a bit of perception.

I could put it to you this way, my best friend has a theory that there are an average of 10 good games released every year that are worth buying at full price. So, $60 x 10 = $600.

And imagine if you bought 50 games at launch you would have spent $3000 on games

I'm happy to buy games at launch as I've already mentioned, but I only bought 3 games at launch last year, two of them were already 10% off, one of them was about 15% off. All up it prolly cost me about $100 more than if I'd waited for them to come down in price. That's about what I pay for 2 weeks worth of gas in my car, or a month's worth of smoothies that I regularly get during lunch, or a couple of weeks worth of lunch on those days I'm too lazy to make something at home.

The cost of video games themselves has never come close to affecting any other form of entertainment or general spending in my life, and its affect on my savings over the past years is pretty fucking close to negligable. The only time gaming has taken a bite out of my savings (in my adult life at least) is when I was just starting out University and needed a PC, so bought a gaming one, which meant I had to be careful with my money that year.

 

[fdiaz78]

This day 1 DLC is absolutely a cash grab and bad PR. If Bioware is that arrogant to think that players will just keep putting up with this garbage then just wait until they release a new game.

 

[Plague_Injected]

I'm happy to buy games at launch as I've already mentioned, but I only bought 3 games at launch last year, two of them were already 10% off, one of them was about 15% off. All up it prolly cost me about $100 more than if I'd waited for them to come down in price. That's about what I pay for 2 weeks worth of gas in my car, or a month's worth of smoothies that I regularly get during lunch, or a couple of weeks worth of lunch on those days I'm too lazy to make something at home.

The cost of video games themselves has never come close to affecting any other form of entertainment or general spending in my life, and its affect on my savings over the past years is pretty fucking close to negligable. The only time gaming has taken a bite out of my savings (in my adult life at least) is when I was just starting out University and needed a PC, so bought a gaming one, which meant I had to be careful with my money that year.

Do you buy at our wonderful local launch prices or do you import?

 

[EPOQ]

Am I the only one who actually doesn't care that Bioware did this? I bought the game, and honestly I think I got my money's worth (20% discounted). I doubt I would buy any DLC for this game unless it had an adverse effect on how the game ends. Maybe you can argue that the game didn't come "complete" -- but it felt complete enough to me.

 

[Jeremy C]

I'm happy to buy games at launch as I've already mentioned, but I only bought 3 games at launch last year, two of them were already 10% off, one of them was about 15% off. All up it prolly cost me about $100 more than if I'd waited for them to come down in price. That's about what I pay for 2 weeks worth of gas in my car, or a month's worth of smoothies that I regularly get during lunch, or a couple of weeks worth of lunch on those days I'm too lazy to make something at home.

And that shows the difference in economics. $100 will buy my gas for almost 2 months, will easily cover my lunches for about 6 weeks, family food for a week, my cell phone and land line bill combined, or any other better things than a game that I probably won't play until it's cheaper anyways. I simply can't justify $60-100+ (when you count all DLC) for something that will be $15 in 5 months. When you add in the fact that I buy many games in duplicate or triplicate (me + wife + kids) this adds up exponentially. I have far too many other things that are more important than lining a publishers pockets.

 

[drako]

The funny thing is that if Bioware were better at hiding their lies, this wouldn't have been a point of discussion. Simply don't put the fully functional character on the game disk and release the DLC 2-4 weeks after launch. In the end, it doesn't really matter what the truth is, you just have to play the game properly.

 

[MavericK]

seriously??? games have been between $50-70 on day one as long as I can remember. games are one of the least inflated pieces of merchandise you can buy. shit. look at the price of a candy bar, or a car, or gasoline, or a 20 oz bottle of soda. How much was an opening night movie ticket when you were a kid? I bet all these things were much much cheaper back then. They were in my experience. In the meantime games have remained the same price range.

edit: actually, for the most part, companies CAN do whatever the fuck they want.

Not sure what you are talking about...PC games have never been $60-70 on release until just recently, and EA was the one pushing that price up, too.

 

[spacing guild]

So let me get this straight...maybe I got this all wrong.

You guys are mad, that a planned DLC was already included in a game to be just waiting to be activated?

If you buy Windows Basic, doesn't Windows Ultimate already exist on the disk for the upgrade?

