And what about Dragon Age and quests that are mentioned in-game but have to be purchased? Don't act like it's just one or two games that do this. It's becoming more common.
It's pretty much nonsense. Dragon Age had day-zero DLC that was free with a new purchase. New DLC was
advertised in-game which was crummy and broke immersion (I believe these ads were actually pushed in an update, though I could be wrong) but you basically had the DLC NPC in your party camp hawking it. This is hardly a big deal. It's being characterized in this thread as "you could not complete Dragon Age's story without buying DLC!" which is patently false. Can you point to any
specific examples from other games?
Part of the problem as well is that people don't know much about retail game development so when they see DLC get released early they are under the mistaken impression that it's already sitting on the disc. This is generally not the case. The certification process for big games, especially ones that sim-ship on all three platforms, can take months. During this time there's usually just a small group of programmers working on whatever issues come up last minute that block cert and a few other guys from other departments on call in case anything else comes up. The entire rest of the dev team is done with the game at that point and so usually they start on DLC. The cert process for DLC usually is much quicker for obvious reasons. I can tell you with absolute certainty that all the DLC release for every Dragon Age game was created
after the main game was complete with the sort of exception of Shale who was cut from the main game for technical reasons. You can read about that
here. And even in that case, the work that went in to making Shale work was done after the game was finished.
I will not deny that some publishers insist on locking of content on disc and then selling it as DLC. This is pretty crappy. But this is hardly the majority practice it's being made out as.
All I can say to that is "boohoo." People sell their games back because they see no reason to keep them. Why don't game companies try making games that people want to keep?
Congratulations, you basically glossed over the entire point! As I said, games are moving into games as a service and to free to play for this very reason. Multiplayer is becoming more pervasive a feature as well for this reason. And of course we have the problem of Gamestop. Are you honestly going to tell me that a company that is abusing both customers and the industry whose products they sell isn't a problem? If you want to take honestly about the Gamestop problem that'd be great, but at this point all you're doing is covering your ears and shouting. That's great and all, but it doesn't make the problem go away.
To be a little more specific, when you trade in a new game at Gamestop, you generally get about $30 for it. Gamestop will then slap a $55 price tag on it and put it back on the shelf
in front of new copies of the game. The people trading their games in are getting shafted because of the massive markup and the publishers are getting shafted because Gamestop's policy is to push used games on people over new ones. How can you possibly justify this as not a problem for both consumers and the industry? How can you possibly expect publishers to just ignore it?
But that's also when games were a smaller market. The market is much bigger now, and they're moving more units. If you look at the last couple console/PC generations, prices have gone up. Comparing N64 prices is a bit silly since Nintendo's prices were just about always higher than everyone else's
But if you look at what games cost in this generation, it's about $60. In the PS2/Xbox generation, it was $40-50. When the original PlayStation dominated the market, most titles were about $40. Taking inflation into account doesn't mean much when real wages are flat or falling, does it? In terms of available purchasing power, game prices are increasing, particularly if you include DLCs required to complete/unlock content that's already in the game you bought.
Uh, no. Please read the article. Gaming on average is
cheaper as time goes on and the reasoning for this is laid out pretty clearly. Love your disingenuous DLC comment though because despite you and others loudly waving your arms, free day-zero DLC is not actually doing what you're claiming it does.
I do love how the "make more money for their stockholders" argument gets used to justify every customer-screwing practice companies use.
Nonsense, I said nothing for the sort. Since you ignored it the first time, I'll say it again... consumers are implicitly voting with their wallets and the big budget games are the ones that sell the most. If it's such a major problem why are people buying those games? Do you really expect companies to walk away from sales to appease your tastes? If these companies are screwing customers over then why are customers giving them their money? We're talking about an entertainment product, not some sort of essential service here that people are forced to pay for.
But hey, I don't even have a dog in this fight. Like I said, I never pay full price for games, and those with DLCs, I wait until there's a package with all of them in it, and I won't pay very much for it. If people want to keep paying $60 for new games and then a few bucks a pop for every DLC, let 'em--I just don't see how that's a sustainable long-term strategy for video game developers and publishers.
If you don't have a dog in this fight, I'd expect you to be a little more objective. Games are set at $60 because they
sell. DLC exists because people
buy it. You can complain about it all you want, but if you ignore the very real market forces that go into these price points and policies then at best you're being myopic and at worst, disingenuous.
