THQ Boss Challenges $60 Price Point

[rainbowunicorns]

My concern with this is that DLC would tempt users with overpowered items, such that not partaking of DLC puts the user at a competitive disadvantage. In Free-To-Play games, the user goes in with this knowledge, but if you're paying $40 (which to a PC user such as myself is full price for anything not "AAA") you might expect to compete on a level playing field with all the other users.

For single-player games I see no problem with these, I personally believe people are ruining the game experience by buying items that the game wasn't balanced around, but it isn't exactly hurting me. For multi-player games, I would be annoyed if I had purchased the base product only to find other people had better stuff than I could get by playing the base product; seems tantamount to cheating to me.

 

[Frotality]

no. no. NO.

the moment THQ does this with any modicum of success, the moment every other asshole abuses it to hell by selling 40$ demos. the casual market is the casual market; the AAA market is the AAA market. how the hell can anyone here honestly support the farmville model? you WANT games to be reduced to micro-transaction skinner boxes? does no one realize how limiting this model is to what developers can make and successfully sell? you dont buy movies as overarching plots then get nickel and dimed for the character development and subplots. there is no reason beneficial to us the consumers to change the current price model, given how greedy publishers are.

you all know how quickly innovations are abused; lets keep that in the actual content and away from effecting the bloody price point please, publishers have reason enough as it is to sell unfinished products.

 

[Void Droid]

Personally I'd just rather they sell me the full game like they used to and then fuck off.

 

[Vezi]

A micro transaction setup would work really well on most games, if done correctly for that genre/console (be it PC or home Console). If you are forced to purchase items to progress and reach endgame that will not work and will frustrate people (I for one would rather pay a monthly subscription. However if the micro transactions were focused more towards character aesthetics, costumes, cars, DLC's (that are actually worth wile and well thought out) then I am all for it!

 

[Nemesha]

You guys go into dlc too much when it comes to extra content. I think part of this strategy is to offer for example only the single- or multiplayer mode for a game. Sign me up Scotty!
Another example with this motorcrossgame (think it is, don't know the franchise) would be that you have say a normal race mode and a stuntmode. Say you're only interested in the stuntmode, you just buy the game with that feature and leave out the racepart. The game basicly transforms to suit your needs and leaves the, in your eyes, uninteresting stuff out of the picture.

Same story with everyone complaining the game is broken if you haven't paid for all the dlc content....suck it up and start thinking. If a broken game comes out it won't be bought (sure the sheep who follow will probably buy it (read CoD Black ops))But if you are in the same category as myself, I check reviews first before buying so you won't encounter this issue.

 

[Wasted Frank]

The main problems I see with this is that no DLC I have bought has been worth it. The closest would be World at War, but only for the Nazi Zombies. Another problem with this is that a while after the game is out, its price drops. Except this doesn't happen with DLC.

The best example I can think of is fallout 3, I had the original copy then they released 4 DLC extras, they were good, but none of them were worth £8. So i just sold my old copy and bought the game of the year edition for about £20 of amazon. The point is that this sounds like a good idea, but most DLC is way over priced.

 

[rapidoud]

Lol $60.

In aus they're still $80+ even though the US dollar is dropping faster than their country is (currently at 1.05 USD for 1 AUD and our games are price gouged even on Steam, to Impulse or D2d!).

 

[brendonnelly]

I just want games at the US price point. Paying $120 (for new releases) is starting to get ridiculous, especially with the Australian dollar worth more than the US dollar.

 

[brendonnelly]

Personally I'd just rather they sell me the full game like they used to and then fuck off.

This right here: either that, or make DLC irrelevant to the story, or make full blown expansions in the vein of WoW.

 

[jackanderson]

I'm totally behind this 110,000%. I am sick and tired of paying £40 - £55 for games where the single player can be finished in about 6 hours (or three sittings for me) and where the entire focus is multi-player, which is usually full of people who've done nothing but play the game obsessively for the first however many days/weeks the game has been out.

I buy games for the single player first and the multi-player second. When a game that barely lasts longer than watching 3 movies back-to-back-to-back can be sold at a full £40-odd, you know that something is wrong. This idea is actually rather clever, assuming that people don't milk it for all it's worth (a.k.a. £20 - £30 demos with everything else locked for DLC).

THQ: This is the first sensible thing you've done in over 2 years. Congrats!

 

[Dr. Ent-Face]

Wait, so someone who is better at business or economics explain to me why lowering games to $10 a pop doesn't lead to six times more sales? Game prices seem to have gone through some ridiculous inflation over the past few years if DLC is taken into account. A decade ago, IIRC, most games only cost 30-40 dollars.

Games have increased in price because the costs of making them have increased, AAA titles employ hundreds of people working for at least a couple of months and to get the level of graphics in AAA titles is expensive in time and money. This is why small indie developers like notch or popcap can afford to sell their games cheaper and still make a serious profit.

