[OldJadedGamer]

I don't really buy this, because PC games of that day were around the same price and came on floppies. The only time I would accept the cost of the format significantly influencing price is when you factor in memory.

Then PC publishers were overcharging you for games back then. Turok on N64 was around $80 when it came out but Shadow of Colossus was only $40 yet SoTC had a way higher budget to make the game.

[crazygambit]

No, the game is the same price. The DLC is an option.

If a game has a free demo then the game is free. Paying $60 for the rest of the content is optional.

[Bumblebeetuna]

All these passes do is make me rent. Especially one that splinters the multi so much.

[SirIgbyCeaser]

Don't they in Japan have variable prices for games depending on their development budget?

Honestly when I look at the quality of work in Max Payne 3 i'm not at all surprised they needed a subscription to help out the developers post-release. If they didn't have work to do and income for patches and working the multiplayer, all of those employee's would have simply just been laid off in a heartbeat like is traditionally done in game development. Systems like this let people keep their jobs after crunch time and stay employed at the company they just worked their ass off for.

I mean I aint complaining about how the price of a game like this is still mostly to the standard we're used too. Rockstar could release this game and GTA V at 90 bucks flat out and still probably make record sales. This way they're at least only taking money from those who have it to spare for extra content. And it also gives the DLC a matching quality to the game being released with employee's being paid for their extended hard work.

I feel like a politician but think of the people!

[Clear]

Serious question: How many people here have a sizable backlog of things they've bought but haven't got around to playing yet?

I suspect most of us do.

There's no shortage of stuff to play, and there's new stuff every week to suit every budget, so why all the drama?

[Sir Garbageman]

Wait 6-12 months, buy used or if you're a PC gamer wait for the inevitable sale. 95% of my game purchases are $20 or less.

[Woo-Fu]

I wouldn't buy a game at $90 but I don't see anything inherently wrong with games costing more money, particularly when considering inflation and growing development budgets for AAA titles.

That said, I don't think raising prices is the best way to increase overall profitability.

[HP_Wuvcraft]

People like you are the reason this is happening.

DLC doesn't pop up because we ignore it. It kind of works the other way.

[Metalmurphy]

You don't know what was and wasn't cut from GT5 unless you work for Sony or PD.

Are you fucking serious? The DLC came ONE YEAR after GT5 released. Kazunori publicly stated he is against DLC, it happened because people requested it. GT5 didn't even have a backbone for DLC, it had to be added in an update.

[Commanche Raisin Toast]

my input on the subject isn't really for the purpose of taking a side, just to give my observations:

-"back in my day" games shipped with a decent length of play, a handful of multiplayer modes, and had plenty of things added through patches of on PC.
-games these days ship with far less. short length, bare bones mp with few maps.
-curiously enough, this trend increase ten fold around the time that the dlc craze became popular.

the old "don't buy it" argument is fine and dandy if the "vote with your wallet" concept wasn't a one-way street, but it is so it doesn't. you don't buy a game because it doesn't justify $60 or skimps on content the publishers will either never know or won't care anyway. said sequels will be simply cancelled or designed to be even less worth the money to try and starve users into giving into overpriced dlc.

i can hear it now: "we think our title really packs a lot of content in..." like you see on countless developer preview articles. /rant /observations

[OldJadedGamer]

Are you fucking serious? The DLC came ONE YEAR after GT5 released. Kazunori publicly stated he is against DLC, it happened because people requested it. GT5 didn't even have a backbone for DLC, it had to be added in an update.

Considering the excessive troubled development for this title, that really means nothing.

[Metalmurphy]

Considering the excessive troubled development for this title, that really means nothing.

It means alot, it means no one felted cheated when the DLC happened, it means everyone felt they got what they paid for.

Your unfounded nonsense is what really means nothing.

[Loofy]

"I dont believe in DLC, I like to call them prologues instead."

[Parch]

There is serious competition now. For $60 you can buy a ton of entertainment for the Ipad or XBLA. The quality of top console games is superior but it's still a consumer decision whether or not it's worth the price compared to the gaming value elsewhere.

Problem is most of the console games are not AAA yet they still expect $60 retail for vastly inferior product. Paying $60 for a turd is going to become less acceptable when there is much better gaming value out there.

Devs can try to justify costs all they want, but it's still the competative marketplace they have to deal with. Prices for most console games should be going down, not up.

