I have nothing to do with economy but I took few courses in University just for fun. At one of them we were discussing different distribution models. And without going into detail, it was best of all to digitaly distribute small software and such. It's fast, reliable and most of all cheep.
So DLC is not a big chunk of code, it will be evn stupid to burn it on the disc just by itself (waste of space) and think of the costs to manufacture, distribute and sell it. It all come to the point where it will cost much more than it will gain.
we can argue that BW should wait, acumulate these DLC and later release a patch. But who said that there will not be like this. Lets take a look at Fallout3 DLC, eventually they were bundled and released on the disc. Same might be with DA:O. But if my XBox do not lie, then total amount of all DLC is less than 1Gb, while simple DVD is about 5 (you can make it 10 with double-layer) so again it comes to a point of not using its complete capacity.
Now then it comes to the point of pricing. This I really have no clue. But fortunatly I am a developer myself, so I can gamble a bit on this.
Usual teams on the project in RnD are around 3-10 people (at least where I worked so far) without counting QA and managers, the bigger the corporation the better people its trying to hire (take a look at EA employment). And average software engineer gets around 2-5000$ a month, but don't forget that company have to pay also for "employing" personal which in the end almost doubles the sum that company pay per person. Sum to it basic costs as internet, el, workspace and so on.
Now anything even a slight tiny-miny patch goes through several stages of development and testing which will lead to 1-2 month of work at least. (unless its a urgent show stopper). So do the math and you will see that the cost to develop even this tiny DLC is huge.
Now you can say that EA gained more than it payed... well don't they have to get a profit in the end, or have they become a charity organisation at some point? Well, the product is popular and thus gaved a good profit.
No mentaly normal person will think: "Hell it prints us money, lets NOT do it!" It just don't make any sence. Company + Profit = Good. Thats how life goes.
Also often used argument here is "back in old days", well, its true but back in old days it was different exchange rate and no financial crysis. Now the prices are different. Because "back in old days of NWN or BG" bread in a local store cost 5kr while now it costs 20kr (hell, I miss good old day) and usual salary were much less then now.
Things the way they are because that what the life is now. We live in a crapy world, and many of us don't like most of it. Not much can be done aboutit, except: "work harder, try harder and hope for things to change".
Modifié par Klimy, 23 novembre 2009 - 04:14 .
Ce sujet est fermé
Retour en haut
) doesn't seem like a whole hell of a lot. The only problem I see (which I haven't experienced for myself but I have heard from a few different sources) is that you have a guy stood in your camp trying to sell you DLC. I don't know whether that was just laziness (it being too hard to conditionalise whether that guy appears or not), a misinformed attempt at streamlining the DLC purchase, or just pushy marketing, but it was a bad idea.
