83 réponses à ce sujet

[AtreiyaN7]

From what I've read, RtO has been delayed because they found a bit of a major bug/issue. Personally, I'm glad they want to fix whatever this problem is before releasing it. Or would you rather have something that doesn't work right now? I would suggest being patient. As for Awakenings, we don't know how long it is yet. I doubt it will be as long as DA:O proper, but I would imagine that it's probably going to give us a decent number of hours. Besides, there's always the toolset and mods to play with in the meantime (if you're the technically inclined sort).

[TheSeeker33]

Well I got the PS3 version, so I had to spend $60. I'm glad that Awakening is only $40. After all it is only an expansion. Look at MMOs. The very first game costs around $50-60. They later release expansions for $40 or less, but you still get really good amount of content. So I expect no less from Awakening.

[bucknut1007]

Where are you all finding the info that DA:A is 15 hours. I can't find an official source from Bioware saying that it's 15 hours. If I am wrong and Bioware has said that it is then please give me the link. Thank you.

Modifié par bucknut1007, 07 janvier 2010 - 02:38 .

[Yargoyle]

I prefer boxed copies to downloads; hence, I'm more willing to pay $40 for a retail expansion than any cash for DLC. It was just a matter of time before Dragon Age expanded.

[Doc Bacon]

Torias wrote...

ComputerEd wrote...
Also I am a bit concerned about the price of the expansion. The Dragon Age game which needed a lot more time and cost to produce was sold for on release $49.95.  The expansion is listing at $39.95 or  only $9 less, 20% than the original game. Now I do not expect the expansion to have the same amount of content as the original, it is after all an expansion. However I would hope that at only 20% less cost we would see nothing below 50% less content. I mean you are really close to the same price so if asking for half the content really that bad?

Yet the number bantered around is 15 hours, or in other words less that 30% of the content in the original game. By some standards it is close to 20%.

Consider the reverse....

Dragon Age: Origins should have cost more than $50.

They crammed an incredibly large amount of content into the game (looking at modern game lengths, perhaps 3 games worth) and sold it for the cost of one.

They did that to kick start a new franchise....

So they gave us this amazing deal to start the franchise, three games worth of content for the price of one.

Most modern games don't last 15 hours. Awakening for 15 hours and $40 will:

1) add new stuff to Dragon Age: Origins (talents and what not), increasing it's replay value.
2) provide a full game worth of content for 20% less than the price of a full game.

That's a pretty good deal.

It might not be the absolutely astonishingly good value as Origins itself way (three games for the price of one), but one game for the price of 0.8 is still good :-)


Also, they have mentioned that the team working on DLC is seperate from the team working on the expansion, so they shouldn't have an impact on each other.

No. This is not 3 games in 1, The orange box is three games in 1. This is one long game, as is Oblivion, Fallout 3, Mass Effect, and many FPS games due to the multiplayer aspect. This is one game, and the price should be 30$ at most

[Matdeception]

Am I the only one who pre-ordered from Gamestop and it only cost me 30 bucks? DA:A I mean.

Modifié par Matdeception, 07 janvier 2010 - 02:57 .

[tls5669]

Truthfully I think the DLC will keep getting delayed until March 16. Its just like Bioware
to tease us with some DLC just too add that DLC to an expansion.

Modifié par tls5669, 07 janvier 2010 - 03:02 .

[Veiel]

DA:O cost about $40 here but then the government demands another $10 in VAT so its 50 dollar, whicjh is an ok price for a PC game. But I felt a bit ripped off from the DLC which I paid $7 for. I expected a bigger dungeon for that price.

[craigdolphin]

I think the 15 hours meme came from the original 'rumour' about the expansion that circulated for a few days before the official announcement (e.g., http://kotaku.com/54...coming-in-march).

Most news sites read the release and took it to mean that the 'details' of the original rumours must have been entirely correct: including the 'upwards of 15 hours' part. A bit of lazy journalism would be my guess. I don't think BW has confirmed this aspect of the rumour yet. (That said: maybe BW/EA confirmed it off-the-record to the journalist. I'm only speculating here.)

