Am I the only one who keeps reading these things by all the publishers about DLC and misses the days of cartridges where 99% of the time they sent out a complete game, without game killing bugs or any of the other stuff that they now have to patch through updates or DLC?
I'm tired of putting in a new disc and being told I have to update the game because of something they fucked up. Maybe if the companies had better quality control and a person knew that when they bought a game on release day that there game would work and not have to let it sit there and wait for updates to come "shortly" (Remember the Major League Baseball 2K6 fiasco?) so they could play the game, people would be more apt to buy a new game as opposed to waiting until it's fixed and buy it used.
I know this is a broad statement, but I really think CD's and DVD's have been one of the worst things for the evolution of games. How many of us have gotten a game that had the little prongs broke off of the case so the disc slides around and got scratched before we even opened it? How many of us have had a game refuse to be read by the laser for whatever reason?
I bought a game the other day (brand new) came home and it had come out of the new "green case" prongs and was scratched to hell, I took it back and they (Walmart) told me I had to return it for a like item, which was cool because I wanted to play it because of the laws stating you can't get refunds on opened disc based items-problem was, they were out of it. So I was supposed to just be happy with my unplayable game, luckily my cousin by marrage is one of the store managers and she got me a refund on it and I went somewhere else and got it. (I know that doesn't have to do with the topic but I'm making a point lol)
See, if this had happened in the NES or SNES days it wouldn't have been a problem, I could return the game no questions asked for a refund. But since they've gone to CD's and DVD's they changed the laws because of "piracy"-The publishers created a way (by moving to discs) that forces the customer to keep their games no matter what after buying them. So once used game stores got popular they realize that they don't have a way to control the customer once they bought the game like they thought they did.
So instead of making games worth what people have to pay for them and ensuring they would keep them based on the merits of the game, they decide that the way for us to want to keep our games is by making us give them more money for additional things in the game. It's a good idea in theory, but horrible in practice because they end up doing it ass backwards like cutting levels then releasing them as DLC a month or two (or even day one) after release day. We end up with butchered games and they complain that people trade the game in after beating it's >10 hour campaign and say they are losing customers because of it.
If they really wanted to maximize profits and cut out the used game business they should release a game and then instead of the next year putting out #2, just use the assets from the first game and release the second game as DLC (at a lower price) that requires the first one for the main code. (This is really true with games like Madden) That way people will keep the original and others who want the second one will buy the original game also, not to mention production costs will go down. I know, I'm just talking about expansion packs but it's really the only way to have both sides win without making either side suffer any.
