Comments on: Timing is Everything

By: Andrew

Andrew — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 12:10:19 +0000

I’m surprised there was no comparison made to 108KB downloads, aka unlock codes, being sold. That was found out way back in 2006!

http://news.teamxbox.com/xbox/12491/Unlocking-Keys-Disguised-as-Downloadable-Content/

This isn’t exactly very fair to people to be honest. :(

By: Dave

Dave — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 20:20:32 +0000

I think part of the problem is that you’re already adding insult to injury – as a console player, you’re already being screwed with a $10 price premium over a similar game on the PC side, mainly for the reason that they have a captive audience and can get away with it. When you then try to boost even that inflated price with “unlockables” that quite reasonably seem like they should be part of the game, and are quite probably already on the disc, it’s hard to look at it in any other way than as a money-grubbing gesture.

I think it also says a lot about PR and customer response. When customers put forward a serious concern about your business tactics at a decibel level that’s already hard to ignore, trivializing their concerns and telling them to piss off is only going to fan the flames, and turn a minor dust-up into a major PR catastrophe. Given that this continues to happen, time and again, you’d think that game companies would eventually learn to actually listen to the concerns. Even a token gesture at resolution is going to give you better press, and possibly even increase sales. Tactics that insult the buyer only serve to make your existing customer base angry, and to turn off people who might have bought your product, but now decide against it after seeing how you treat your existing customers.

By: ColinSFX

ColinSFX — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 11:58:41 +0000

My apologies, didn’t realize it was for a new mode rather than the whole co-op mode. In that case, it doesn’t really bother me. I just assume at this point that companies are promoting a new business model and trying to keep getting money after the sale with modular and subscription-type content.

The problem is just that it’s too expensive. The sale of the disc alone is more expensive than it’s ever been, and yet the heavy development that is supposedly affecting disc prices also helps plug in content at inflated prices that gamers are smart enough to know (or think they know) is dropped in using existing resources in the game.

By: ColinSFX

ColinSFX — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 11:47:24 +0000

I feel like something that may be contributing to the problem is that multiplayer seems to have been promoted as a boxed in feature of the game. I don’t know that I saw it explicitly stated in a feature list from Capcom, but multiplayer was a huge focus in every video and every preview I saw during the game’s hype. In fact, I heard from a couple different preview sources that the single player’s bot mode was a cheap fill-in for a rich multiplayer experience.

I haven’t bought the game yet, but I was planning to only so I’d be able to jam with an old buddy across the country. After all I read about this game’s MP and how much it was hyped, all I can say is wow.