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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. "
Remember when people used to play online games on PC, and there was thousands of Maps, Models, and complete game Mods available for free on the internet. Oh, and you could play for free, as long as you could find someone who wanted to run the server. Yeah, those were the days.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
How much money is 200 points? Not everyone plays X-Box Live you know.
I am unamerican, and proud of it!
While the armor is pretty, I can see how a "skin" (even if it adds armor points to the horse) at $2.50 does seem to be nickel and dimeing the player. Especially for people who were used to Morrowinds free mods that completely revamped the world.
I guess this is an experiment with the micro content that Microsoft was looking to build an "ecosystem" of. Bah, I hate that marketoid term. Apparently the ecosystem complains loudly; wonder what that bodes for sustaining such prices for such small add-ons.
Sig under construction since 1998.
Must feel nice for 360 owners to pay more for the game, then get the privilege of paying for stuff that PC gamers can simply download (or make) for free.
Seriously, $2.50 for horse armor? At that rate, I can only imagine what actual content would cost.
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
You're going to see a lot of developers holding back content so they can make you pay more through XBox Live. Here's hoping Nintendo and Sony take full advantage of the mistakes that are being made with Live. This is a great example of what *not* to do with an online service. Micropayments will be their downfall.
That's retarded. Why don't they just make 100 points = $1, aka 1 point = 1 cent. That would make it a lot easier to gauge the actual value or things. Maybe that's the point, I guess..
Joseph?
It's really mind-boggling that Bethesda thinks it's okay to sell a CD full of actual content for $50-70, and still thinking it's okay to sell a couple of extra skins for $1.99-$2.50.
Why didn't they follow the same pricing model when selling their game? Surely if 2 skins are worth $2.50, then an entire CD filled with thousands of skins, logic, sprawling maps, etc would be worth several thousands of dollars per disc.
Bethesda should be ashamed.
No one forces you to buy a 360, no one forces you to buy Oblivion, no one forces you to buy Horse armor, no one forces you to buy Xbox live.
You buy it because you choose to do so. You buy it because it works, because you enjoy it and because you don't mind paying for someones hard work.
Sure horse armor for 2.50 is a joke. I don't dispute that. However the 360, xbox live and the game are all worth every penny i paid and then some. I'll choose not to buy the horse armor because..
you may guess it
i don't freaking HAVE to.
Thanks for blowing this way out of proportion and making yourselves look like idiots. Move along.
You're kidding me right?
Firstly, I'm sure that when comapring the cost of the game the poster was trying to point out that the PC version is typically $49 while the XBox360 version is $59. (Check out EBWorld and Amazon to compare)
Secondly, comparing the cost of my PC to the cost of an XBOX360 is ludicrous. I use my PC for all kinds of things, gaming being one of them. As such the 'cost' of the gaming component of my PC is weighted in with the other uses. Its not like the only thing I do with my PC is Oblivion (or gaming in general). And to be honest, my PC didn't cost all that much. $79 at Frys for an AMD 2800+ and motherboard, $50 hard drive, $100 used Nvidia 6800 Graphics card, 1 Gig Ram ($79), mouse/keyboard ($20), case ($50). $358... Xbox360 is $399...
You don't get to rewrite other people's rules just because you want to do something that benefits you.
To play devil's advocate, my game is reality, and I play to make money. In my reality, I can sell items from a game online for real money. Just because you introduce a game and want to play it a certain way, don't think that you get to rewrite my rules just for your benefit.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
In an MMORPG, its against policy to sell in-game items to other players.
SOE changed that. There are authorized servers where this is allowed through official means. This allows the game creators to monitor the traffic and make sure no one gets ripped off. (they do take a cut, I believe.) EQ and EQ2.
In single player RPGs, its policy to sell in-game items to players. Now I'm confused.
These are external mods. Downloading one for your game doesn't affect the gameplay of others.
Months ago, MS sold an alternate outfit for Kameo (main character in the game Kameo) for the same price I believe.
I didn't pay and I encourage others not to pay either.
I'm not against micropayments, but I lets make MS work for their money, make them develop good additional content. Like Geometry Wars.
When additional tracks/cars become available for PGR3, I don't know what I will do. I would like the content, but the problem is if we pay them, they'll leave stuff out of the next PGR3 on purpose, just so they can sell it to you later.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Isn't this the point of the Xbox Live Marketplace thing? I mean, microtransactions and all that? I could have sworn that people have been talking about this for quite a bit.
Perhaps you should try outrunning a black horse...
Besides which, what did he mean, "allowing" developers to ship "stripped-down" games? So, suddenly MS has to take control of other companies' edvelopment process and force them to meet all their initial feature predictions?
I can just imagine the outrage if they tried messing with other companies like that...
It's official. Most of you are morons.
It's not dumb at all. By making the amount different than 1 pt = 1 ct, Microsoft has made it harder to recognize the amount of money you're spending, so you're more likely to spend over your limit.
Also, as soneone else mentioned, by making the exchange less than 100, they can post amounts that look like less than they really are.
This isn't about paying more for a premium service. This is more like going to McDonalds, purchasing a drink for 99 cents and finding out to get the straw you have to pay an additional 10 cents. They are charging a ridiculous amount of money for an extremely trivial thing. This isn't a pack of skins, new areas, or a set of new weapon skins. This is about charging $2.50 for two game skins. People are calling them out on how stupid and insane that price is. It it were a pack of say 50-100 high quality skins I could see possibly a dollar or two for it. If that McDonalds combo meal cost $50 instead of $2.50 I am willing to bet you would tell them they were crazy, greedy people too. The overall thing people are saying is that it is fine to charge for content. Just make your content worthwhile and reasonable. This set of skins is clearly neither.