GTA V's Microtransactions - "The Gift That Keeps on Giving," Says CEO

[Grouchy Imp_v1legacy]

Meh, still never had any reason to buy money so cant really complain. Im saving some money now to buy a buzzard and the only expenses that I am having is the need to buy ammo, other then that I just stopped pimping out cars and my character and I will eventually be able to buy it.

Pretty much this. My character has over the course of his career had incomings/outgoings of $12m/$11m respectively - money is so easy to acquire in-game why people would pay real world cash for it is beyond me. Especially as if you just click your fingers and buy something it's rendered meaningless. I value my Buzzard so much precisely because it took me forever to save up for the damn thing.

Besides, if a bunch of impatient people with more money than sense want to pay to remove the replay value from their game, let them. Myself and my crewmates only play in private sessions anyway, so Internet randoms flooding the online lobbies with tanks affects us not at all.

 

[Elijin]

Is he talking about the feature where you can spend real money to buy in-game money... which you can then lose when people steal it off your corpse, or if you stop playing for too long?

that's kind of sensationalist though,with a bit of a lack of understanding of the game mechanics. even if you have millions of dollars on you, you drop $500 on death.

it's not like you drop your entire on-hand cash supply every time you die.

It's still real cash (however little) bleeding away, in many instantces due to no fault of your own. And then there's the issue that you lose money (as well as level progress) if you stop playing for too long. Unless they patched that shit out.

yeah, i'm not too sure about degradation. although, i can confirm that every in-game day you are charged a fee for your mechanic and utilities. the nicer the house, the higher the fees. i have the nicest apartment in the game currently. Eclipse Towers, Apt. 31, and i'm charged $125 a day for the upkeep. so, in that way i can confirm that you do lose money, although i can not confirm that you lose it at the same rate during extensive periods of absence.

I took a 4 month break and I can confirm you lose neither stats or money, for not being online even once in 4 months.

 

[josemlopes]

Meh, still never had any reason to buy money so cant really complain. Im saving some money now to buy a buzzard and the only expenses that I am having is the need to buy ammo, other then that I just stopped pimping out cars and my character and I will eventually be able to buy it.

Pretty much this. My character has over the course of his career had incomings/outgoings of $12m/$11m respectively - money is so easy to acquire in-game why people would pay real world cash for it is beyond me. Especially as if you just click your fingers and buy something it's rendered meaningless. I value my Buzzard so much precisely because it took me forever to save up for the damn thing.

Besides, if a bunch of impatient people with more money than sense want to pay to remove the replay value from their game, let them. Myself and my crewmates only play in private sessions anyway, so Internet randoms flooding the online lobbies with tanks affects us not at all.

BTW, when the Buzzard gets destroyed how do you get it back? Do you have to pay it entirely or is the repair just a portion? Especially if its in a mission.

One thing that I would have liked to see were some of those more mundane jobs that appear on the singleplayer like the taxi and the ambulance from previous games. I know not all people are into that sort of stuff but it would be rather easy to implement, I assume.

A thing that I liked about the San Andreas multiplayer mod was that you could be a mechanic, a pilot, a truck driver or a journalist among many other things. It felt nice to be what could be called a law abbiding citizen and earn your money by working your way up a career.

Its amazing how the mod made being a taxi driver work since there were no NPCs, all you had to make money was actually drive around other players (cars are expensive and all you have at the start is a bike).

I dont know, I guess it would give the actual missions a sort of underground criminal activities sort of vibe being something that you werent always part of.

 

[holyshaman]

this reminds me of warZ were you could buy ammo or weapons and lose them when you die. i think this is the worst kind of MT there is. it is purly luck if you gonna keep it.

 

[WouldYouKindly]

Well, when this game is eventually released for PC, I have little interest in the online anyway. While what is for sale is kind of a stupid thing to buy, I don't have a problem with this necessarily. As long as they are continuing to develop the game and all content patches are free anyway. It's the Guild Wars 2 method.

 

[Colt47]

Why are people going gonzo on this statement? Enjoying the fact he has a revenue stream does not imply he is going to start abusing it and the public his company is catering to. Well, at least if he wants to keep his job and wants to keep the company reputation out of the abyss that EA has found itself in along with Blizzard/Activision. Heck, right now EA and Microsoft are proving how hard it is to climb out of the said hole they dug themselves in.

If not, there's going to be plenty of other games coming out from upstarts and studios with different philosophies. Witcher 3, Star Citizen, Shroud of the Avatar, Tides of Numenera (never can spell that right), Planetary Annihilation, etc. The only game types that are almost exclusive to the AAA industry are FPS, sports, and those linear set piece games like The Last of Us and Uncharted.

 

[Something Amyss]

Hey Rockstar Games. Evacuate now. Just evacuate. Just run. Go, quickly, while you still have a soul!

They have a soul? Where are they hiding it?

I'm just saying, it's been like 7 months since launch and there are still things they were promoting GTA on that aren't in the game. One of them, heists, was kind of a big selling point of the game. And the best we have is that they finally said "sometime in spring" on that one.

Is he talking about the feature where you can spend real money to buy in-game money... which you can then lose when people steal it off your corpse, or if you stop playing for too long?

It keeps on giving to them. So yeah, of course those can happen.

I took a 4 month break and I can confirm you lose neither stats or money, for not being online even once in 4 months.

I lost lung capacity.

Of course, it took me all of five minutes to build it back up....

BTW, when the Buzzard gets destroyed how do you get it back? Do you have to pay it entirely or is the repair just a portion? Especially if its in a mission.

Call it in again for 100 bucks. Used to be more. It's been a while, so you may not be able to call it in a second time in a mission and I know there are cooldowns on some items. But I had a buzzard back when all my friends were playing and for a lot of missions I'd just call one in. Very useful bugger, especially since I'm the best pilot of the group.

 

[GonzoGamer]

I took a 4 month break and I can confirm you lose neither stats or money, for not being online even once in 4 months.

I lost lung capacity.

Of course, it took me all of five minutes to build it back up....

That quote. Is that like something I said ... in the future?

 

[Something Amyss]

That quote. Is that like something I said ... in the future?

Nope. Something I said in screwed up formatting. In your case, I pointed out that the conctent was announced and promised to be free before the launch of the game, and therefore questioned your conclusions about whether you'd be enjoying the updates without people buying "shark cards."

 

[Grouchy Imp_v1legacy]

Meh, still never had any reason to buy money so cant really complain. Im saving some money now to buy a buzzard and the only expenses that I am having is the need to buy ammo, other then that I just stopped pimping out cars and my character and I will eventually be able to buy it.

Pretty much this. My character has over the course of his career had incomings/outgoings of $12m/$11m respectively - money is so easy to acquire in-game why people would pay real world cash for it is beyond me. Especially as if you just click your fingers and buy something it's rendered meaningless. I value my Buzzard so much precisely because it took me forever to save up for the damn thing.

Besides, if a bunch of impatient people with more money than sense want to pay to remove the replay value from their game, let them. Myself and my crewmates only play in private sessions anyway, so Internet randoms flooding the online lobbies with tanks affects us not at all.

BTW, when the Buzzard gets destroyed how do you get it back? Do you have to pay it entirely or is the repair just a portion? Especially if its in a mission.

One thing that I would have liked to see were some of those more mundane jobs that appear on the singleplayer like the taxi and the ambulance from previous games. I know not all people are into that sort of stuff but it would be rather easy to implement, I assume.

A thing that I liked about the San Andreas multiplayer mod was that you could be a mechanic, a pilot, a truck driver or a journalist among many other things. It felt nice to be what could be called a law abbiding citizen and earn your money by working your way up a career.

Its amazing how the mod made being a taxi driver work since there were no NPCs, all you had to make money was actually drive around other players (cars are expensive and all you have at the start is a bike).

I dont know, I guess it would give the actual missions a sort of underground criminal activities sort of vibe being something that you werent always part of.

For your first point, calling Pegasus gets your Buzzard (or any other vehicle for that matter) delivered for the meager sum of $200, regardless of whether your last Buzzard landed safely or was completely destroyed.

As for more legit ways of earning cash in GTA:O, I would support something like that being added in future. I enjoyed the taxi/ambulance/cop/fireservice missions in previous GTA games, and although I can see why Rockstar left them out of the fast and frantic public lobbies, I can see them fitting in well in the usually slower paced private lobbies.

 

[Atmos Duality]

As long as Rockstar keeps making a strong core game first, milking later, I have no reason to be upset about this.
A bit wary of the future, but not upset.

 

[RealRT]

Ahahahaha, Strauss Zelnick, what a card you are. Openly gloating to people about how successful is the abominable business practice of having microtransactions in a paid game. Fuck you and your family right in the eyesocket.

 

[NuclearKangaroo]

getting real tired of your shit attitude AAA industry

 

[George Superguin]

Can't wait for Bioshock 3: Co-op only and with microtransactions!

 

[GonzoGamer]

That quote. Is that like something I said ... in the future?

Nope. Something I said in screwed up formatting. In your case, I pointed out that the conctent was announced and promised to be free before the launch of the game, and therefore questioned your conclusions about whether you'd be enjoying the updates without people buying "shark cards."

Oh. Yes, I remember them saying we'd be getting heists and the content creator so I was expecting some free dlc but every couple of months they also add new stuff and missions for free. We had to pay $20 a pop for that with GTA4 dlc. You have to admit, if it were any other game, we would be paying for things like the business update that just came out or the upcoming high life thing. I think what's happening is that releasing those free updates causes enough of a spike in shark card sales that they keep hustling to come up with more.

 

[Farseer]

Why are people going gonzo on this statement? Enjoying the fact he has a revenue stream does not imply he is going to start abusing it and the public his company is catering to.

The reason this makes me nervous is because of corporations' alarming tendency to "monkey see, monkey do" in the worst ways possible. It may be that Take-Two shows restraint (something we humans rarely do in groups) but the "gift that keeps on giving" quote will be another call to arms to someone, who sees Take-Two's success and thinks that they can copy it to the exact same effect. Simular to how every Call of Duty clone is expected to meet or beat CoD's sales. They will be ruining another game in search of False Prophits. And if I'm not afraid of that, it saddens me.

 

[Spade Lead]

I was telling some fellow players when DLC was just starting to boycott it and buy actual expansion packs. This was the reason I was against DLC. Greedy CEO and shareholders swindling customers. But my voice is meaningless so few heard it and those few that did ignored it.

Not entirely. When they announced that GTA 5 would have 9 different DLCs available for purchase ON RELEASE DAY I immediately canceled my preorder, and have not bought the game since. I will not pay extra for titles that exclude content just because they want to charge me $150 for a game that has precisely 0 nostalgic value, and only stupid "Bonus" physical items that I will never use.

 

[Vivi22]

That's just fucked up. Someone goes into a company that had been focussed on providing excellent content at one price (at least as he describes it) with the goal of introducing the devil's pricing model and is happy with his success. Shoot me please.

Yeah, we're all fucked. Time to abandon the triple A ship now.