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Epic, Microsoft Disagree On Gears Content
This past week, Epic's VP Mark Rein spoke with the gentlemen at 1up on the '1up Yours' Podcast. It was ... most informative. It seems that the much-delayed downloadable content for Gears of War is being held up by Microsoft, who wants to charge for the content for the game. "In the effort of promoting a profitable marketplace, however, Microsoft's compromised with the studio by deciding to follow the successful model that Halo 2 pioneered a few years ago: the new Gears of War maps will be available for a to-be-determined fee, and made free a few months from now." The site also has hands-on details for 'Annex', the new (free) multiplayer gameplay type.
The problem I have is that most downloadable content seems to be either of the 'here's the stuff that we didn't get to finish before the publisher shipped' or 'Ok, there's 15 maps ready; lock 5 of them off, and we'll put out a 'downloadable content' patch that reenables them in a few months.'
I was flipping through the downloads for Dance Dance Revolution Universe, to see if they had any songs availble here in Canada; DDR Ultramix for the Xbox didn't allow Canadians to buy additional songs. Sure enough, there are, and the downloads are 108 KB. That means they're unlock codes, not new content. That's not right.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
This thread contains more insight into the situation from the Epic Games CEO:
Click here
Full text from his post below:
Folks,
I think you guys are blowing this up into something bigger than it is. Please listen to the entire podcast before jumping to conclusions.
What we have here is simply a difference of opinion on how to maximize the return on Gears of War - something both Epic and Microsoft want to do. While we create products like Gears because we love games, and we have a passion for making them, at the end of the day this is a business for both companies and how we earn our living.
Epic thinks the way to maximize the return on Gears of War is to give the maps away for free and Microsoft thinks the way to maximize the return on Gears of War is to sell the maps. So what we've agreed to do is to put these maps on sale at a reasonable price then make them free a few months later. They did this with the original Halo2 map pack and it was a huge success. Lots of people bought the maps and lots of people downloaded them when they became free. That's what is going to happen and it seems like a fair compromise for both companies and a win-win for Gears players.
Why does Epic not have control over this even though we created this content on our own time and our own dime? Quite frankly Xbox Live Marketplace isn't our store. It's Microsoft's store. Like any retailer they have the right to figure out what goes on the shelves of their store and what price they sell it at. They spend the money to operate the store and deliver the content. They've also spent billions of dollars to create and build Xbox and subsidize it's the price so you can afford it and we can make games for it. As our publisher, they also invested tens of millions of dollars marketing Gears of War, and have done an awesome job for us, so they have a right to a good return on that investment.
As Tim Sweeney and I said in the podcast, we want the download economy to work - it is something the industry needs, something we hope to use in the future, something that will help bring more variety to end-users and ultimately could help bring prices down for end-users. If we had to put this map pack on a disc and sell it in retail it would be more expensive to end-users and maybe we wouldn't have done it because of all the extra work and cost involved.
In the mean time we are planning to bring out an awesome new Gears of War multi-player gametype called Annex that works will all of the existing multi-player maps and the new pack we're talking about here. The 1UP guys who got to play it a few weeks ago left the office raving about how it could be our best Gears gametype yet and I think a lot of people will enjoy it. Best of all, it is totally FREE and will come in the new Gears update that we expect to see released this week.
The hookers up my way don't seem to agree.
That's what I thought initially, but I seriously doubt anyone who paid $399 for a console, $7 a month for Live, $40 a month for high speed, and $59 for the game is going to balk at a $10 tag on new maps for their favorite game.
:|
What's really shocking to me, after writing the above rundown, is that I am one of those people.
Has anyone ever been sued for copying a press release? You know those things they release with the sole intent of being copied by newspapers and anyone else who gives a fuck?