Why is everyone in such a furor over this? You want the extra character? Then fucking pay for it and be done with it.

 

[Shalafi]

Not sure what you are talking about...PC games have never been $60-70 on release until just recently, and EA was the one pushing that price up, too.

Yes, they charge $60 because they CAN, because people are willing to pay $60.

They are not charging $60 because they have to.

If they had to, then their games wouldn't go on sale so quickly after launch. If they had to make every bit of that $60, then they wouldn't be discounting so steeply during the winter sales or mid-summer sales.

Bioware points are a huge scam and I see no reason why someone would buy Bioware points when they can't use up every single point to buy DLC . . .

 

[XvMMvX]

Yes, they charge $60 because they CAN, because people are willing to pay $60.

This is called capitalism and the free market. Provide by the US of A...the same country that gives you the right to own all of the firearms you bragged about. Supply and demand my friend.

Feel free to move out if you don't support it...perhaps Greece is a better country for you...

 

[Shalafi]

This is called capitalism and the free market. Provide by the US of A...the same country that gives you the right to own all of the firearms you bragged about. Supply and demand my friend.

Feel free to move out if you don't support it...perhaps Greece is a better country for you...

I'm on the other end of the spectrum of capitalism where I say no game is worth $60 on Day 1, so therefore I do not spend $60 on games on Day 1, and being the penny wise and pound wise gentleman I am, I craftily wait untill the games I want come on sale, and I POUNCE LIKE A BOSS!

I'm a wise consumer, a veritable bargain hunter, a colossus of thrift, a surveyor of slick deals, and a maestro of choice spending.

That too, is capitalism, my friend, if you don't like it, move to North Korea.

 

[Parmenides]

This is called capitalism and the free market. Provide by the US of A...the same country that gives you the right to own all of the firearms you bragged about. Supply and demand my friend.

Feel free to move out if you don't support it...perhaps Greece is a better country for you...

It's capitalism baby, and the consumer is a force within the system. Consumer's using their voice does not make anything more communist. And apparently a lot of consumers like when that voice is marginalized.

 

[TwistedAegis]

I'm a wise consumer, a veritable bargain hunter, a colossus of thrift, a surveyor of slick deals, and a maestro of choice spending.

All hail the king of hyperbole!

 

[mrgstiffler]

It seems like a lot of people don't actually understand what the DLC is. The DLC is a new character that's part of your squad, and a mission where you recruit him. In order to make the DLC seemless with the full game, the character's assets were added to the full game media. The mission is not included on the disc. It's the mission that took development time (time that apparently took place after the full game was code complete). If they hadn't developed it this way, it would have felt disjointed or it would have taken much more time and money to complete.

I purchased ME3 from Amazon for $60 minus a $10 credit. I also bought the DLC. I've played through the game and the DLC. If I had to do it over again, I would. I love Mass Effect and I feel like I got value from my purchases. No one can tell me that I didn't. I own all 3 games and all content DLCs for them (missions, not outfits/weapons). I've prolly spent ~$250 on the games and all their content. Not including the 4 books, the comics, Normandy replica and Cerberus tshirt. 2 complete playthroughs of the games and DLC, plus multiplayer will put me over 300 hours. Well worth the price of admission.

Fail: The ONLY reason why you are able to buy cheap games is because people paid full price for them earlier. If people were not willing to pay $60 for a game at launch, then there wouldn't be a game industry in the first place. You're calling these people "stupid" but they're keeping the games you love in development. It's the same thing for movies. The only reason you're able to rent or buy them cheap is because people went to see them in the theater. If it weren't for these early adopters paying full price, the games and movies that come out would suck.

 

[Shalafi]

It seems like a lot of people don't actually understand what the DLC is. The DLC is a new character that's part of your squad, and a mission where you recruit him. In order to make the DLC seemless with the full game, the character's assets were added to the full game media. The mission is not included on the disc. It's the mission that took development time (time that apparently took place after the full game was code complete). If they hadn't developed it this way, it would have felt disjointed or it would have taken much more time and money to complete.

