In Response To: Welcome to the market economy, comrade. (Gravemind)
: 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.
True. I guess video game merchandise is no worse than other merchandising. I'll say outside of that that it's a bit of a waste of time as a consumer unless you're collecting, though (doritos on ebay)
: 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.
No, no, no, I mean the NEW new ones.
Oh yeah, I forgot. They did make them free.
But Microsoft DID kind of crack the whip for not letting them make it free from the start.
: 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.
Isn't it policy if you're going to make it ranked that you can't let people join? Or am I mistaken...?
: 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, I know people do that...I guess that point I made doesn't make sense if it wasn't development policy to forbid joined ranked games.
: 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.
They certainly do try within their own system of products. But considering Sony's attempts to make their own system of media hardware (blu-ray, etc.) and Nintendo's muscling in the 80s, I'm not going to take sides within the video game market anymore.
: "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.
Here in Canada they're 70. I remember MechCommanader 2 being 80 cnd dollars. But I also remember games commonly labeled as 50 dollars.
: 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.
Oh god, that's a lame saying. But I understand.
I think my anger is more towards consumers, then, because while DLC prices are ripoffs and everything is laid in front of you before you buy stuff, people still buy them.
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