In addition you have to add the costs of the publisher, who may be funding titles that aren't successful, and the distributors and the random price gouging like in Australia. These small price increases mean that except for digital distribution $10 is unfeasible.
There's only a limited amount of audience for games, so even decreasing the price you probably can't attract enough people to offset the loss of profit especially as $10 can't compete with the low, low price of free.

 

[Proton Packmule]

Unfortunately after a few publishers do it with some success, EA, Capcom, & Activision will start selling $40 demos where the bulk of the game is from DLC.

I disagree with the publishers you name, but I fully agree with your point.

The iPhone style, sell a cheap/free game, that's crippled without buying all DLC.

 

[Keava]

I agree with the idea, however it will be execution that will actually matter. All comes to the definition of finished product and how it combines with DLC. At what point do you consider a game to be 'full product' in correlation to the price.

Racing games are probably the easiest to transform into such scheme. Say the 40$ version has a fully working core features which are built around Torunament Mode, Free Race and some sort of multiplayer. For sake of example let's say it has 10-15 maps and about the same amount of different car/bike/whatever the case models (i don't really know what are standards these days since last racing game i played was NFS2). After release every 1-2 months you release DLC that adds maybe 2-3 new vehicles, maybe some new decals/eye candy and 2-3 more maps. Maybe different DLC will add a new model and a new game mode. You can mix and match as long as they are fairly priced.

Problems with DLC start when content in correlation to price is just simply lacking. Releasing 2 new cars and 1 map for 10-15$ is a big no in case of core game being 40$. But For 3-5$ it's fine. For 15$ you can release bundles or more advanced add-ons like completely new challenge/tournament mode, with several new maps, some new mechanics and few new cars, sort of mini-expansion.

In the end it's about how reasonable the publisher/dev are about it. Done well it will lower the entry price for game and provide even higher return in long term from DLCs. Done wrong will anger the community and give bad example to rest of industry.

 

[punipunipyo]

um... I'd say... this is a good start... but THQ didn't take this idea to the point of risk yet... they are testing it on a sport title... when the BIG game is actually the action(Shooters... like... say... maybe SPACE MARINES!~), and RTS (like Dawn of war)...

 

[GonzoGamer]

Unfortunately after a few publishers do it with some success, EA, Capcom, & Activision will start selling $40 demos where the bulk of the game is from DLC.

I disagree with the publishers you name, but I fully agree with your point.

The iPhone style, sell a cheap/free game, that's crippled without buying all DLC.

Exactly.
I actually think it's a good idea, it's just that it might set a bad precedent for some of the more greedy publishers... and I think we/they all know who they are.

 

[JimmyFury]

I'm a little torn. The potential for such a system to be abused by the Dollars-over-Quality side of the industry is really high.
But then lower price points can level the field a bit between the high-disposable-income-teenage-gamers and the strict-budget-adult-gamers. A boost to the DLC market would also help stabilize it, bring down prices, and draw out market-standard prices.

Plus there's the reality of the situation. We're already getting hit with repackaged cut content, gimped games, and continuously growing multiplayer via DLC. It's not some theoretical concept or anything. That part is already happening and it's profitable so it's not going away.
All THQ is proposing is a drop in the base-game price.

 

[Icehearted]

I think your closing points are killer, Greg. One of the reasons I'd actually avoided more than a few shooters was due to the larger focus on multilayer, which I've always felt is too dependent on other players rather than on the game itself (which is awful when you take into account all of the boosting that goes on online). I think the idea could be a good one, as long as they don't start abusing the DLC system to milk even more money out of us with higher price points for their content. I realize they're already doing as much, but still it could get a whole lot worse than Horse Armor if they decide to take that path.

 

[IamGamer41]

I wish there wouldn't be DLC.

So you want continual updates for free? Not going to happen.

maybe he wants a solid game and not have to have the DLC to finish the story or get the best cars.

Besides thats a crappy game so I can see why he would try it on that.40 bucks to buy it then 5 bucks here for some new bikes, 10 bucks here for 5 new maps another 5 bucks for even more new bikes.And what do you know??? they got their 60$ out of you anyway.Just may have took them 1 month or two longer.

That's the point...

You buy what you want added to the game.

So if that true ending for a game is DLC your just shit out of luck if you don't want to pay the 7 or 15 bucks for it.

 

[Jacob.pederson]

I wish there wouldn't be DLC.

So you want continual updates for free? Not going to happen.

That's funny, so all my free campaigns for Left for Dead must have occurred in my imagination then?

Left 4 Dead was hardly a full game when it was released.

I paid $35 for Left 4 Dead on release day (4-pack deal), but If you don't want to count that, how about the free maps, game modes, and features on Starcraft 2? Or the free new Portal themed game modes on the 13 games of the Potato Sack? How about the free map packs on Unreal Tournament, Company of Heroes, Portal 1 or Team Fortress 2? I seem to recall similar items being priced in the $10 range on consoles.

No, you won't get free updates for ever . . . but on a system that has to compete with piracy (PC), games will be cheaper, better, offer more community support (official mod support) and offer more free stuff, because they HAVE to. If they didn't, many more people would just pirate.