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GTA Online microtransactions made nearly $66.4 million in three months

Alienous

Member
Is there even an ETA on heists?

Wow.

Yeah, they're still missing the feature that sold me on the idea.

I feel like they're abandoning it until they can release a PC and/or PS4/XBONE version. Include the DLC with that, and allow it to be downloaded for last-gen versions.
 

Mathezar

Member
Not one cent from me. GTA Online has left a bad taste in my mouth. On paper it sound awesome, but the reality (for me) has been an un-enjoyable experience.

1. Current gen consoles can't cope with it.
2. Rockstar is too inexperienced in building and maintaining the infrastructure needed for this.
 

Ploid 3.0

Member
I wonder how many of those payers lost their characters and money to the cloud eating them up. I lost quite a bit of earned money which lead me to not care and glitch.
 

Kallor

Member
They probably would have made even more off microtransactions for the SP mode. I imagine games like Elder Scrolls 6 and Fallout 4 could make a real killing off microtransactions, double xp or temporary invincibility, unlocked map locations and extra gold or any other kind of "cheat code" seems to be popular with these types of games on pc. Microtransaction helms and swords packs. Paid mods for consoles? lol
 
Who are these fuckers that buy this stuff?

Not only is GTAO so barebones that it's not worth spending anything on it, but it was so fucking easy to glitch money in the game to the point that Rockstar didn't even take away the things that people bought with the glitched money.

Baffling stuff.
 

Dire

Member
The one thing that's fairly surprising to me is the connotation of this as a success. It works out to about $2 per player or a 3.3% premium on top of the standard MSRP of the title. I just find it difficult to believe that that's considered a reasonable to good return for doing this to full price games. Microsoft absolutely damaged the value of their Forza franchise with their F2P silliness there. That alone has to be worth substantially more than this sort of return. Perhaps this is apples to oranges? It sure would be interesting to know the figures for Forza's microtransactions.

Back to GTA in particular, I doubt this will effect GTA much at all. I don't think it's unfair to say that single player is what sells GTA games, so it was essentially free money for them - for now. However the implications are disturbing. If they decide to try to start throwing random paywalls into the single player game just because they get greedy then it seems likely that they'll be going down the exact same path. Seeing more and more console pubs hop on this train certainly isn't making me exactly sad I haven't jumped into the PS4/XBone gen or anxious to do so!
 

noobasuar

Banned
Imagine how much money they would have made if they actually did a good job with the multiplayer.

I'd wager a billion by now. Maybe next time Rockstar.
 
This is the new fps craze. Last gen pubs saw the cod money printer and pumped out fpses. Now they'll see this and put micros in all their games. Even Sony is doing it. Microsoft too. Welcome to next gen gamers.
 

Raptomex

Member
None of that income was from my wallet. Still waiting in single player DLC. There's no reason some of the stuff for Online could not have been implemented in SP.
 
How does this mean that developing games is becoming too expensive?

Companies are making way more than they ever used to and are continuing to make money after the initial sale which they never had before.

IMHO they should drop the price of games, especially console DD's.
 
So, for those still playing GTA Online, what has changed since the first month of the online release? When I was playing, everyone had cheated to hell and back, everyone had multi-millions, and many were .iso hacking every kind of vehicle into the game. Also, the purchase credits option was disabled for the entire month I was playing.

How is the pay model now? Are there new things to buy? Do people even do missions anymore?
 

JDSN

Banned
How can a game journalist just copy and part and statements that suggest that GTA Online is free to play without even fucking flinching.
 

dex3108

Member
014944bf103c6ef4095941dcbc331c08976e64d9372adb492e6eca04d10253b1.jpg


F2P game that you need to pay 60$ to play it, game where promised features are not released yet, game that received many content cuts so it will be playable on current gen...

If this happened to smaller dev it will be crucified.
 
GTAOnline. The greatest idea that was so poorly conceptualized and poorly executed.

I'm glad that Rockstar is getting money because I love their Single Player games, but GTA Online was broken and is broken. It sucks and it really soured my opinion of GTA V, too, which is a damn shame. It's honestly a case where no online would have been better than what we got.
 

GlamFM

Banned
Good news if they considers this a success.
These micro transactions weren't offensive at all.
In fact I didn't buy anything.
 

Oersted

Member
Faith in humanity just dropped 10 points. C'mon people, don't encourage this stuff.

In Q1 2013, Sony gaming division lost $312 million.
In Q1 2013, Zynga made $263.5 profit in revenue.

