And finally, that Year 1 stuff looks slick. :)

Tiger Man lives!

Finally, an emblem for my Titan!

Just noticing the black on black tiger stripes, new shader is literally your gamertag.

I think we all knew what you meant, bullshit like horse armor. You don't need to leave to save face.

My quest for getting hawkmoon before Cody starts when those PS exclusives hit xbox

There is absolutely no way on earth that class items and a couple of emotes are worth more than 10 quest chains. Destiny with both of its current expansions only includes about that many quests!

For me, and for you, that's not $20. But plenty of people were upset because they couldn't just buy these, and they'll probably pay the $20.

$20 is not out of the ordinary these days. For example, there are lots of Heroes of the Storm heroes (blizzard) for $10 each. Granted, the base game is free, but still.

Yes, and it doesn't reflect well on Bungievision when you think about it. HotS (and other free to plays) charges because they don't charge for the game. Destiny asks for a large up front payment and a pretty hefty cosmetic payment.

I'm just making sure everyone has context.

You're paying the full cost of an expansion, which included lots of class items and shaders, raised the level cap, had a raid or PoE, added ToO, new maps... There's no goddamn way I'm paying $20 for some class items and shaders alone. No. Way.

And that's totally fine that you are drawing that line in the sand. I full support that.

But I also hope that you won't get mad - or even pass judgment - when I do spend the $20 for the class items, shaders, and emotes.

I mean, by buying it you are endorsing the behavior. I can't get mad, but I can pass judgement.

I didn't spot that you were talking about the Digital CE. The price difference is $20 between the Legendary and physical CE usn't it? Is the digital CE the same price as the physical? That seems weird *shrug*.

Edit: Would still pay for CE Upgrade package. I want a book that's been scribbled in by a robot Unicorn.

Still not seeing what's wrong with "Here's content that you can buy, for money. You don't have to buy it, and it doesn't offer any serious advantages over those who don't buy it."

I get that it's a business model that charges too much for too little, probably, but if people willingly buy it anyways... ?????

I'm not seeing a problem?

What is the issue? Artistic integrity? Or is it somehow a leech on creativity, or something?

And why are you so convinced it's coming as a definite possibility?

I'm not sure what you mean by 'in the market, not [my] own personal subjective idea of worth' - something is worth whatever someone says they're willing to pay for it. That's the DEFINITION of market value, in fact.

I think this is all me poorly expressing the idea I'm trying to describe, and I'm sorry for that. It makes sense in my head, but I'm not doing a good job of wording it or something. I'm trying to directly refer to the set price that Activision has decided upon, regardless of who was going to potentially buy it or not, and how people are then viewing these set prices in relation to one another. Prior to Destiny even launching, and prior to it even going up for pre-order, somewhere at some time, Activision's plan was a $60 base game, $20 DLC packs (pre-orders dropping one to $15), and (based on that leaked thing) a more expensive Comet pack (which we now see is $40). So to get to you below...

In this case, they've already set a price point for the game+all expansions ($60) and a price point for the game, all expansions, and this digital collection of goodies ($80) - so pricing the goodies ANYWHERE below $20 would mean cannibalizing sales of products they'd already announced. They priced this exactly where their current pricing scheme requires it be priced.

I think you're spot on here, and yet it comes off looking weird. Activision had this $60 price point for one thing in their minds, and then went with $80 to justify what appears to be extra digital content and physical items. This has caused a problem throughout all the lands apparently, which leads them to go with the $20 upgrade for digital content to try and calm the fires, right?

So compared to the $60 bundle that jams a $40 Taken King upgrade with a $20 base game and double DLCs (that each cost $20 on their own, give or take $5 depending upon "season pass"), all of a sudden it looks like three specific class emotes, three armor shaders, and three exotic class items with XP bonuses translate to the same $20 price of a single DLC, or to a base game and two DLCs in a sort-of GOTY edition.

Again, I think you're completely right on how they came up with this current pricing scheme, and I think it absolutely fits where their current pricing scheme requires it to be priced, but now people are looking at it in comparison to everything else with a similar breakdown of what I just said above and realizing that it's really wonky.

Now personally, I'm not even on the fence. I've been ready to drop my $40 for Taken King the entire time (don't care about the extra swags and such). At the same time, the pricing that Activision has offered for its different versions has looked pretty whack, and I've been trying to get at that. I outright said it looked like a fuck you to people who bought stuff previously. That may be heavy handed, and of course that's just my opinion, but a lot of this pricing just looks totally off.

Edit: Hopefully I conveyed where I'm coming from better. Sorry if I'm still failing!

I mean, Avril's a poet. Listen to this.

"He was a skater boy, she said see you later, boy."

Wow.

"Hey hey you you I don't like your girlfriend. No way no way I think you need a new one."

My god.

And of course, this one.

People should study her work in English class.

If you think avril is a poet, you should listen to Ke$ha!

Is it a positive that she wrote those lyrics or a negative? I mean, many "artists" these days don't even do that.

... that is a little unique in the journalism side at least - which I just noticed when Monochron said:

If interviewers could stop attacking devs about pricing models that they likely have little influence over then reading their articles might become pleasant.

Compare that to comic book journalism, which isn't necessarily any better in general, but is a little different in this specific aspect. As in, I don't think I've ever read an article or interview with a writer or artist where the journalist throws them over the coals because Marvel or DC increased the price of their comic or the fact that there are ads in the middle of the art. It's just a known that the authors are in no way responsible for or even have a say in the stuff the big publishers do, so there's no point in grilling them about it.

This is a good point.

I think part of the blame comes from how little most people know about how the video game industry works. Even when I worked in it, many of the employees had confusing job titles that did not at all match their skillset, pay grade, or responsibilities. Take these two guys whom I worked with: Both were Associate Producers. One of them was responsible for setting up and installing every single dev kit in the building, he "hired" the interns, he fixed broken machines, and he assigned people to their workstations or offices. He was really functioning like a hybrid Producer / IT technician / Coordinator. The other guy with the Associate Producer had one job only: He bought and set up buffet lunches. That was it. He was our lunch lady. And these guys got the same title and credit in the games we worked on! This sort of job description confusion is commonplace in the industry (at least at the places I worked, such as EA and Activision). So you get in a habit of just asking people who seem authoritative, whether or not it's actually their job, and those people get in the habit of answering because they don't really know if that's something they're responsible for or not.

Now I'm going to say something crazy: Just like Cody knows he could make a better video game for $300M, I know I could run a company better than the way these major corps are doing it, at least in terms of efficiency, employee satisfaction, and product quality. I would certainly not be making the shareholders as happy (though I would pay quarterly dividends instead of only stockpiling my cash reserves... I'm looking at you, Apple). Since shareholders hire CEOs, well, that's why I don't run the place.