I have to admit I'm a little bit torn over the price relative to the supposed length of the content. DA:O is the best game I have ever played IMO. We bought a copy for PC and another copy for XBox so my wife and I would not have to argue about who got to play! :innocent: That means more domestic harmony but double the cost. And because each DLC/expansion is linked to the platform, I have to buy them twice also. That makes me a teensy bit irritable because I think that I've you've already bought the game twice, and they should reward me for my support by only linking the DLC to your account and letting you download for either platform based on that alone. Still, the game is so good that I'm still willing to pony up anyway. I would not do that for any other game that I can think of.

So I will be paying $80 for this expansion without question.  But even at $40, 15 hours (if true) does intuitively seem quite light. I know one of the developers posted about the concept of distributing the full development costs of the original game over 2 years worth of DA-related content. Without such a strategy, the original game may never have been released.That sounds entirely reasonable to me, but does the pseudo-math add up?

My first playthrough of DA:O was about 72 hours. That's about $0.83 per hour of amazing awesomesauce and Leliana's incredible accent <3.

Let's assume that DA:O was priced as a loss-leader for the IP. That would mean that the dollar value for the product was underpriced from 'normal' pricing. Let's assume a significant cost reduction was made to get you 'in the door'. In retail, a loss leader might be 30% off the 'normal' (profitable) price. Pulling that figure of 30% out of my **** (and from http://129.3.20.41/e...401/0401008.pdf ), that would make the regular (profitable) rate for this kind of content to be closer to $1.19 per hour. Now, in the case of bookstores, the loss leaders (best sellers) actually constitute only 3% of sales (see link). So if your loss leaders are going to provide a higher overall percentage of your sales distribution, then your 'regular' priced content will actually need to turn a significantly higher rate of profit just to offset the difference.

While I don't have EA's sales statistics for DA:O and DLC etc, I can pull statistics and speculation out of thin air with the best of them.

Let's assume that consumer interest in the DLC wanes linearly over time with a 2/3 take-up rate for customers of each sequential release, and likewise for expansions. The number of buyers for DLC can never be higher than the number of people who bought DA:O. Same for expansions.

Let's take NWN IP expansions as a base for our model for the overall DA:O content release strategy. There were what? 3 or 4 'expansions', a sequel, and 3 expansions to the sequel? Throw in say, 5 or 6 paid DLC modules for the original, and 5 or 6 paid DLC modules for the sequel.

Yes, all bull-pucky and speculation, I know. So is what follows. Get over it

Assume that the amount of content in DLC's averages the same as Warden's Keep (say 2 hours to be generous), and that expansions will have 15 hours of content on average, and a full sequel has the same amount of content as the original.

If you throw all that together in a spreadsheet, that suggests that overall the original DA:O will contribute something like 43% of the total content-hours consumed by all customers for the IP.

That's going to require a comparatively steep boost to the profit taken on the remaining 57% of the sales IF DA:O is a heavily discounted loss-leader like the bestseller books at B&N. In fact, my spreadsheet tells me that a 30% loss-leader discount would require that followup content be priced at $1.45 per hour to make up the difference.

But...they can't do that for the sequel without either raising the price way above market standard, or reducing the content to compensate.

So that makes things even more dire for DLC and expansion pricing because they need to make up the difference on the loss-leader original, and also a not as profitiable sequel.

So, by this arcane math-thaumaturgy, 15 hours of content DA:A would likely need to be priced at $31.17 to make up for a 30% loss-leader discount on DA:O. (This ignores the sequel market cap issue which woul make the price a bit higher again for the remaining content)

Ok, so this is a very silly exercise in gratuitous math and speculation, but if the assumptions bear anything close to reality it does seem to suggest the pricing is still a little too high at $40.

However, there's a LOT of unfounded and entirely made-up assumptions in this 'analysis': including the supposed length of the expansion content, and follow-on sales rates, and the amount of followup content to be produced etc. This also makes no allowance for the concept that new players will be drawn to DA by publicity surrounding a sequel, and possibly causing sequel sales to exceed the original (which would reduce the price pressure somewhat).

We also forgot to mention that EA is losing money and they need profitable game studios to plug the financial haemorage in other studios. And also, BW are just the best game studio on the planet so they all deserve raises IMO.  On the other hand, they know they'll lose customer by pricing things too high which will only serve to increase their troubles.

