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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.
Christ. It's pronounced "horse armor".
You know where you are? You're in the $PATH, baby. You're gonna get executed!
$2.50. 80 points = US$1
I hate to say it, but I'm one of the tools that just egged them on yesterday by buying the download. I felt awful about it afterwards because:
A - It wasn't worth $2.50.
B - They really shouldn't be rewarded for charging for something that used to be free and probably should've been free considering the 360 owners already paid more than the PC people.
You may now "crucificate" me.
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.
In an MMORPG, its against policy to sell in-game items to other players. In single player RPGs, its policy to sell in-game items to players. Now I'm confused.
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.
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.
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates