186 réponses à ce sujet

[London]

It's already been justified. The developers need a business proposal that results in a profit or the idea is axed by Corporate. Then there is no additional content to complain about.

[bzombo]

Monstruo696 wrote...

"Don't like, Don't buy" seems to be the only retort around here you guys can use.

it's how a capitalist society works. put out product. if enough people like it and buy it, then it has a market. screaming about the system and the man will not change this fundamental. it's everyone's choice. were the game not a full game on its own without dlc i would agree, but it is a full game.

[Mad Method]

SebastianDA, as for our opinions, that's fair. We have our own standards for what we like. If it's worth it to you, then good for you. For me, my standards are rather high. (High enough that I would say DAO isn't reaching them; the storytelling, characters, visuals, and gameplay all felt somewhat weak to me. Doesn't mean I hate DAO, but I really don't consider it to be that good. To be fair, my standards for good fantasy storytelling tend to hover around Tolkien.)

But I don't think they are strictly overpriced if compared to the original game. I don't try to compare it to that. I just run off of my own personal evaluation of "Would I want to pay $4/$5/$7/$12 for just that?" and the answer is "Hell no." I think their content is neither good enough nor of an amount enough to be worth what they're asking, not just by my standards, but for most consumers, I imagine.

And Sebastian, they get most of their profits from retail sales. They don't need this for a great bottom line. This DLC mess is just costing them a fair bit of goodwill in exchange for slightly added revenues. And honestly, I think they would earn more money if they lowered DLC prices. The law of demand says that as prices decrease, sales increase, and I think they're charging well above the equilibrium price-point here.

Modifié par Mad Method, 22 juillet 2010 - 11:02 .

[London]

I can respect that, Mad Method.



I also think that later on, prices will be reduced as the game gets older and people start to lose interest. We'll probably see more and more of the DLC included with the purchase of the game itself, or for less money.



For example, when I played EverQuest2 (It's an MMO, but the same concepts apply) they would charge you full price for each expansion pack. Every year a new expansion would come, and the original game suddenly came with all of the prior expansions except the new one. So, I bought the original game for say $50, and each expansion for say $50 when they were new. Someone going to the game now can buy everything for $50 whereas I paid $300 for the same content.



They also tried to sell $5 and $7 "Adventure Packs". It worked for a while, but eventually they started to become "free" with other purchases as they got older and no one was really interested in them at that point.



I'm assuming they will make all of the money they can from the $5 and $7 consumers now, and when that runs out, try to entice the rest who have held out with "2 DLC's for $5" or something. They will probably do this when DA2 comes out and very few still need to catch up on DA:O and it's DLCs.



I think I read that Bioware has made over a million dollars from DLC's as of 8 months ago (I don't know if this is revenue or profit). So, it's significant enough that small teams can work on these products and justify it for now.



http://www.1up.com/d...ory?cId=3176910

[Jigero]

ITT: Kids who couldn't get 7 dollars worth of allowance from mommy and daddy to pay for DLC.

[Itkovian]

Mad Method wrote...

Itkovian wrote...

No, people who buy used copies of DAO are NOT Bioware's customers. They don't make any money off of it. They are the retailer's customers only.

They bought 100% legal copies of Bioware's games. They are 100% legitimate Bioware customers. Bioware made money off of the copy when it was initially sold; the money Bioware received from that copy is one of the places where Bioware's obligation to support that copy of the game comes from. The same rights extended to the first purchaser ought to have been carried to the used customer who received it afterwards.

The Stone Prisoner was, like the Cerberus network, a way to try to maximize new game sales. And there is nothing malicious in the people actually making a product trying to maximize new purchases by having new purchases have greater value than a used one.

It's price-gouging and screwing over the second-hand market, plain and simple. They are hurting their own customers because many of us like to sell, regift, etc. our copies when we are done with them. And a certain amount  of us would probably like to sell DA1 to afford DA2. This BS is of the same nature as with limited activations DRM (although DRM has more problems than just that).

As for the storage chest, I already made this point in the thread I linked above: There is a considerable difference between releasing it as retail or part of a patch for all DAO gamers would be able to enjoy and as part of a dev kit which only reaches a small portion of DAO's PC gaming community.

I think it's quite clear from what they've been doing, and indeed this is something the industry at large seems to be moving towards, is to minimize used game sales. The used-game purchasers is certainly not a segment of the market they wish to cultivate.

Why are they doing this? Mostly because the retailers have steadely changed their business model to push used game sales above new games. This has the effect of ****ing an inordinate amount of money that would have normally gone to the developer/producers to the middle man instead.

In short, the retailers have changed their business model to maximize their own profit at the expense of the developers/producers. And so it is perfectly normal that the developers/producers make their own moves to maximize new sales by increasing the value of new purchases.