[volturnus]

PC gaming man.... its the only way to go...havent spent more than $20 on a game in years

That's a bit extreme IMO, some games deserve the $30+ price tag, specially when it's day 1.

[S0N0S]

"Flexible pricing" in the wrong direction. I used think I couldn't wait for our inevitable DD future, but the big console game publishers (2K, EA, Activision, Ubisoft, Capcom, etc...) have yet to come even remotely close to getting it right. Now I think that unless the upcoming consoles are more open with things like free and unlimited updates, more price flexibility, better or less content segregation(eg Arcade, Indie Games, and On-Demand), and a significant step away from retail distribution(codes, not boxes), the current expected level of quality from them will be completely unfeasible. Higher prices and more closed platforms aren't the solution.

There are fewer and fewer willing to spend $60+ on a single game, much less $90, and the next platforms won't change that. This isn't happening just to games, either. All forms of entertainment are getting cheaper, because when content is as abundant as it is today, all of it is inherently is worth less. Sure there will always be some that will be willing to spend $90 upfront on a single game - just like there are still those willing to spend $15 on a movie ticket - but that group isn't getting larger.

I want to see the big publishers pull out all the stops and show us some amazing stuff we've never seen before, but with more reasonable pricing models (F2P, episodic, a la carte, frequent sales, gradual price reductions, etc...). This trend towards higher upfront cost doesn't exactly inspire confidence, though. And if things don't change, console gaming is going to look a lot like the worst parts of PC gaming circa '04-'09.

/rant

[Commanche Raisin Toast]

another thing is that graphics send other technical aspects are becoming a larger and larger pie piece of development budgets, but prettier graphics and smarter ai aren't something the end user can really measure, so it doesn't equate to being "content". it becomes expected, and game length + replayability + mp content become the things that are weighed out against the price of admission.

i mean does anyone really go "aww amazing graphics, i would pay more for this!". of course not. or how about "6 hour campaign? well, at least the graphics are awesome do that makes it worth the $60."

[Dyno]

Serious question: How many people here have a sizable backlog of things they've bought but haven't got around to playing yet? I suspect most of us do. There's no shortage of stuff to play, and there's new stuff every week to suit every budget, so why all the drama?

As a result of being really choosy for over a year I don't have a backlog. Games that deserve a second playthrough? Sure. I've got three or four of those.

The thing is when there is a game coming out that I want, I usually pick it up the first day or so. I am really interested in Max Payne 3 (the animations, the physics, the storytelling techniques, seeing Euphoria and Rage pumped up for a linear game) and while the season pass didn't anger me in any way because we seen them quite a bit, it was what promoted me to write the thread. Not out of rage, but because it's becoming the new normal and I wanted to see how other people are observing the marketing strategy.

It seems everyone has become very cynical about the industry, doing what's necessary to pay as absolutely little as possible.

[blitzcloud]

season pass makes more money than retail game for the publisher. That's about enough of a reason for them pulling this shit.

[Satchel]

I still laugh every time I see Americans complain about the cost of gaming. You have it better than anyone else in the world and yet complain the most.

[Bioloff]

Oh so if it's on the disc I don't need to buy it.

fine.

Charge me $45.00 then.

[blitzcloud]

I still laugh every time I see Americans complain about the cost of gaming. You have it better than anyone else in the world and yet complain the most.

Thats kinda true.

[bone_and_sinew]

I'll just wait for the inevitable Game of The Year Edition that includes everything at a sensible price.

[Lord-Audie]

7 years ago you paid your 60 dollars and got all the content created during the development cycle of the game. Now you get a subset of that content. If you think that anything created as dlc was not planned for, budgeted, marketing strategy decided on, developed and tested during the overall development cycle you are a sycophantic fool ripe for abuse by publishers.

I love posts like these because it shows how delusional people are about how content is created and sold.

First of all, the "7 years ago you paid your 60 dollars and got all the content created during the development cycle of the game." is a lie. Total bullshit. Things get cut all the time in all kinds of media (music, books, movies and of course games).

Second, the fact that it was done on the development cycle, DOESN"T ENTITLE you that content. There is such a thing called the free market and people have the right to sell whatever they want at the price they want. It is for the market demand to decide if those goods are worth the price.