So BW's pricing may be much more reasonable than this BS analysis would suggest. Not to mention: all this is based on the idea that the price should reflect the amount of content. Which is nonsense (however much it pains me to say that as a customer who just want MOAR!). The real measure for Bioware is that the total income has to exceed the total costs by enough to keep the shareholders from the door. The costs of developing the engine, customer support, sedatives for community coordinators, etc are not dependent on the amount of content produced for that engine in the slightest.  If initial sales of DA:O were not as high as they projected, they may have no choice but to try to seemingly 'milk' the price of DLC and expansions from the smaller player base than they had expected in order have a prayer at breaking even.

That said, I hope to the maker that DA:O sales were well above expectations! Either way though: I'll be buying DA:A. 

Actually, having done this silly exercise, I feel a bit better about the pricing than I did. How bout that? I talked myself down from the ledge!

[Ferret A Baudoin]

Just one point, there is definitely DLC that will be released after Awakening. We're like Santa's elves busily crafting away. Or maybe more like the Nightmare Before Christmas critters, that would be way more cool. Every fourth box whill have a severed head.

[TeleProd]

Ferret A Baudoin wrote...

Every fourth box whill have a severed head.

It wouldn't be downloadable content if it came in a box, now would it? Otherwise, sounds like a good marketing plan.

Yay for more DLC! Even though I haven't bought a single one, yet anyway.

[Aesir Rising]

Who doubted this? The monetary gain to be had from making both premium-priced DLC in tandem with premium-priced mini-expansions would make this self-evident.

[Magic Zarim]

Torias wrote...

ComputerEd wrote...
Also I am a bit concerned about the price of the expansion. The Dragon Age game which needed a lot more time and cost to produce was sold for on release $49.95.  The expansion is listing at $39.95 or  only $9 less, 20% than the original game. Now I do not expect the expansion to have the same amount of content as the original, it is after all an expansion. However I would hope that at only 20% less cost we would see nothing below 50% less content. I mean you are really close to the same price so if asking for half the content really that bad?

Yet the number bantered around is 15 hours, or in other words less that 30% of the content in the original game. By some standards it is close to 20%.

Most modern games don't last 15 hours. Awakening for 15 hours and $40 will:

This particular comment I'm so growing tired of seeing. Are those "most modern games" you refer to all Single-Player-ONLY RPG types of games? If not, you probably feel like apples and oranges taste all the same too.

Let's look at the play length of games that have only/primarily single-player content as their selling perc, in the broad RPG range? Cool:

The Witcher: Most reviews tacked 40 hours of play worth to it.
Oblivion: 20 hours main quest, 60+ hours GOTY ed.
Mass Effect: ? (never played it but reading around on these forums this is somewhere 15 - 25 hours of content)
Hmmm..! Any other single-player-only RPG games? I can't remember recent ones.

Someone else fill in these gaps:
Baldurs Gate I: ?
Baldurs Gate II: ?
NWN: ?

Modifié par Magic Zarim, 07 janvier 2010 - 05:03 .

[stefanhacc]

Doc Bacon wrote...


No. This is not 3 games in 1, The orange box is three games in 1. This is one long game, as is Oblivion, Fallout 3, Mass Effect, and many FPS games due to the multiplayer aspect. This is one game, and the price should be 30$ at most

Eh what? A regular playthrough for me in Mass Effect is 20-25 hours including the expansion. In DAO it's 60-80 hours.

[stryderdy]

Ferret A Baudoin wrote...

Just one point, there is definitely DLC that will be released after Awakening. We're like Santa's elves busily crafting away. Or maybe more like the Nightmare Before Christmas critters, that would be way more cool. Every fourth box whill have a severed head.

Just a quick question on this Ferret A Baudoin. Just Who's 'severed head's would you be including?

[DwemerWARRIOR]

Torias wrote...

ComputerEd wrote...
Also I am a bit concerned about the price of the expansion. The Dragon Age game which needed a lot more time and cost to produce was sold for on release $49.95.  The expansion is listing at $39.95 or  only $9 less, 20% than the original game. Now I do not expect the expansion to have the same amount of content as the original, it is after all an expansion. However I would hope that at only 20% less cost we would see nothing below 50% less content. I mean you are really close to the same price so if asking for half the content really that bad?

