Let's Talk About Pricing(Did I Speak Too Soon?) (Gaming)
by Morpheus 
, High Charity, Thursday, January 21, 2016, 19:36 (3025 days ago)
So, as I started my aforementioned Destiny break I began with a game I had on my shelf since Black Friday:Dead or Alive 5--Last Round(yes, yes, most sexist franchise evar, etc, whatever). Anyway, whenever I start a new game, the first thing I do is check it for DLC/Store content to find 1. Anything that's free, 2. Whatever is essential for story/completion expansion, and 3. Whatever's relatively cheap but cool looking. So as I scroll through the list, I notice that the digital version of the game is $39.99 Give or take a few dollars, that's around what I paid when I bought it. Remember that price. I keep looking and find an add-on called the New Costume Pass--for the outfits that the characters wear in the fights. Get this--NINETY TWO DOLLARS AND NINETY NINE CENTS. EACH. And there's THREE of them.
I checked the contents of these packs, and there are no characters(except for one in Set 3), no maps, no modes, nothing but outfits!
Yes, I know the obvious solution is not to buy them(and obviously, I didn't). But that still doesn't stop the question from forming in my head and being expressed(usually in confused, angry shouting) from my mouth: Why would a DLC pack made of 100% purely cosmetic items singlehandedly cost nearly three times the amount of the game itself?! I know DOA5LR didn't ship at $40, but even at original full price, those packs are still double the money! I added it up--buying all three packs(without tax) is $279 dollars--enough to buy seven copies of the game at its BF pricing or 4 and a half copies of it at MSRP.
What sense does that make? I know it's excessive/unnecessary, but I'm actually on the fence and thinking about contacting Microsoft and finding out how something like this sounds fair to them.
For those of you that buy Marketplace content on a regular basis--have any of you come across ridiculously priced items on your favorite games? Does this look like some weird mistake to you or a company out for blood? Would you buy a game if something like this was actually required?
Sex in marketing at it's... uh... finest?
by slycrel 
, Thursday, January 21, 2016, 20:00 (3025 days ago) @ Morpheus
- No text -
It's disgusting, but also kind of reasonably priced
The costume passes are 98 costumes for $92.99 on Xbox Live. Is that an insane cost? Hell yes it is. Does it also signify value in the DLC market of the game? Actually, yeah, it does. Each of those costumes can be purchased individually for $1.99 each. So at $93 for 98 costumes, that's more than half off. Assuming you want to buy every single costume.
Anyway, this falls firmly into my "never buy a season pass or pre-order a game" category. If you pay up front before they release the costumes, you'll invariably get filler material and poor quality items down the line. If they know they need to capture your attention to get you to buy the costumes individually, they'll put a lot more effort into making them awesome.
It's cosmetic, and fighting games are different...
by Korny , Dalton, Ga. US. Earth, Sol System, Thursday, January 21, 2016, 20:52 (3025 days ago) @ Morpheus
For those of you that buy Marketplace content on a regular basis--have any of you come across ridiculously priced items on your favorite games? Does this look like some weird mistake to you or a company out for blood? Would you buy a game if something like this was actually required?
Fighting games can have a much longer lifespan than other games, because their fans tend to stick around for a while, and cosmetic gear is relatively simple to make.
People love to add personal touches to characters (especially when the vast majority of those characters are generously rendered females), and so they're more willing to dish out a couple of bucks for a piece of attire. Paying $90+ might not seem so crazy if you mostly only play that one game (I don't know many fighting game afficionados that play too much of other gaming genres), and you just neeeeed to have the complete "Halloween 2013 Costune Set" to go with the set from 2014 and 2015 for some reason.
I will admit that I had a ton of costume packs for DoA 4 and a couple for 5, and I never felt ripped off, despite the fact that I quit playing the game fairly quickly (PS4 came out shortly after Sammy got me DoA 5). I wouldn't buy one of those $90 packs though, but I wouldn't blink twice at hearing that someone did. I know guys who still play DoA 2 Ultimate.
*shrug* At the end of the day, it's entirely cosmetic. League of Legends is a bit more exploitative, since one particular character skin costs $25, and people shelled out for that in droves.
It's cosmetic, and fighting games are different...
by Cody Miller , Music of the Spheres - Never Forgot, Sunday, January 24, 2016, 17:29 (3023 days ago) @ Korny
The soul calibur series used to have a mode where you could recolor existing characters and build your own characters. For free. Who would have thought that you could add flair and customize your characters in a fighting game without being Nickled and dimed.
No excuse.
It's cosmetic, and fighting games are different...
by Korny , Dalton, Ga. US. Earth, Sol System, Sunday, January 24, 2016, 21:53 (3022 days ago) @ Cody Miller
The soul calibur series used to have a mode where you could recolor existing characters and build your own characters. For free. Who would have thought that you could add flair and customize your characters in a fighting game without being Nickled and dimed.
And where is the Soul series now? Ah yeah, a crappy free-to-play from 2012 (that lacked the majority of iconic characters), and the last thing that the dev team made was a mobile game in 2014.
No excuse.
Looking at what happened to Project Soul, I'd say there's plenty of excuse.
Besides, different devs focus on different things. You can't really compare a game like DoA to SoulCalibur. That would be like complaining that Bungie doesn't let us put pink animated skins on our guns just because Gears 3 did it... Different devs focus on different features.