I purchased ME3 from Amazon for $60 minus a $10 credit. I also bought the DLC. I've played through the game and the DLC. If I had to do it over again, I would. I love Mass Effect and I feel like I got value from my purchases. No one can tell me that I didn't. I own all 3 games and all content DLCs for them (missions, not outfits/weapons). I've prolly spent ~$250 on the games and all their content. Not including the 4 books, the comics, Normandy replica and Cerberus tshirt. 2 complete playthroughs of the games and DLC, plus multiplayer will put me over 300 hours. Well worth the price of admission.

Fail: The ONLY reason why you are able to buy cheap games is because people paid full price for them earlier. If people were not willing to pay $60 for a game at launch, then there wouldn't be a game industry in the first place. You're calling these people "stupid" but they're keeping the games you love in development. It's the same thing for movies. The only reason you're able to rent or buy them cheap is because people went to see them in the theater. If it weren't for these early adopters paying full price, the games and movies that come out would suck.

Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.


If people did not buy games at $60, then publishers/devs would not spend so much money on advertising and big budgets on marketing tie ins, and other bullshit that does nothing to enhance the game for you, and would instead focus on making *gasp* good games!

Even then, if nobody bought these GOOD games at $60, then publishers would learn that consumers are not willing to buy games at $60 and would pare down the price to $50 and would set a budget for their game that fits what their sales projections would be for their game.

When a game like CoD MW2 is WORSE than the previous iteration before it (CoD4) and cost $50 million to make, yet $200 million was spent on it's budget, then that teaches you that $60 games aren't the sole problem. It's decisions made by suits and bean counters that if you megabudget the advertising campaign, it can overcome any deficiency in the game itself.

It's not $60 because the game is "expensive" to make, it's $60 because consumers are willing to pay the $10 "I'm too impatient to wait for a sale" Day 1 tax.

Prices drop rapidly after, if a whole legion of stupid people want to buy a game for more than it's worth, more power to them, that's capitalism.

I stand by what I said about no game being worth $60 Day 1, not a single one.

 

[Shalafi]

http://hardforum.com/showpost.php?p=1038490731&postcount=2

What's more is the above link takes you to my idea of how I would handle "paying for DLC", in a game I would develop, if I were a developer

Once my game has made a profit, I don't care about earning $50 million over the budget for it, I just need enough to keep the lights on, anything over that is gravy.

I would definitely feel a need to reward my fans for making my game successful. Not everything is about the bottom dollar.

I'm a hard liner for a reason, I believe strongly that the old way of doing PC games was and remains the correct way to do things. Thank God that there's developers like Valve and CD Projekt who share my vision, and thus, get my dollars.

 

[drako]

The ONLY reason why you are able to buy cheap games is because people paid full price for them earlier. If people were not willing to pay $60 for a game at launch, then there wouldn't be a game industry in the first place.

The industry wouldn't just disappear if people were only willing to pay say $40 for a game. In all likelihood, the big pubs would be even more cautious, and there'd probably be an even larger market for indie games, where the true innovation is at the moment. Whether you'd see that as a positive or negative development is all in the eye of the beholder.

 

[Tudz]

Do you buy at our wonderful local launch prices or do you import?

A bit of both

And that shows the difference in economics. $100 will buy my gas for almost 2 months, will easily cover my lunches for about 6 weeks, family food for a week, my cell phone and land line bill combined, or any other better things than a game that I probably won't play until it's cheaper anyways. I simply can't justify $60-100+ (when you count all DLC) for something that will be $15 in 5 months. When you add in the fact that I buy many games in duplicate or triplicate (me + wife + kids) this adds up exponentially. I have far too many other things that are more important than lining a publishers pockets.

And hey, that's fine. You pay what you feel something is worth to you. I'm far from careless with my money, I honestly don't make a whole lot (doing research at a University), but I still save a good portion of it. Fuel costs me so much thanks to where I live, but I drive an old car that cost me almost nothing to buy and almost nothing to maintain, you have other people who are struggling to have a positive flow of money and for some reason are driving cars 10 or 20 times the value and maintainence costs of my car By comparison, $100 over the course of a year for the previlege of playing a couple of games at launch each year is no skin off my back.

Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.


If people did not buy games at $60, then publishers/devs would not spend so much money on advertising and big budgets on marketing tie ins, and other bullshit that does nothing to enhance the game for you, and would instead focus on making *gasp* good games!

