Allan Schumacher wrote...
Publishers are shooting themselves in the foot now with the whole DLC thing. It's increasing the cost of a game from $60 to $70 or $80, for a product the consumer has no option to try beforehand.
No. At best you could argue that it's episodic. You're making the assumption that there aren't people that don't buy DLC that aren't happy with their purchases, and don't feel as though they are missing out because they don't have the DLC. This isn't true. (I'm an example of it. Very rarely do I buy DLC, though I am typically very happy with my gaming purchases).
You're looking at it from an Industry insider's perspective Alan.
The Consumer doesn't see it as episodic when they hit the register. When they hit the register with their copy of ME3, and they're told "Do you want to buy the DLC with that?", they're not seeing it as episodic. They're seeing it as an additional $10 cost to get the full game.
The Walking Dead is perceived as episodic, it's a series of self-contained titles that progressively build upon one another. DLC is different, at it's best, it's an expansion pack. Often it's a money grab by trying to sell the "Horse Armor" with pallette swaps or some random clothing that took an artist half a day to generate. At it's worst, it's EA, it's hostage content and content cut from the main game in order to jack the price up $10.
We can already tell there's alot of anger and frustration about the Day 1 DLC issue, look at the massive thread on the ME3 board about From Ashes. Look at Capcom's performance in 2012 for clues to consumer interpretations of disc-locked content (Hostage content).
Further, you're dodging the issue of "Pay us more money for "Extra content" for this game you haven't tried and don't know if you like it".
Furthermore, customers are more than within their right to wait to purchase games until they are a lower price if they aren't convinced the game will be worth the money. I encourage gamers to do this too. I personally look at a new release and gauge my interest level for it, and then determine the price point at which I will buy it. This is often not top price at retail. I suppose if one is starved for gaming (my gaming interests are exceptionally diverse) this may not be the case, but it still comes back to "the alternative to playing one video game need not be play a different video game."
I'll agree with that. The unfortunate reality is though, it'd crush the industry inside of 12 months were that to happen. Few Publishers/Studios are able to wait 12 months for the release of the DLC-packed-in version to see the return from their work, especially since in most cases that would mean significantly lower sales.
If a large number of people had taken that route with DA2 or ME3, it's very likely neither one would've made back their budget. EA for example, cannot wait for people to actually learn about their games, since their business strategy appears to be to put little effort into the games and alot of effort into monetizing the games. A market that waits is a market that is much less likely to buy EA products considering their recent track record.
They do what we've seen people increasingly stating they'll do. "I'll wait for the release with all of the DLC packed in". In order to meet their expectations of value, and to determine if the product is worth the expense by waiting for word of mouth, the consumers are deciding in increasing numbers to wait for titles that they didn't feel were "Must have".
Does it? Or is that just what you think it does? Do you have anything to substantiate your perspective? Preferably numbers if possible.
Capcom provides a ready example. Street Fighter 2 was well under expectations, Dragon's Dogma was well under expectations. Neither game was bad, and neither game had any reason not to meet the projections. Given the internet backlash about the disc-locked content, it's reasonably safe to assume that the cause of the missed projections was the DLC policy.
From there, I'll have to ask you to consult the NPD reports EA receives. Since the Publishers campaigned to have the numbers hidden from Gamers a couple of years ago in an effort to hide their increasing slide and fuel their campaigns of disinformation ("Game X has shipped 2 million units!"), you know I cannot give you the hard numbers.
But I can draw inferences from news bites, quarterlies, NPD's monthly +/- percentages in sales, and the various threads on boards showing what concerns gamers.
@ Dlc - Why are you guys stressing so much? There are many legitimate alternatives to purchasing dlc if you can't afford it such as survey and reward sites. No need to expend energy putting up a shielded argument around the real issue.
Because the gaming industry doesn't operate under anything remotely resembling good sense. One only has to look at the block-buster mentality of the Industry compared to Kickstarter's success to see that the Industry is leaving piles of money on the table while chasing after Call of Duty and World of Warcraft.
The equivalent being if the movie Industry suddenly stopped making anything but pirate movies after Pirates of the Carribbean made a billion dollars. Hollywood doesn't do that, because they know there's mountains of money to be made in diversity.
If DLC is permitted to become the norm, then EA can, and will, drive hard to charging you $1 to reload your clip. EA has no concept of long term health or sustainability, they're only interested in trying to seperate you from as much money as they can.
Ultimately, if left unchecked, the emerging DLC models will cause a full industry crash as Publisher greed exceeds consumer tolerance. At some finite point, between poor quality and upward spiraling costs, the market is going to shrink.
Since the market has a huge lag time in order to make changes, and such an event can occur at an incredible speed, it would literally be catastrophic. Once Publisher greed exceeds consumer tolerance, it'd be completely impossible to avoid the crash.
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