Slashdot Mirror
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?
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.
Of course, the fact that gamers will pay for downloadable content on consoles is certainly a good reason by itself...
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.
Take that, you console-owning-PC-haters! :>
Life is too good to waste... Read!
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.
DLC is supposed to give to console gamers what we the PC gamers have. Stuff made by entusiast to enhance already good games with more maps, game modes, textures, models, etc..
Since that stuff can't be freely installed in a console, because a console is locked down hardware, to give that cool stuff companies make that stuff thenselves and need to sell it.
DLC is the DRM version of Modding.
-Woof woof woof!
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.
Consoles are generally used by richer people (children and adults) who, in addition to owning a computer, can afford to own consoles too (people who own consoles, in all likelihood, own computers before they own consoles).
There's a difference between owning a computer, singular, and owning computers, plural. A family of four may own one computer and one console. But unlike a console, a computer is probably not connected to a large monitor. So when one player is playing on a console, the other players can pick up controllers and join in, but when one player is playing on a computer, the others have to sit and wait. The way most PC games' multiplayer modes work, one would have to buy four PCs and four copies of each game in order to play the same game that one console, one copy of the game, and three extra controllers allow.
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 ----
PC gamers purchased that PC. Often at thousands of dollars -- mine's just over $7K including the 30" LCD. When I purchase a game, I purchase the game.
Consoles don't cost thousands of dollars. Most consoles cost $300ish. The idea of the console industry is to lose money on the consoles and make it up on the games. So the game publishers pay the console makers. No one pays the PC makers except the person buynig the PC.
Lately, DLC has been an excellent way to make the games cheaper, because there is further revenue to be had on the DLC later on.
Remember, someone has to pay for that $1000 console. Congrats on paying the first $300 yourself. The next $700 used to come as $20 from the $60 games. Now it comes as $15 from the $40 games, and $5 from the DLC. Big surprise.
Stop wanting things for free. If consumers would look at things from the other side, things could be very different. Instead of wanting things cheaper, why don't you try to fund your favourite company, by paying larger prices, so that they have the money to build better things, and can then charge less for better. You don't want the same for less money, you want better for the same money.
But hey, most of my friends spend $20 per month on satelite radio. Because "it's a fine deal, for loads of content, blah blah blah". They forget that if they add up all of their entertainment dollars -- radio, television, internet, movies, restaurants, games, sports, et cetera -- there isn't enough time in the month to get the full value of all the money spent. It's not that satelite radio isn't worth $20/month. It's that television plus radio isn't worth $100/month.
But consumers are too busy budgetting dollars to know how to budget value. I find it interesting.
My thoughts is that PC DLC would be pirated immensely. Also, since distribution is distributed, you don't incur massive bandwidth costs. WoW does bittorrent type patches, for most other games it's mirrored on a dozen sites. Marginal cost to the developer.
With consoles, you have to pay to get certified, and this includes any bugfixes you release. While the cost of DLC certification may be marginal, as someone else pointed out (Just assume $1 out of the 5 that DLC costs), you still have to certify all your patches, which are given for "free." DLC works to pad their expenditures in other areas in order to sell more copies.
Also, you can't really pirate the DLC from a closed network, so it's guaranteed that people pay for it. With every person that purchases DLC, you lock them into owning your game. If they bought it second hand, you now got revenue that you wouldn't have otherwise. If they bought it new, paying for DLC ensures they won't get rid of it, otherwise their DLC purchase will have gone to waste. Less used copies floating around.
Sllow me introduce you to Steam, Valve's content delivery system that every Team Fortress 2 player has installed.
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
Being a PC gamer of many years, I wouldn't complain about PC gamers having the advantage. It seems that gaming companies are giving up on the PC as a gaming platform and releasing buggy games to us now as an afterthought. So while we may be able to get DLC, your game at least works when you put the disk in the drive.
"During My Service In The United States Congress, I Took The Initiative In Creating The Internet." -Al Gore
Amongst its strong points are such diverse elements as: small indie gamges, modding communities, emulation, abandonware, better performance and nice fancy cases. Oh forget it, I'll come in again.
