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Frustration With Oblivion Mod Costs on Xbox Live
Vizionary wrote to mention the player backlash swelling out of a recent addition to Xbox Live. Major Nelson's blog made the announcement that they'd finally added the (previously announced) barding for the player mount in Oblivion. The catch is that the simple modification costs 200 points, removing a lot of the appeal of the small mods the Elder Scrolls series has thrived on. From commenter 'SW 1540' on that site: "Unquestionably, some downloadable content should cost money/points. Having said that, the cost of that content should be directly proportional to the enhancement it provides to the original game. For example, I would expect to pay $20.00 for the soon to come Perfect Dark Zero maps or new cars for Project Gotham. On the other hand, I would expect any additional costumes for PDZ to be free. I imagine there is good arguments on both sides, but one can see that the potential is there to exploit an eager fan. "
$2.50. 80 points = US$1
Actually, they're charging P.C. users for the same content via OblivionDownloads. The only free mods are user made at this point.
It isn't just XBOX gamers who are being fleeced. PC users are being "fleeced" as well, although $0.50 less.
Restricting the aftermarket in games has always been about companies seeing an opportunity to profit for themselves. Even if they can't deliver in this generation of games, they don't want you getting used to the notion that you can buy and sell from other players. I remember this being a big discussion in the development of diablo 2 ... people spent a long time talking about how to have a real cash aftermarket for items controlled by blizzard, but in the end we didn't have the resources to do it.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
Looks like they're charging for the PC addons as well. And have a couple more than just horse armor. I don't know that they're worth the $2 they're selling them for after all the free goodies the community created for Morrowwind but it'll be interesting to see if any other game devs follow their lead.
This is Bethesda's doing, and not Microsoft's. Apparently, if you want the official Bethesda horse armor mod on the PC, you still have to pay $2.50, which is roughly the equivalent of 200 MS points.
I honestly don't see why everyone is freaking out about this; message boards seem to have exploded in rage all over the internet since yesterday, and it's really not that big a deal. I don't feel like $2.50 is worth a mod that doesn't actually do anything (the "armor" doesn't actually increase the horse's armor class, it just makes it look nice), and I feel like a lot of people are thinking the same thing. When Bethesda finds out that people aren't willing to pay that amount for so little, I'm guessing that future content will be priced more in line with the value it gives players. All in all, this really has nothing to do with Microsoft or how horrible the 360 is, but with why Bethesda chose that price for this particular content.
Nice dream, but Sony is banking on micropayments as well. Check out the coverage of Phil Harrison's GDC 06 presentation and you'll see that is one of the ticks on his "circle of revenue" for online.
Pete Hines from Bethesda Software was kind enough to answer a few question and shed some light on the whole Horse Armor Spectacle. Click here.
HDTV is 1920x1080
Took a few tries to get that link to come up, here's the text:
Pete Hines from Bethesda Software was kind enough to answer a few question and shed some light on the whole Horse Armor Spectacle.
Quote:
bapenguin: It seems there's been quite a bit of backlash from the $2.50 horse armor skins. What's your take on it?
Pete Hines: Honestly there's not a lot of info out there for us to go on. We tried to find a spot for it that fit with what other things were out there. A Theme costs 150 points. The Kameo thing was 200. We're trying to find the right spot that fits. How much is something you can use in the game worth versus a gamer picture pack, or a theme, and so on.
bapenguin: Any chance that we'll see a change in the price structure because of this? Or has it been selling well enough at the current price point that you guys are happy?
Pete Hines: Will they all be priced the same? I don't know. We're not even a day into this right now. We've got a couple more we're working on finishing and testings and will release in the next couple of weeks. We want to put some different things out there and find out what folks want and what they don't want. These are optional things, not requirements, so if you don't want to get them you don't have to.
bapenguin: What about free mods on the 360? Will we be seeing any of the popular PC mods from the user community showing up on Live?
Pete Hines: Right now we don't have plans to do any free mods. We don't ever get involved with fan-created content, on any platform, so taking some of that and releasing it on Live is not something we'd ever do.
Pete brings up a good point relating to content already out there. I completely forgot about the Kameo "winter pack" thing which was the same price. That "content" is pretty much the same as what Bethesda is offering. It's good to hear that a variety of stuff is in the works.
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They will not be Ashamed till we call them on their bullshit.
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An Education is the Font of All Liberty
No, not so much. I have a 7800GT. It's a wonderful card, money well spent in my book, but I'm not fooling myself in to thinking it's the same thig as a 360. It's the same general class, in terms of features, but it's not as fast. A 360's graphics is most closely on par with a X1900XT, and would also be comparable to a 7900GTX. It's a fast grpahics chip, and gains some advnatages from having access to the same memory as the CPUs.
Also your upgrade analogy is extremely flawed. You are totally neglecting the value of the rest of the system. Money had to go to buy that, espically if it's new enough to support a 7800 GT. I was in just such a situation a month ago or so when I did get my 7800. I had an AGP system, but all the AGP offerings were unattractive. Too slow for the money. I wanted a PCIe card, specificly a 7800 GT. Ok so now to the graphics card, add a motherboard, that's about $150 for one with features I liked. Ahh but now there's a new problem, RAM. My old RAM was DDR, new system needs DDR2. RAM's cheap, but still another $150 or so for 2GB. Then there's a biggie: The CPU. Had to go with a new socket factor to get PCIe. So that's $300 for a nice dual core one. Not done yet though, turns out these new graphics cards and mobos need power my PSU doesn't handle, I need a new one of those. Decided I'd like it to be quiet and efficient so $100 there.
All tolled it was about $1100 for the core upgrade and that doesn't count sound, harddrives, case, display, input or any of that, I kept all those things.
Money well spent in my book, but it doesn't get the graphics up to 360 levels. It gets them around it, but does not match it.
Not using credit cards is hardly a European thing, by the way. I, as a European, pretty much only use my (debit) card for everything except if I just happen to have cash on me and feel sympathetic to the store not having to pay dealer charges. Americans use che[que|ck]s a lot. Japanese use cash almost exclusively.
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