The fact that budget for DLC is done on the development cycle is most likely for timing issues. Games are front loaded this days. You rarely get coverage for a game past a week, unless the game is broken. So is not far fetched to have the DLC come in a timely manner when people actually remember the game and haven't moved on to other things.

[RiderKairuu]

The season pass model is not something I'm a fan of at all, not even for the games I really enjoy. It's all optional no matter how much we may feel like games have intentionally held back content just so it can be sold to us as DLC. It has been said enough but if we don't buy into it and let this business model persist then I doubt it will be a major part of future generations.

[chaosblade]

On one hand, I want to feel like I'm not part of the problem because I've only bought 3 pieces of DLC this gen (2 of the Valkyria Chronicles DLC on sale, and WipeoutHD Fury), and I buy most of my games on sale or after price drops. And when games are obviously going to have complete/GotY editions down the line (and it usually is obvious), I'll wait for those.

But maybe I am part of the problem because I'm not willing to pay $60 upfront for the majority of games, so because of people like me publishers feel the need to take advantage of those who do?

I guess the real problem here is that even though development costs have exploded, I personally don't feel like I'm getting anymore out of gaming than I did years ago when the expenses were much lower. So even though publishers and some developers are whining about it, I'm not seeing a meaningful difference on my end.

I still laugh every time I see Americans complain about the cost of gaming. You have it better than anyone else in the world and yet complain the most.

Europe, or at least the UK, is cheaper isn't it? Games getting price drops before they even launch? It was cheaper to import Xenoblade than it was to get a NA copy locally.

[TriGen]

I've only bought a few map packs worth of DLC this gen. This stuff will only bother me if it turned into, one of the the single-player, or multi-player is locked completely thru DLC, which I don't see happening.

[Atomski]

Didnt Chrono Trigger for the snes originally cost 90 dollars? :p Nothin new!

Also I dont know why anyone would pay for Max Payne multiplayer DLC anyways. Rockstar is terrible at making competitive online games.

[fernoca]

7 years ago you paid your 60 dollars and got all the content created during the development cycle of the game. Now you get a subset of that content. If you think that anything created as dlc was not planned for, budgeted, marketing strategy decided on, developed and tested during the overall development cycle you are a sycophantic fool ripe for abuse by publishers.

I remember 2005 quite different...
Heck I remember the 90s quite different too. Mortal Kombat 3 to Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3...the constant Street Fighter releases on consoles. We got "DLC" as separate full price games.. every year.

:p

[foxdvd]

I am more concerned how many great games have their single player compromised by the inclusion of a MP component.

[iNvid02]

no i think the UK has it the best right now considering how much we earn

and i think tesco, asda, sainsburys and morrisons competing with the jersey based retailers who dont pay VAT
is the main reason this has happened, but ii believe the VAT loophole is getting closed soon so who knows

its good, we get screwed over the rest of the time

[evil solrac v3.0]

But then there's stuff like RDR, which will never come to PC :(

is one game really worth it?

[24FrameDaVinci]

No, the game is the same price. The DLC is an option.

They got you good.

[NSQuote]

[Mihael Mello Keehl]

Not to bitch about gears again but damn I got to. I found out about 2 months ago or something that if you dont buy DLC for gears when you try to play multiplayer you wont be playing on dedicated servers. Ive had to suffer laggy games because I had to buy the dlc..friends suffered laggy games. How can they pull some shit off like that when before the game epic boasted about how gears was gonna have dedi servers but then make us have to buy it. Whats really crazy is season pass is like 30$ each of those DLCs that you have to keep updated with to play multiplayer on dedicated servers was like 10-15$ a piece. You know what I just went ahead and bought (forced!lol) the season pass cause there was no use to do all that other bull..It was not like that day 1.

[Liquidus]

Why not wait 1 month for a drop to $39.99 2 months for $29.99 or 8 months for the GOTY Edition with all DLC for $49.99.

[Warm Machine]

7 years ago you paid your 60 dollars and got all the content created during the development cycle of the game. Now you get a subset of that content. If you think that anything created as dlc was not planned for, budgeted, marketing strategy decided on, developed and tested during the overall development cycle you are a sycophantic fool ripe for abuse by publishers.

Take a look at it this way.

You have a game that is budgeted for 12 months to make. Your art and design staff essentially have 10 months to make the game because the last two months is the programming staff working on stability, bug fixes, optimization, and submissions. They don't want any art coming into the main game that puts the product at any risk at all. The art staff rolloff is part of your budget on the game so you calculate that 10 months they can work into the total.