Yet the number bantered around is 15 hours, or in other words less that 30% of the content in the original game. By some standards it is close to 20%.

Consider the reverse....

Dragon Age: Origins should have cost more than $50.

They crammed an incredibly large amount of content into the game (looking at modern game lengths, perhaps 3 games worth) and sold it for the cost of one.

They did that to kick start a new franchise....

So they gave us this amazing deal to start the franchise, three games worth of content for the price of one.

Most modern games don't last 15 hours. Awakening for 15 hours and $40 will:

1) add new stuff to Dragon Age: Origins (talents and what not), increasing it's replay value.
2) provide a full game worth of content for 20% less than the price of a full game.

That's a pretty good deal.

It might not be the absolutely astonishingly good value as Origins itself way (three games for the price of one), but one game for the price of 0.8 is still good :-)


Also, they have mentioned that the team working on DLC is seperate from the team working on the expansion, so they shouldn't have an impact on each other.

Oh Dragon age should have cost MORE and its worth 3 GAMES!!!?? Maybe games like COD MW 2 dont have as long story but i have played the multiplayer+local Spec-op for days (in hours), and i'll be playing it for months to come with my friends. Allthough i've  spend couple of hundreds of hours playing DAO with 7 dif. char., I'm having a hard time finding things to do in it any more. + I have bought every buyable add-on for DAO, so I really have spend maybe twice as much money on DAO then on "basic" game.
 

[Aesir Rising]

stefanhacc wrote...


Eh what? A regular playthrough for me in Mass Effect is 20-25 hours including the expansion. In DAO it's 60-80 hours.

Ray Muzyka said this about Mass Effect...

I mean, it really depends on just how much you want to do on the
uncharted worlds. I think it’s going to be about 40 hours or so for the
main story, so it’s going to be a good-sized BioWare RPG just for the
core part. Off the beaten path, there’s probably another 20 or 30 hours
or so of stuff, or more, depending on how much you do and what order you
do it in and all of that. It’s this non-linear exploration of uncharted
worlds.

The someone at Microsoft realized he wasn't grounded in reality and issued this clarifying and obfuscating statement through the xbox live site interviewer:

Microsoft hedges a bit with ...

There are so many interesting choices, no player will likely see everything in the game in one pass through the core game. One play through, just one permutation of the critical path, would be about 20-30 hours and the extra stuff you could do, including exploration of uncharted worlds and post-release content, would add another 20 or more hours depending on what you do and in what order.

Will you now concede the point you were responding to?  Or do you really want to quibble about just one of the examples given to you?

Modifié par Aesir Rising, 07 janvier 2010 - 05:55 .

[stefanhacc]

Aesir Rising wrote...

stefanhacc wrote...


Eh what? A regular playthrough for me in Mass Effect is 20-25 hours including the expansion. In DAO it's 60-80 hours.

Ray Muzyka said this about Mass Effect...

I mean, it really depends on just how much you want to do on the
uncharted worlds. I think it’s going to be about 40 hours or so for the
main story, so it’s going to be a good-sized BioWare RPG just for the
core part. Off the beaten path, there’s probably another 20 or 30 hours
or so of stuff, or more, depending on how much you do and what order you
do it in and all of that. It’s this non-linear exploration of uncharted
worlds.

The someone at Microsoft realized he wasn't grounded in reality and issued this clarifying and obfuscating statement through the xbox live site interviewer:

Microsoft hedges a bit with ...

There are so many interesting choices, no player will likely see everything in the game in one pass through the core game. One play through, just one permutation of the critical path, would be about 20-30 hours and the extra stuff you could do, including exploration of uncharted worlds and post-release content, would add another 20 or more hours depending on what you do and in what order.

Will you now concede the point you were responding to?  Or do you really want to quibble about just one of the examples given to you?

What do you want me to do? To disagree with Ray Muzykas quote about the lenght of Mass Effect? Sure I do. Even though as has been said over and over in this forum that the time it takes to play a game is something individual and should be taken with a grain of sand it's a stretch to call ME a 40 hour main campaign when I'm doing every single side quest and get's 25 hour out of it.

