Mdoggy1214 wrote...
And exactly how does that justify nickle and diming the consumer? It's one thing to have cosmetic type dlc on day 1, or an extra side mission that doesn't effect the story at all. But to charge people extra for something that's very important to the lore of the franchise, that was also obviously developed before the release, is going too far. Your argument is "Well if it's important that's a good thing cause then people will buy it", but you're not truly thinking in the consumers best interest.
It doesn't. At no point are the consumers ever deprived the choice of purchasing DLC. If you don't feel that it is worth the money, then you don't purchase it. Clearly, there are plenty of others who disagree with that. ~40% of the people who bought ME3 also bought From Ashes. If they did not feel it was worth the money, they would not have done so.
The consumer will always want more. If I asked you if you wanted more DLC for free, I think nearly 100% of the consumers would say "yes". But there's a difference between looking out for the consumer and acting in a way that is simply financially unsustainable.
This is a post I wrote in a similar thread about the same topic.
Fewer people are buying console games year over year. It's a noted trend. Saying that people still buy games is true, but they are buying fewer games than they used to, and that ultimately hurts the company's revenue and thus profitability.
The traditional retail model for games is starting to break down. The costs of development, distribution, and marketing is outpacing the revenues, and it's becoming too risky. This is why there's such a sudden push for things like digital distribution, paid DLC, and microtransactions. The publishers are desperately searching for new ways to provide service/product for money, because the current model isn't sustainable in the long run. The most successful companies right now are sustaining themselves with these sorts of revenue streams (Valve, for example, publishes 90% of the digital games on PC, *and* makes millions from microtransactions).
Returning to the old model won't really work. There's no more room for a 2-million selling game to be called a huge success, unless they reduce the costs (CDPR is located in a nation where software engineers are paid $15-20k USD annually) or the development time (DA2), unless they find alternate revenue streams where players are willing to pay for more efficient-to-develop content like DLC.
I know it sucks. I know that you feel that you're being denied things that you feel should be in the game, and you long to return to the olden times when you could. But honestly, those days are gone because people just aren't buying enough games for developers to do it that way any more.
Do you honestly think that the publishers would be doing this if they didn't have to? EA's financials are in shambles because they can't get enough people to buy their games. And if it was just EA doing it, they'd probably stop if they really weren't making money from it. But it isn't just EA. THQ is considered by many to be a doomed company, because it had to do a reverse stock split to avoid delisting from the NASDAQ because of how low their stock was trading. Nintendo posted its first loss in 50 years. Funcom's stock lost 40% of its value because of lousy sales. Even with paid DLC, microtransactions, etc. they still aren't profitable. If it was really just greedy publishers trying to squeeze every last drop out of you, wouldn't they be making money hand over fist?
Right now, the publishers are scrambling to find ways to survive because the old business model isn't working any more. I know that you'd like it if they were, but people just aren't buying their games, so they are forced to look for other ways of getting money from their customers. And so we see things like paid services (Call of Duty Elite, Battlefield Premium), microtransactions (the aforementioned Valve hat sales), and paid DLC.
Want things to go back to the way they were? Get people to stop buying DLC, and buy more games.
Modifié par hoorayforicecream, 14 août 2012 - 10:28 .
Retour en haut
[And the name-calling is still inappropriate. Fancy that.]