So in order to keep the art and design staff busy, (and not fired) they branch the game and allow them to work on maps and DLC content freely and not under the pressure of final. This DLC is now on a whole other budget because the core game's budget for these people is spent and gone. Also remember too that the game hasn't even shipped yet so they haven't made any money. They just don't want to fire staff and at the same time, hope that the DLC they are making will at least cover the financial gap.

Now in this two months the art and design staff have been able to complete three new maps, coincidentally at the same time the game has finally been released. So they bundle the maps and sell them as DLC within a couple weeks after launch. You may think it is dirty that it isn't in the main game but it couldn't have been in the main game because it would have slowed the whole bug fix and submission time down delaying the launch of the main game.


Still, We have to remember that Origin Systems, who was very much loved was doing this kind of stuff in the physical world back in 1991. Wing Commander had 2 content packs and Ultima 7 had 1 as well. Wing Commander was $50 and the two mission backs were $20 each. The game was on floppies and totalled $90. The PC world loved these expansions throughout the 90s.

Valve was also doing this sort of stuff for Half-Life with Opposing Force and to a lesser extent, Blue Shift.

Only with the mod scene coming into its own in the late 90s did we start seeing lots of free DLC.

[Vane_MagicCity]

No, game budgets growing faster than audience is the reason this is happening.

No, they are doing it because they believe people will buy it. The price is based on what they believe the market will bear, if they are wrong, the price will quickly drop.

[blitzcloud]

I love posts like these because it shows how delusional people are about how content is created and sold. First of all, the "7 years ago you paid your 60 dollars and got all the content created during the development cycle of the game." is a lie. Total bullshit. Things get cut all the time in all kinds of media (music, books, movies and of course games). Second, the fact that it was done on the development cycle, DOESN"T ENTITLE you that content. There is such a thing called the free market and people have the right to sell whatever they want at the price they want. It is for the market demand to decide if those goods are worth the price. The fact that budget for DLC is done on the development cycle is most likely for timing issues. Games are front loaded this days. You rarely get coverage for a game past a week, unless the game is broken. So is not far fetched to have the DLC come in a timely manner when people actually remember the game and haven't moved on to other things.

First block is true partially. If they didn't have DLC as an option, they would put as much as they can so the game catches your attention. No more holding back "costumes" for characters.

Second block means I should never buy a game on launch despite reviews. I have to wait for users to tell me if the game was worth it and if there's DLC planned inside there.

Third block is true. But those updates should be free. However, they seem to act like: our games plummet in price a few months after launch. What should we do?

a) hats.
b) Who cares about the retail price? Our dlc is in the 30$+ value!
c) Maybe we should roll free updates that don't allow the retail price to plummet so quick since it still has a good demand. Updates can be free too. Or even give some dlc alongside updates. Never under any condition MP maps should be monetized. They divide the playerbase.

[Kai Dracon]

Take a look at it this way. You have a game that is budgeted for 12 months to make. Your art and design staff essentially have 10 months to make the game because the last two months is the programming staff working on stability, bug fixes, optimization, and submissions. They don't want any art coming into the main game that puts the product at any risk at all. The art staff rolloff is part of your budget on the game so you calculate that 10 months they can work into the total. So in order to keep the art and design staff busy, (and not fired) they branch the game and allow them to work on maps and DLC content freely and not under the pressure of final. This DLC is now on a whole other budget because the core game's budget for these people is spent and gone. Also remember too that the game hasn't even shipped yet so they haven't made any money. They just don't want to fire staff and at the same time, hope that the DLC they are making will at least cover the financial gap. Now in this two months the art and design staff have been able to complete three new maps, coincidentally at the same time the game has finally been released. So they bundle the maps and sell them as DLC within a couple weeks after launch. You may think it is dirty that it isn't in the main game but it couldn't have been in the main game because it would have slowed the whole bug fix and submission time down delaying the launch of the main game. Still, We have to remember that Origin Systems, who was very much loved was doing this kind of stuff in the physical world back in 1991. Wing Commander had 2 content packs and Ultima 7 had 1 as well. Wing Commander was $50 and the two mission backs were $20 each. The game was on floppies and totalled $90. The PC world loved these expansions throughout the 90s. Valve was also doing this sort of stuff for Half-Life with Opposing Force and to a lesser extent, Blue Shift. Only with the mod scene coming into its own in the late 90s did we start seeing lots of free DLC.