That being said the quotes from Bioware about the lenght of DAO has been pretty accurate from what I've seen. Maybe they've learned something from the Mass Effect example.

This does mean that Dragon Age is about 3 times as large as Mass Effect though. At least in my estimation of playing time.

Ther's no doubt that DAO is a large game, and ther's also no doubt that ther's other large games out there. As for the size of the expansion and therefor what the cost of it should be. How can anyone of us know at this point? The whole discussion is moot.

[Codemanjap]

stefanhacc wrote...

Aesir Rising wrote...

stefanhacc wrote...


Eh what? A regular playthrough for me in Mass Effect is 20-25 hours including the expansion. In DAO it's 60-80 hours.

Ray Muzyka said this about Mass Effect...

I mean, it really depends on just how much you want to do on the
uncharted worlds. I think it’s going to be about 40 hours or so for the
main story, so it’s going to be a good-sized BioWare RPG just for the
core part. Off the beaten path, there’s probably another 20 or 30 hours
or so of stuff, or more, depending on how much you do and what order you
do it in and all of that. It’s this non-linear exploration of uncharted
worlds.

The someone at Microsoft realized he wasn't grounded in reality and issued this clarifying and obfuscating statement through the xbox live site interviewer:

Microsoft hedges a bit with ...

There are so many interesting choices, no player will likely see everything in the game in one pass through the core game. One play through, just one permutation of the critical path, would be about 20-30 hours and the extra stuff you could do, including exploration of uncharted worlds and post-release content, would add another 20 or more hours depending on what you do and in what order.

Will you now concede the point you were responding to?  Or do you really want to quibble about just one of the examples given to you?

What do you want me to do? To disagree with Ray Muzykas quote about the lenght of Mass Effect? Sure I do. Even though as has been said over and over in this forum that the time it takes to play a game is something individual and should be taken with a grain of sand it's a stretch to call ME a 40 hour main campaign when I'm doing every single side quest and get's 25 hour out of it.

That being said the quotes from Bioware about the lenght of DAO has been pretty accurate from what I've seen. Maybe they've learned something from the Mass Effect example.

This does mean that Dragon Age is about 3 times as large as Mass Effect though. At least in my estimation of playing time.

Ther's no doubt that DAO is a large game, and ther's also no doubt that ther's other large games out there. As for the size of the expansion and therefor what the cost of it should be. How can anyone of us know at this point? The whole discussion is moot.

Well said. People need to stop speculating and wait until more information is out.

[Codemanjap]

stefanhacc wrote...

Aesir Rising wrote...

stefanhacc wrote...


Eh what? A regular playthrough for me in Mass Effect is 20-25 hours including the expansion. In DAO it's 60-80 hours.

Ray Muzyka said this about Mass Effect...

I mean, it really depends on just how much you want to do on the
uncharted worlds. I think it’s going to be about 40 hours or so for the
main story, so it’s going to be a good-sized BioWare RPG just for the
core part. Off the beaten path, there’s probably another 20 or 30 hours
or so of stuff, or more, depending on how much you do and what order you
do it in and all of that. It’s this non-linear exploration of uncharted
worlds.

The someone at Microsoft realized he wasn't grounded in reality and issued this clarifying and obfuscating statement through the xbox live site interviewer:

Microsoft hedges a bit with ...

There are so many interesting choices, no player will likely see everything in the game in one pass through the core game. One play through, just one permutation of the critical path, would be about 20-30 hours and the extra stuff you could do, including exploration of uncharted worlds and post-release content, would add another 20 or more hours depending on what you do and in what order.

Will you now concede the point you were responding to?  Or do you really want to quibble about just one of the examples given to you?

What do you want me to do? To disagree with Ray Muzykas quote about the lenght of Mass Effect? Sure I do. Even though as has been said over and over in this forum that the time it takes to play a game is something individual and should be taken with a grain of sand it's a stretch to call ME a 40 hour main campaign when I'm doing every single side quest and get's 25 hour out of it.

That being said the quotes from Bioware about the lenght of DAO has been pretty accurate from what I've seen. Maybe they've learned something from the Mass Effect example.