Even then, if nobody bought these GOOD games at $60, then publishers would learn that consumers are not willing to buy games at $60 and would pare down the price to $50 and would set a budget for their game that fits what their sales projections would be for their game.

When a game like CoD MW2 is WORSE than the previous iteration before it (CoD4) and cost $50 million to make, yet $200 million was spent on it's budget, then that teaches you that $60 games aren't the sole problem. It's decisions made by suits and bean counters that if you megabudget the advertising campaign, it can overcome any deficiency in the game itself.

It's not $60 because the game is "expensive" to make, it's $60 because consumers are willing to pay the $10 "I'm too impatient to wait for a sale" Day 1 tax.

Prices drop rapidly after, if a whole legion of stupid people want to buy a game for more than it's worth, more power to them, that's capitalism.

I stand by what I said about no game being worth $60 Day 1, not a single one.

Those are all pretty baseless comments. If they weren't making as much off games you're assuming they'd keep development costs the same and reduce marketing? I'm sure marketing would go down, but I reckon both marketing and development costs would take a hit. No one is fucking stupid enough to put millions of dollars into making a game and rely on word of mouth to let people know about it. Advertising costs ARE a cost you have to consider, you can't just write them off as unnecessary.

Look at sales records for games and you'll see that almost all the money is made near launch when the price is high. There might be a few exceptions to that, but I can say with reasonable confidence that you could apply that as close to a general rule. That means most the revenue for games comes from people paying full (or close to full) price.

That's largely why games development costs have increased, because there are more people willing to pay the high price for games so it gives publishers confidence to invest more money in games development.

If people weren't willing to pay the launch prices of games and all sales were made at the sort of prices indie games are, guess what, development costs of big budget games would drop to that of indie games as well!

 

[Shalafi]

If they weren't making as much off games you're assuming they'd keep development costs the same and reduce marketing? I'm sure marketing would go down, but I reckon both marketing and development costs would take a hit.

No shit, that was my point. If people didn't buy games @ $60, then the companies would sell it at a lower price to reflect the consumer's demand for games at a certain price point. In fact, there are probably sales graphs and business articles you can read on this very topic which they discuss how long games sell @ retail value and how long a company should wait before pricing the game downwards and holding sales on the game.

No one is fucking stupid enough to put millions of dollars into making a game and rely on word of mouth to let people know about it. Advertising costs ARE a cost you have to consider, you can't just write them off as unnecessary.

Games sold just fine for years without big budget marketing campaigns on the scale of mass marketing movie campaigns. Great games sell themselves, no question, with very very few exceptions.

Look at sales records for games and you'll see that almost all the money is made near launch when the price is high.

Again, no shit, this is pretty much Captain Obvious stuff.

That's largely why games development costs have increased, because there are more people willing to pay the high price for games so it gives publishers confidence to invest more money in games development.

Incorrect, once people like Kotick realized that you don't need to make a good game to sell millions of copies, you just need to exploit the brand loyalty that gamers attach to a franchise and have a big enough marketing campaign to capitalize on that.

MW2 or Black Ops cost like $50 million to make and had a $200 million advertising campaign and got like over $1 billion in sales. That's pretty much quadruple their investment, that's good value on their advertising campaign. The game itself didn't cost that much to make. Was MW2 a good game? Fuck no, it was garbage bin material. The game didn't sell itself, the marketing campaign sold the game.

If people weren't willing to pay the launch prices of games and all sales were made at the sort of prices indie games are, guess what, development costs of big budget games would drop to that of indie games as well!

Indie games are losing their stigma as being "low budget and therefore mediocre" and the trend is going towards "big budget and therefore less than mediocre".

If you wanna take the big publishers side and blubber on about how they deserve $60 on Day 1, I feel sorry for you. The last time I felt a game was worth buying Day 1 was when I bought Bioshock 2 Day 1 and I realized how shitty it was after playing through it and seeing how bad the storyline and ending was.

That was the last time I bought a game on Day 1, and I have no regrets since.

 

[Tudz]

That was the last time I bought a game on Day 1, and I have no regrets since.

I have to go out in a minute so I'll address the rest of your post later... but what about Dark Souls, I'm sure I remember you saying you preordered that? And didn't you buy Skyrim at or near launch as well?