It's also because of these aspects that the customer often doesn't get "everything made during the game's development" even if there's not DLC.

There was a lot of stuff made during the development of Super Mario Galaxy, Final Fantasy XIII, and Assassin's Creed II that never made it into the games or DLC. So much that in all three cases, the assets were used as the basis of new retail games.

Game development just isn't as linear as people might think it is... having said that one can see how the use of DLC to piece out seemingly arbitrary bits of micro content like skins, guns, and other trinkets creates the impression that developers are 'randomly' pulling out chunks of content from a game to sell as DLC just 'cause.

But what's really happening there is that publishers have discovered that people like pre-order and incentive bonuses that have some visible effect inside the game itself. Rather than swag like t-shirts. So with the technology for DLC available, what is actually a very old marketing tactic has been brought back in a different way.

Some uses of the DLC concept are not good, and I suspect probably DO involve the shenanigans that people imagine; a great case is the Mass Effect 3 situation with the day 1 mission which had much of its content already in the game. It's hard to believe that a core mission like that and a core party member were not developed and tweaked along with the primary game, and for a release of that stature EA could be fairly suspected of finding a secret way to raise the retail price to $70 for the regular edition.

[Goldrusher]

These days it's better to wait for the inevitable Complete Edition.
Usually takes less than 6 months and includes $50 worth of DLC.... for less than half the original price.

[witchedwiz]

i don't really get this shit...
with all the talk of crisis, with all the layoff... they "raise" the price of game artificially with season pass? are they stupid?
you get a bit more (game+dlc), made by less people (due to layoff) for quite more while having to pay more taxes for other life concerns...
this baffles me..

[Warm Machine]

Actually, when has professionally produced expansions to games ever been free?

[hatchx]

Considering most Rockstar games are lengthy, high-quality experiences, I don't see this as a big problem. Games come in all different shapes and sizes after all.


At the end of the day, I can justify 5 dollars for an hour of entertainment. If I put less than 12-15 hours into a game, I did not receive that value.

[ToxicAdam]

Turok on N64 was around $80 when it came out but Shadow of Colossus was only $40 yet SoTC had a way higher budget to make the game.

Seems you are comparing apples to orange. Acclaim spent 80 million dollars just to acquire the rights to Turok and buy out Iguana Entertainment to create it. Plus, that price was inline with the first run of N64 games which were all priced between 60-80 dollars IIRC. It was also the only shooting game available at launch, making it even more desirable.

SOTC was a sequel to a very unpopular game, late in the PS2 cycle when it's competing with dozens of other AAA titles (at budget prices) that had more clout and name recognition.

Then PC publishers were overcharging you for games back then

But it was no different in the 80's either. Prices for new games have always been around 80-100 dollars (when adjusted for inflation). Both on consoles and on personal computers. But the actual quality of this product has only increased exponentially over that time.

It's the gross amount of titles that has kept prices in check, not the cheapening of the physical format they came on.

[chaosblade]

Actually, when has professionally produced expansions to games ever been free?

Witcher 2 EE is a very recent example, I don't know exactly what it added but it was supposed to be a pretty huge update as far as I know.

Though you could argue the price of the game went up after that launched I guess, but for anybody who already owned the game it was free. But I'm positive there have been previous PC games that got free expansions.

[nel e nel]

This game will be on sale for $40 a couple weeks after release, like ALL major releases (except COD) Just wait a little

Wait a little longer, and you'll have a GOTY edition with all DLC included for $40.

GTAIV
Red Dead Redemption
LA Noire

They all had a 'complete' edition around a year after their initial releases.

[Onion_Relish]

nah, if you wait for it to drop to $30, it's still $60 ;)

We have a winner

[Heart of Black]

To be fair, full games now cost like 1000% what they used to to make. And sell less copies.

[nel e nel]

First of all, the "7 years ago you paid your 60 dollars and got all the content created during the development cycle of the game." is a lie. Total bullshit. Things get cut all the time in all kinds of media (music, books, movies and of course games).

You know what? You're right! I want my money back for Avengers because that cocksucking money grubber Joss Whedon cut out 30 minutes of footage.

I'M ENTITLED TO THIS.