This does mean that Dragon Age is about 3 times as large as Mass Effect though. At least in my estimation of playing time.

Ther's no doubt that DAO is a large game, and ther's also no doubt that ther's other large games out there. As for the size of the expansion and therefor what the cost of it should be. How can anyone of us know at this point? The whole discussion is moot.

Well said. People need to stop speculating and wait until more information is out.

[shorn_]

Torias wrote...

ComputerEd wrote...
Also I am a bit concerned about the price of the expansion. The Dragon Age game which needed a lot more time and cost to produce was sold for on release $49.95.  The expansion is listing at $39.95 or  only $9 less, 20% than the original game. Now I do not expect the expansion to have the same amount of content as the original, it is after all an expansion. However I would hope that at only 20% less cost we would see nothing below 50% less content. I mean you are really close to the same price so if asking for half the content really that bad?

Yet the number bantered around is 15 hours, or in other words less that 30% of the content in the original game. By some standards it is close to 20%.

Consider the reverse....

Dragon Age: Origins should have cost more than $50.

They crammed an incredibly large amount of content into the game (looking at modern game lengths, perhaps 3 games worth) and sold it for the cost of one.

They did that to kick start a new franchise....

So they gave us this amazing deal to start the franchise, three games worth of content for the price of one.

Most modern games don't last 15 hours. Awakening for 15 hours and $40 will:

1) add new stuff to Dragon Age: Origins (talents and what not), increasing it's replay value.
2) provide a full game worth of content for 20% less than the price of a full game.

That's a pretty good deal.

It might not be the absolutely astonishingly good value as Origins itself way (three games for the price of one), but one game for the price of 0.8 is still good :-)


Also, they have mentioned that the team working on DLC is seperate from the team working on the expansion, so they shouldn't have an impact on each other.

I saw this last night and just had to comment.

Your point about the game costing more by the length of time it takes to finish said game.

This idea is flawed because your basing it on non RPG games. Yes if this was a FPS then 80 hours would be wicked long and more like 3 games (think half life 1, 2, and 3). This being a RPG at arround 80 hours is prety standard for RPG games though; in fact considering some of the RPG games past and present (think Fianly Fantasy, baulders gate, the ultima series, Fallouts, Oblivion, Morrowind, Daggerfall, NWN..etc) its probably about adverage. So the price point for a RPG game with 80 hrs of play is actually right arround $50. That is, unless your game frys us up baccon and makes us toast with eggs were not going to pay much over that price for it.

So in reality an expansion for an RPG that gives us 15 hours of excitment but costs $10 less than a game that gave us 80+ hours of excitment is much more akin to not a good deal.  Now $25 for 15 hours of content is a much better deal for an expansion and from a marketing standpoint you will actually make more money due to more people being willing to buy the product for that price. Need Proof? look at Fallout 3's expansions...$50 RPG game with 60-80 hours game play with expansions for about $20-$30...

Anyway, Its a good game and so far i think we all like and and would love to support Bioware. We just dont want to feel like were being ripped off. Is this your issue? No of course it is not. In fact im sure most modirators are so far down the ladder that complaining to you all is just a waste of time and effort. Still we vent in hopes that the people above might hear our pleas..

[fantasypisces]

Ferret A Baudoin wrote...

Just one point, there is definitely DLC that will be released after Awakening. We're like Santa's elves busily crafting away. Or maybe more like the Nightmare Before Christmas critters, that would be way more cool. Every fourth box whill have a severed head.

Any knowledge whether or not the DLC after the expansion will only be with the five new companions +1 returning (*cough Oghren*) or will all the old companions still be available? (Well not all, but those that would have stayed).

Otherwise I have a lot of artistic screenshots to take, so I can remember the awesome characters.

[shorn_]

sprybry wrote...

15 hours? poo, poo! check out fernando melo's interview with ign and draw your own conclusions.

Sounds good..got a link or are you just going to tease me with knowladge?


This is the wait that doesn't end,Yes, it goes on and on, my friend.Some people started waiting , not knowing for what,and they'll continue waiting for it forever just because...
<keep repeating song till RTO comes out>