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Welcome to the market economy, comrade.
Posted By: Gravemind <kuukan_no_kage@yahoo.com>	Date: 9/7/07 3:06 a.m.
In Response To: That's because here... (proof long, point short) (Barcode711) : ...you all have come to accept Microsoft's ownership of Bungie. : Come on. Halo 3 Doritos? You talk about merchandising as if it is some horrible new menace. It's been around since the early days of Star Wars. As Yogurt said in Spaceballs: "Moichandising. Where the real money from the movie is made." Action cartoons in the 80s almost always had toyline tie-ins, most notably GI Joe and Transformers. Hell, I even had a set of ET bedsheets when I was a little kid, and I remember eating Nintendo cereal, bringing Lazer Tag and Silverhawks lunchboxes to school, and so forth. If there's a successful entertainment franchise, you can be damn sure that there will be at least some kind of merchandising tie-ins. This is the way things are and will continue to be. : Microsoft seems to be able to muscle out anyone doing anything that remotely : involves them. Epic wanted to make their second map pack free, MS cracks : the whip for profit purposes, they're forced to back down and make you pay : 10 dollars for 4 maps using recycled textures and models when the : 70-dollar game came with 10 maps plus the actual game until Halo 3 comes : out. Clueless, average console users just see something that would be nice : to have, and seeing that it's not a lot of money (because they don't : understand the concept of value), they buy it. First off, the GoW map downloads aren't mandatory, and are now free. Nobody's forcing anyone to download them. I'm not a big fan of GoW's multiplayer component, so I didn't buy them, but I may download them now that they're free just to see what they're like. Secondly, it's not Epic's decision on whether the new maps were free or not. As Mark Rein said: "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." — Source So, if MS thinks they that it's worth their while to make a profit off new DLC for gamers who want it right now, that's their prerogative. Xbox Live doesn't pay for itself, after all. So, pay five or ten bucks now, or wait a couple of months for it to become free. Or just do without and spend your money elsewhere. That's your right as the consumer. : Oh, and no games will have : friends-joinable ranked match capabilities until at LEAST Halo 3 comes : out. You know what happens? Once again, average users + chance to rank : with friends = sales for Micrsoft, loss of players online for other games, : decreasing their resale AND replay value, people start ONLY playing Halo 3 : and will most likely be uninterested in other upcoming games, Microsoft : can drop a lot of suppor tfor other games so that their development time : and money goes to greater use (time spent upgrading Halo 3 goes to more : use than, say, time spent upgrading Shadowrun). Microsoft makes money, : other companies don't. The inability to join ranked matchmade games with friends isn't a MS-enforced policy. It's a decision made by the game developers themselves. Unfortunately, few other games besides Halo 2 & 3 have the ability to play ranked matches with friends, but don't blame Microsoft. Also, people have a tendency to migrate from older games to new games when the newer ones are first released, and some of them will stick to only a couple of new games they like for a while and ignore others. Weird, isn't it? : No, it's not "econonmy", it's monopoly, : and no, I won't stop "complaining", because otherwise who's : going to simultaneously point out these problems and also back up these : points? Come again? How does MS have a monopoly on the videogame market? Last time I checked, Nintendo has a fair share of the market, and Sony is a somewhat more distant third (in America, at least). Also, third-party developers have been developing multi-platform games for years. There is no "monopoly" anywhere. : No, I haven't bought the maps. My copy of Halo 2 is secondhand, and will be : traded in along with PGR3, Crimson Skies: High Road to Revenge, and GRAW : (the last two taken with permission from a cousin who didn't like : them...CS was bullshit and GRAW was annoying, plus I had deleted my : gamesaves from my rental of that game before I got it from him, so I never : played it) to get Halo 3, because it's ridiculously expensive, along with : every other video game out for this generation of consoles, and : Blockbuster's 4-games-for-halo-3 deal rocks. "Ridiculously expensive"? Are you getting the Legendary Edition? You do know that Halo 3 comes in a $60 standard version, which is the standard price for 360 games? That's a fair price, especially considering that I remember new NES games costing $50-60 back in the day. Adjusting for inflation, video games have actually been getting cheaper over the years. : And Dustbunny, sure, everybody likes money, but not everyone will do anything : for it or is willing to, as they say, push others under to make their way : up, and not everyone likes to turn a blind eye when someone does it to : someone else. For example, sure, you love money, but not enough to say, : kill a family member for, say, 100% shares in Microsoft. Or, say, you : wouldn't accept money coming in from a warlord who's pillaging villages in : Africa, even if it was no strings attached. I'm not a big fan of multinational megacorporations either, but I fail to see how Microsoft's business model for the Xbox 360 and XBL could be described as criminal, predatory, or whatever negative adjectives you wish to ascribe to it. In fact, the refund check my roommate got the other day for the repairs he had to get done to his 360 when it red-ringed tends to support the conclusion that Microsoft's Xbox division has fairly decent customer service. MS took a billion dollar hit compensating people whose 360s have broken, which hardly sounds like shafting the customer. There's things a corporation can do that's a lot worse than making you pay a few bucks for some optional commodity. If you're going to bitch about Microsoft, find something more substantial than their pricing plans for DLC over Live. So, take a chill pill, and if you feel like you shouldn't have to pay a few bucks for new DLC for a game you like, then be patient and wait until its free.

My 1up Blog

Message Index

Micr$oft Machinima Rules	QuickTactical	9/6/07 7:14 p.m.
Re: Micr$oft Machinima Rules	Dustbunny27	9/6/07 8:01 p.m.
Re: Micr$oft Machinima Rules	QuickTactical	9/6/07 8:15 p.m.
Re: Micr$oft Machinima Rules	Dustbunny27	9/6/07 8:34 p.m.
Re: Micr$oft Machinima Rules	QuickTactical	9/6/07 8:51 p.m.
Re: Micr$oft Machinima Rules	Eiii	9/6/07 9:16 p.m.
Re: Micr$oft Machinima Rules	QuickTactical	9/6/07 10:04 p.m.
Re: Micr$oft Machinima Rules	Narcogen	9/7/07 12:12 a.m.
Re: Micr$oft Machinima Rules	Narcogen	9/7/07 12:11 a.m.
That's because here... (proof long, point short)	Barcode711	9/7/07 12:49 a.m.
Welcome to the market economy, comrade.	Gravemind	9/7/07 3:06 a.m.
Yeah, I'll calm down.	Barcode711	9/7/07 3:19 a.m.
I didn't see any proof.	Narcogen	9/7/07 3:27 a.m.
Re: I didn't see any proof.	Cody Miller	9/7/07 1:08 p.m.
Re: I didn't see any proof.	Narcogen	9/7/07 7:44 p.m.
Re: That's because here... (proof long, point shor	Matt	9/7/07 11:13 a.m.
Re: That's because here... (proof long, point shor	Schedonnardus	9/7/07 11:40 a.m.
Re: That's because here... (proof long, point shor	Charley117	9/7/07 1:33 p.m.