I find it quite understandable, and find bioware's method rather ingenious (much better than limited-use activations and the likes).

Itkovian

[AlanC9]

Mad Method wrote...
 I think their content is not neither good enough or of an amount enough to be worth what they're asking, not just by my standards, but for most consumers, I imagine.

Quite probably so. I've got no idea how many copies of, say, Leliana's Song they're selling, but it's almost certainly nothing near the numbers that even DAA did.

This DLC mess is just costing them a fair bit of goodwill in exchange for slightly added revenues. And honestly, I think they would earn more money if they lowered DLC prices. The law of demand says that as prices decrease, sales increase, and I think they're charging well above the equilibrium price-point here.

I'm not convinced they've lost all that much goodwill. I see a lot of the usual internet squawking, but we see that sort of thing all the time anyway.

As for the equilibrium price-point, it would be interesting to run an experiment., though frankly I don't think there'd be many more sales at $3 than at $6. The big problem with doing that experiment is that you really would burn a lot of goodwill if the lower price wasn't sustainable. EA should probably pick one brand to give it a shot, but I imagine all the brand managers would be pushing for someone else to be the one.

Modifié par AlanC9, 21 juillet 2010 - 10:57 .

[Mad Method]

Sebastian, I'm with you on that, but just how long would we be waiting for something like that? The fact that prices will improve is good, but the question of why they had to be like that to begin with... well, no. Besides, I think Bioware should release some free additional content like they did in the past.

Itkovian, what you call ingenious is what I call fleecing, screwing over the second-hand market, and Bioware/EA's personal brand of second-class citizenry. I think the difference in our opinions is due to the difference in our sympathies.

Alan, you're right that there's the usual internet squawking, but it does count for something and there's a difference between self-entitled squawking and folks complaining about Bioware going about business the wrong way. We're seeing a good bit of the latter here. That counts for something, alright. And if Bioware halved their prices (and publicized it), I am sure the DLC sales would jump an awful lot. The reason why people don't buy DLC right now isn't just "I don't like DLC" but "it's not worth the money."

Modifié par Mad Method, 21 juillet 2010 - 11:49 .

[Monstruo696]

bzombo wrote...

it's how a capitalist society works. put out product. if enough people like it and buy it, then it has a market. screaming about the system and the man will not change this fundamental. it's everyone's choice. were the game not a full game on its own without dlc i would agree, but it is a full game.

True, that's how it works, but it never killed anyone to THINK before handing over the moolah.

[RetrOldSchool]

Itkovian wrote...


I think it's quite clear from what they've been doing, and indeed this is something the industry at large seems to be moving towards, is to minimize used game sales. The used-game purchasers is certainly not a segment of the market they wish to cultivate.

Why are they doing this? Mostly because the retailers have steadely changed their business model to push used game sales above new games. This has the effect of ****ing an inordinate amount of money that would have normally gone to the developer/producers to the middle man instead.

In short, the retailers have changed their business model to maximize their own profit at the expense of the developers/producers. And so it is perfectly normal that the developers/producers make their own moves to maximize new sales by increasing the value of new purchases.

I find it quite understandable, and find bioware's method rather ingenious (much better than limited-use activations and the likes).

Itkovian

On a side note, in Sweden (I don't know how the used-market works in other countries) the used-market is a total rip off. You go to a retailer and sell your games you will get ~100SEK for a game that they will charge ~499SEK for used (a game that probably cost 399SEK new and unused at most other retailers).
The retailers in Sweden who sell both new and used games usually sell their used games for a higher price than you can get a new version for from other retailers.
So to me the only "real" used market is on eBay etc, but the prices there tend to go almost as high as the cheapest new copy anyway.

[Massadonious1]

Monstruo696 wrote...

bzombo wrote...

it's how a capitalist society works. put out product. if enough people like it and buy it, then it has a market. screaming about the system and the man will not change this fundamental. it's everyone's choice. were the game not a full game on its own without dlc i would agree, but it is a full game.

True, that's how it works, but it never killed anyone to THINK before handing over the moolah.

Just because they don't come to the same conculsion as you doesn't mean they don't "think" before they make a DLC purchase.

[Bryy_Miller]

Massadonious1 wrote...

Monstruo696 wrote...

bzombo wrote...

it's how a capitalist society works. put out product. if enough people like it and buy it, then it has a market. screaming about the system and the man will not change this fundamental. it's everyone's choice. were the game not a full game on its own without dlc i would agree, but it is a full game.

True, that's how it works, but it never killed anyone to THINK before handing over the moolah.

Just because they don't come to the same conculsion as you doesn't mean they don't "think" before they make a DLC purchase.

I so want to make an abortion analogy right now, but it would get me so much flak.