DLC is ruining sales of games on consoles, at least as far as I can see.
On the PS2, it was pretty simple: The game was $40-50 new, or you could wait a year or so and buy it for $20 as a Greatest Hits release. Either way, you got the same game. Buying new, you'd pay $50 up front, play the game, sell it for $15-20, overall cost $35. Buying Greatest Hits, you'd buy for $20, sell for $10-15, overall cost $5-10. With buying the game at release costing you maybe $20 more overall, it often made sense to buy games on release day.
On the PS3, the game is released new for $60. A couple of DLC packs are released for $10 each. Then after a year or two, the entire game plus the DLC packs is released as a Game Of The Year Edition for $30. So if you buy new, you pay $60 + $20, but by the time you sell the game second hand it's worth $20 at best because of the GOTY edition at $30, so your overall cost is $60. Buy later, and you get the entire game plus add-ons for $30, resell for $20, overall cost $10. So now suddenly it costs $50 more to buy on release day than to buy and play later.
So basically, there's now a major financial incentive to wait for the Game Of The Year edition which has the DLC bundled in. For instance, I was considering buying Red Faction. However, I just saw on the PSN store that the first DLC has been released for $10. So now, I'd much rather wait and buy the whole thing in a year or two for $30.
Ultimately, I think the game companies are shooting themselves in the feet by penalizing early purchasers to this extent. I wonder if this might be why PS3 and Xbox 360 game sales have been down.
And if we're talking Valve, the way they've treated Xbox 360 owners is nothing compared to how they've fucked PS3 owners. There's no DLC for TF2 on the PS3 at all; we haven't even seen any of the fixes for the initial maps, which means that games tend to be ruined by glitchers. (Yeah, I know the "It's up to EA" excuse, but it's Valve's decision to let EA decide release policy, so ultimately they're still responsible.)
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
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.
Theres a new type of DLC on game consoles that many people dont know about and its practice is becoming frequently used... Its basically where all the contents of the game and dlc are ALREADY on the game disc. but force you to pay to unlock new things that are fully on the disc... Some examples of this are Soul calibur 4... Darth vader(ps3) and yoda(xbox) were console exclusives xbox and ps3 however the code for them was fully on the disc along with all the costume packs and everything else. ALL OF IT WAS ON THE DISC when you bought it. yet they charged 5 bucks each for all the unlocks.
The Nintendo systems have always preferred local multiplayer. One of the reasons why GoldenEye was such a successful game was the local multiplayer, which I still see people play to this day.
Similarly the Smash Brothers series popularity is due almost exclusively to the local multiplayer.
How about the Mario Party series?
Hell, half the games for the Wii that are popular are popular for local multiplayer.
And that is not exclusive to Nintendo. I've seen 4 player local Halo often enough to know that.
Please keep in mind though that all of this is generally found only in college aged people or under. Older gamers tend to only do online multi-player.
Stylish sheet to fix many problems in Slashdot's D3: https://gist.github.com/801524
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.
Because Microsoft paid out so you won't be getting it any time soon. Same goes for PS3 owners.
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.
Of course it's complacency. PC users don't stand for this shit, because they know they have alternatives. If you don't want to pay for content that should've been in the game in the first place, then you're probably going to pirate it despite whatever protections the publishers think are going to prevent that from happening. They're slowly wising up to this: companies like Valve, Bioware and Stardock release updates/"DLC" for free on the PC knowing damn well that it's going to generate more interest in the core game, equaling more game sales.
Owning a gaming PC might be considered graphic proof of having more money than sense, at least until you start seeing just how fickle PC gamers are when it comes to what games they're buying and WHY they're buying those games. Console gamers, despite the argument that consoles are cheaper, will inevitably demonstrate that they'll buy just about anything available on the service because they're starved for content and don't realize (or care) just how hard they're getting screwed.
"There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge." - Bertrand Russell.
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
Look, if you don't like what they're offering, or the price they're asking for it, or the terms under which their offer is extended, exercise your ultimate power.
Don't buy it.
If you REALLY don't like it, personally blacklist all products from that maker.
You have ALL the power. You just have to have the fortitude to exercise it.