It's cosmetic, and fighting games are different...
by Cody Miller , Music of the Spheres - Never Forgot, Sunday, January 24, 2016, 22:29 (3022 days ago) @ Korny
And where is the Soul series now? Ah yeah, a crappy free-to-play from 2012 (that lacked the majority of iconic characters), and the last thing that the dev team made was a mobile game in 2014.
That's true, and that's why I don't play it anymore! But it was once great. Could be where Bungie is heading.
Let's Talk About Pricing(Did I Speak Too Soon?)
by RC , UK, Saturday, January 23, 2016, 19:12 (3024 days ago) @ Morpheus
edited by RC, Saturday, January 23, 2016, 19:18
I'm not surprised by this stuff any more. The point for them is profit, not total number of sales.
Classically, the lower the price, the higher the number of sales. Higher price, lower number. But the relationship between these two is not directionally proportional. At some point between '1 cent' and 'A MILLION DOLLARS' there is a point where total value of sales ($$$) is maximised. Which is where they want to be. In recent years, game companies have worked out that for many items this point is actually on the higher end of the price scale, with fewer total sales.
There is also this theory about so-called 'whales.' I believe it originated in gambling, but is now used in the construction of business models for games. Whales are the regulars, the super-fans, the people with too much money and few other interests. Because the whales spend so much (hundreds, thousands even) they account for a disproportionately large share of the revenue compared to how many they are. For the developer then, it's OK to baffle, bemuse, anger, or even put-off many, many players with high-priced cosmetic items, so long as the whales keep buying them.
Try to look at this way though: those whales are keeping your game prices lower by putting in so much cold hard cash. Even if those cosmetic items have little value to many players, they prevent games from being $80... $120 up front instead. People can play more games a bit and be more choosy about those they really get into.
:)
Let's Talk About Pricing(Did I Speak Too Soon?)
I'm not surprised by this stuff any more. The point for them is profit, not total number of sales.
Classically, the lower the price, the higher the number of sales. Higher price, lower number. But the relationship between these two is not directionally proportional. At some point between '1 cent' and 'A MILLION DOLLARS' there is a point where total value of sales ($$$) is maximised. Which is where they want to be. In recent years, game companies have worked out that for many items this point is actually on the higher end of the price scale, with fewer total sales.
There is also this theory about so-called 'whales.' I believe it originated in gambling, but is now used in the construction of business models for games. Whales are the regulars, the super-fans, the people with too much money and few other interests. Because the whales spend so much (hundreds, thousands even) they account for a disproportionately large share of the revenue compared to how many they are. For the developer then, it's OK to baffle, bemuse, anger, or even put-off many, many players with high-priced cosmetic items, so long as the whales keep buying them.
Try to look at this way though: those whales are keeping your game prices lower by putting in so much cold hard cash. Even if those cosmetic items have little value to many players, they prevent games from being $80... $120 up front instead. People can play more games a bit and be more choosy about those they really get into.:)
Which is all true for free to play games like Path of Exile, but in a game like Destiny, the whale buying every single emote and all of the collector's editions isn't making the game cheaper for the rest of us. It's purely extra income for Activision and Bungie. We were promised that these FTP style items would fund future expansion content, but so far all we've seen were limited time events which were later taken away from us. At this point, I'm surprised there's not been additional, permanent content, like extra strikes or - honestly - another raid.
Let's Talk About Pricing(Did I Speak Too Soon?)
by Morpheus , High Charity, Sunday, January 24, 2016, 14:11 (3023 days ago) @ RC
I'm not surprised by this stuff any more. The point for them is profit, not total number of sales.
Classically, the lower the price, the higher the number of sales. Higher price, lower number. But the relationship between these two is not directionally proportional. At some point between '1 cent' and 'A MILLION DOLLARS' there is a point where total value of sales ($$$) is maximised. Which is where they want to be. In recent years, game companies have worked out that for many items this point is actually on the higher end of the price scale, with fewer total sales.
There is also this theory about so-called 'whales.' I believe it originated in gambling, but is now used in the construction of business models for games. Whales are the regulars, the super-fans, the people with too much money and few other interests. Because the whales spend so much (hundreds, thousands even) they account for a disproportionately large share of the revenue compared to how many they are. For the developer then, it's OK to baffle, bemuse, anger, or even put-off many, many players with high-priced cosmetic items, so long as the whales keep buying them.
Try to look at this way though: those whales are keeping your game prices lower by putting in so much cold hard cash. Even if those cosmetic items have little value to many players, they prevent games from being $80... $120 up front instead. People can play more games a bit and be more choosy about those they really get into.:)
Hmm. It still seems kinda messed up to do that to their most loyal fans, though. And I'll have to admit, I'm like that for Halo, too. I pre-order the games, buy Season Passes, all of that. I admit, it's out of blind adoration--but that seems to be a little underhanded. I mean, while I was reading through your post, and realizing the accuracy of it, all I could think of was that South Park trailer parody where the announcer says "Whatever, you'll pay to go see it! Fuck you!"
Is that really what they think of us?
Let's Talk About Pricing(Did I Speak Too Soon?)
Is that really what they think of us?
It's what the marketing team thinks of you, yes.