Sony is financing now the " Free-To-Play" PS4 exclusive title Deep Down. I guess its too late.
 
Good news if they considers this a success.
These micro transactions weren't offensive at all.
In fact I didn't buy anything.

When did you play it? Ever since launch they nerfed payouts more and more hoping that eventually people would start buying those cash cards. There were game modes that were simply not worth playing because you spend more on ammo than you receive for finishing.

If you only played during the first week or two, you were playing on increased payouts. Now the game is a grinding hell where the only salvation is buying GTA bucks with real bucks.
 

GlamFM

Banned
When did you play it? Ever since launch they nerfed payouts more and more hoping that eventually people would start buying those cash cards. There were game modes that were simply not worth playing because you spend more on ammo than you receive for finishing.

If you only played during the first week or two, you were playing on increased payouts. Now the game is a grinding hell where the only salvation is buying GTA bucks with real bucks.

Ah ok, so it has changed. That's too bad. I only played during the first weeks and never felt pushed towards buying GTA bucks.
 
If you only played during the first week or two, you were playing on increased payouts. Now the game is a grinding hell where the only salvation is buying GTA bucks with real bucks.
That's pretty amazing considering the other big named games with microtransactions like Forza and Gran Turismo went in the opposite direction and made in-game currency payouts easier in those games.
 

Ploid 3.0

Member
Did they ever put that replay mission button back? I'd try but even though I'm rich off of glitched money they didn't take from me I'd probably lose currency trying it.
 

Musolf815

Member
One of my friends actually paid money in GTA Online, said he might spend as much as 60 dollars on it...


I never found it interesting enough to spend money on it. I really hope Rockstar doesn't see this and decide that GTA VI needs to be online multiplayer only.
 
D

Deleted member 1235

Unconfirmed Member
ugh stop voting with your wallets idiots. :(
 

YoungOne

Member
GTA online was a boring experience, it's when the hackers were running free placing million dollar bounties on my head was the only time of fun I was having in the game. Why are they calling it F2P?
 
This is just sad. Bad sign of things to come from Rockstar.

It could definitely go that way. However, there are creative forces and personalities within Rockstar that I think go beyond money, and wouldn't sit back and make just this sort of BS in perpetuity.

Will we have a tacked on, half-baked f2p multiplayer mode on every Rockstar property going forward? Yes, probably. But maybe that means they can likewise spend away on the single player content as the publishing side knows the money will be rolling in even beyond initial sales. That's my hope anyway.
 

Eusis

Member
Long story short: we can't win the battle against abusive monetization in a world so rich of suckers, I guess.
All it takes is a few whales and a moderate number of people willing to throw a $5 in here and there to ruin it for everyone too.

Although, that came out to be about $2 per copy. Does make me wonder if it's just a few whales while a lot of people went "nope, screw this shit."
 

Grayman

Member
All it takes is a few whales a moderate number of people willing to throw a $5 in here and there to ruin it for everyone too.

Although, that came out to be about $2 per copy. Does make me wonder if it's just a few whales while a lot of people went "nope, screw this shit."

I always "vote with your wallet" as worthless as only yes votes are counted clearly. Unfortunately for players businesses would be stupid to not take advantage of the opportunity.
 

Eusis

Member
Actually thinking about what I said about how the numbers break down: the worst part is that this may be like an inversion of saving money on packaging by not including manuals (or coloring them anyway) and not throwing extras on like reverse printed covers. The savings are a pittance per copy, but en masse it adds up. Same thing here, it's possible to come to the conclusion that $2 more per copy isn't worth the negative reaction, but when that adds up to several million it's probably irresistible. The best hope may be that GTA is just so big it's kind of an exception and the bad will angle is more effective on other games, deterring at least smaller games from bothering.

I always "vote with your wallet" as worthless as only yes votes are counted clearly. Unfortunately for players businesses would be stupid to not take advantage of the opportunity.
Yeah, in a sense all games would lose if everyone abstaining was a "no" vote anyway, even the best selling games aren't bought by more than a quarter of the base unless it's included with the system and that's effectively a rigged vote, or the system's install base is pretty much just people that wanted that game. But as the only thing that matters is profit the only way we win in something like this is if next to no one bought in, in which case it's too little profit to balance out the negative aspects. But people en masse kinda suck in this way.
 

Coolwhip

Banned
So we can call modes in a game that costs 60 bucks free to play now? Mario 3D World has over 80 free to play levels and you dont even get harassed for payments!!
 
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