Weekly Update Up Early... (Part 1 of 2...) (Destiny)

by Avateur , Thursday, June 25, 2015, 00:15 (3438 days ago) @ Claude Errera

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!