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Are Game Consoles Ruining DLC?
A round-table discussion at Gametopius looks into the state of downloadable content for games as it has evolved over the past several years, going from an occasional, welcome supplement to being a common marketing strategy for most of the industry, frequently causing irritation over pricing and availability.
"All of the map packs so far released for the Call of Duty games have been $10 each to download on consoles through closed networks, while PC gamers could download those same packs for free off of FileShack or somewhere else. Valve's own Team Fortress 2 has received a significant amount of DLC that's been completely free on the PC. Xbox owners of the same game, however, have only received perhaps half of that content, and they have had to pay for it in $5 packs. Why is this? The idea of this kind of content delivery was scarcely heard of on consoles, so console gamers see no reason not to pay for it. But on the PC, these amounts of content are usually just considered parts of patches. Furthermore, why pay for a few extra maps and costumes when modders are making and offering new ones for free all the time?"
I'd attribute this to a difference in intended audiences between consoles and the PC. Consoles tend to go for the lowest common denominator, whereas PCs have this remarkable ability to get everyone on board for something or other. Consoles have a proprietary system for publishing games, whereas with PCs you can go the normal route of publishing hard copies, or a paid digital distribution, or a free one. Consoles can only connect to one service, that of the console maker's choosing. PCs can do anything you can really imagine doing with electronics. Console users pay for a console, pay for each game, and have this "drop in the DVD and play" interface, whereas on a computer you have a much more complex, full featured one. Consoles are largely locked into what they are when they're produced; PC's are ever-changing, expandable, upgradeable, extensible, versatile machines. Consoles are a toy; PCs are a tool. Is it really a surprise that consoles pay for shit that PC users don't?
Simple. Stop paying for it.
If people pay money for something, that's because they think it's worth that money (eBay syndrome). If you get "more" for free on the PC, use a PC.
What really aggravates me is when game studios/publishers for consoles announce that DLC is going to be available and when it is coming out before the game is ever released! C'mon, guys -- don't rape us and force us to watch. Include the content in the game rather than releasing it later. Or, better yet, let us delete maps/non-needed extras from our game to trade out for other DLC.
Consoles are a closed system where the owners have little choice about where they get content (sure, you can hack the firmware, but only a small fraction of owners will), PCs are an open system where owners can get content from all over. It's hardly surprising that users of closed systems get screwed.
This is why every tech company wants to own a closed system.
A lot of companies announce DLC for a game right after, or even before it was released. Buy doing this they hope people will not trade in the game, and thus reduce the number of second hand copies that are available.
I think the console manufacturer should take it one step further. Not only should it be disclosed that "your online game experience may vary" but they should also mention on the outside of the console package that "additional downloadable game content may incur a cost" and consider including a way to uninstall it for a full or partial refund.
Whenever Valve or any other company wants to release DLC on the Xbox 360 or PS3, they have to pay either Microsoft or Sony to certify the content. They charge gamers to make up for the cost of this certification.
How much do you think MS charges to certify a map pack? Its not going to be 10s of thousands. If they just wanted to make up for the cost certification, they could charge 50 cents and still turn a profit. (Of course, charging 50 cents ends up costing 25 cents in transaction fees, so make it 75 cents...)
Of course, the fact that gamers will pay for downloadable content on consoles is certainly a good reason by itself...
This. They can, so they do. The price is set based on what people will pay, not on what it cost. (If it cost more than people would pay, they wouldn't do it, but the set price really has very little to do directly with the cost, beyond determining whether its worth doing in the first place. Business 101.)
This has nothing to do with rights. When you buy a console, you're buying a particular type of premium platform: streamlined game delivery, dedicated controller, etc. It's no different than people who buy Apple products paying for common bits of software (or more for hardware) that PC users get for free because of the much larger market with far poorer quality control.
Quality control is one of the biggest advantages of console gaming, and it's long been a complaint of PC gamers that their versions of games are buggy because the studios don't put the QA time into them because they can always release patches, while console games have to be relatively bug free on first release.
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
Because the market supports it.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I'd rather have the convenience of choosing any control setup, with any controllers, than have the convenience of plug-and-play. 5 minutes of setup for a better 20-hour experience is worth it.
Remember MSN Music, the Yahoo! Music Store, the Walmart music DRM disaster and the row around Zune and PlaysForSure? Servers are turned off, established formats are phased out to push the next generation of a platform, and in many cases only a major PR debacle brings the companies to reason.
Rudolf Hess edited Mein Kampf. He was the very first grammar nazi.
Not only do you have to pay for downloadable content but that's on top of having a Gold membership for multi-player content.
No one seems to want to admit it but the business model that Microsoft employs for console gaming is seriously flawed. Sony's is a little better because at least you get onto the network for free.
Microsoft brags about their success but what they don't mention is that they need to over charge you for accessories (ie wifi adapters and hardrives) and they need to charge you for any little thing you do online.
One reason the 360 has no browser (and mouse / keyboard) is to stop them from being accused of trying to make their own closed PC. But I suspect the other reason for a lack of a browser (and therefore a lesser experience than all other consoles online) is to keep the system as closed as possible so they can nickel and dime you to death all so they can eek out tiny profits which they've only just started to do recently.
The Wii is the cheapest system all around and part of the reason for that is because Nintendo makes a profit on the hardware. They don't need to fuck you about to make up for selling unprofitable hardware. The Wii also has a browser which gives you access to free browser-based games. They do charge you to download new games from their shop but that's understandable imo and even then you get to earn points from buying games which result in free games to download. This is despite the fact their games are cheaper and yet they're still making money hand over fist.
The old system, which MS works under, doesn't work well when every system has some success. It relies pretty much on there only being one big success per generation to make great profits. Had Sony not cocked up in a few areas it would probably be worse for both them and MS with numbers being more evenly divided.
It's only going to get worse and that's why they want to move out of physical sales and into downloadable games. It'll make it much easier for them to jerk us around even more.
That's because Microsoft gave console developers the ability to patch their games and PC developers are moving into the console space with their "release now, patch later" mentality. There is no reason to wait and fix it because they know they can patch it later. No one will complain. Reviews will no reflect the fact the game is broken.
They might as well just shove the game out and watch people eat up their broken rubbish. If the game fails don't patch it and you've saved some money on testing and development.
Believe it or not, but that "$1200" gaming PC is low-end. (for a gaming PC)
$250 for a graphics card, $250 for a CPU, $200 for a motherboard, $100 for a terabyte hard drive, $100 for a case, some RAM, a DVD drive and a few other odds and ends; that will play any modern game with decent performance. $1200 may even leave you enough to buy a monitor on top.
'Low-end' is an Athlon X2 with integrated graphics or a cheap graphics card; that won't cost you much more than $500.
Ok, I'd forgotten the Windows tax in both cases, so add whatever Windows costs on top... it's a long time since I've built a PC where I had to pay for the operating system.
The implication is better reflected by Resident Evil 5.
Release multiplayer mode as a separate product, with it's own cost, a few days later?
Does anyone really believe they were so swamped they couldn't include it on the disc, and were able to code it in two days' time?
It's obvious they just removed content from the game, and released it as DLC, to milk money out of customers for something that was planned from the beginning.
Imagine if a racing game came out with only "Career mode" unlocked, then you had to pay $10 each for "Time trial", "Single Race", "Versus", "Practice", "Co-op", and so on, until a $60 game costs well over $100 for what was normally expected to be in such a game.
That is the type of bullshit parent is campaigning against.
Developers are starting to omit game content just to sell it back to you after the original purchase, increasing the total cost for the full experience. This also allows for deceptive pricing tactics.
Twinstiq, game news