Five Dollar Yoda, Three Dollar Armor, Where is the Outrage
A couple years back people freaked out on Bethesda for charging $2.50 for horse armor. Six months ago people freaked out on EA over DLC guns for Bad Company. Today we have $5 dollar yoda and $3 Dead Space armor……..cricket chirp
We have brought up the cost of games before, several times in fact. But the silence of the latest round of WTF pricing makes it clear it needs to be brought up again. Five years ago developers were claiming that games were taking too long (30 hours) to beat and that they were too expensive to make. Many a developer has stated they would like games to take 25 hours to beat and cost $30. The average game cost $40-$50 at the time, not exactly a bad deal. However you look at today’s games, they cost $60 and most are finished in under 20 hours. The reason given is because games are more involved and take longer to make. However, developers are regularly announcing DLC before a titles launches. Some release the DLC so close to the launch of the title that you know it could have been included. A good example is the recently released Spore expansion. Spore was launched barely a month prior. Where did the outrage go?
Since the launch of the current generation, hardware console costs have increased 50%, game costs have increased 20% and gaming time has decreased by a 33%. On top of this we now constantly get buggy software. LittleBigPlanet, Fable, Fallout 3 all perfect examples. The harddrive was once touted as being a way to bring “added value” to the consumer. What it has turned out to be is a way for developers to be lazy and more easily hit their target release date. Why has this all of a sudden become okay?
I couldn’t agree with you more. The hard drive has destroyed so much that was good about console gaming. The patching system is ludicrous and allows developers to release buggy products; something that was unheard of 5 years ago. Seriously, can anyone think of *any* major bugs in games before this current generation? They were extremely rare, and yet now they are common place.
And the DLC thing is just crap. Soul Calibur 4 is an especially bad offender. The vast majority of the DLC for it is just unlock codes, meaning *the content was already in the game when they shipped it!* Talk about a kick in the face. Developers should be ashamed, and consumers should think twice (or three times) before being nickel-and-dimed to death. But we all know that will never happen. People will continue to pay $60 + $40 worth of DLC for the content that used to be available for $50.
[...] Article here [...]
@andy- Older games have plenty of bugs, it’s just that most people have learned to accept and play off them. They (usually) aren’t game breaking so there’s not all this NERDRAGE but they still have bugs. I don’t know if you ever played any games on the N64, but there were quite a few games that had exploits/bugs
They had some bugs, but there were few and far between. I have been gaming for 20 years, and I constantly and going back and replaying old games. And *never* do I play an old game that is as outright (and insultingly) buggy as most of the newer generation of games. How a person can fail to recognize that I do not know. Most every new game I boot up now is just bug after bug, everywhere you go. People post about the forums and write them up in reviews and such because there are so many. I bet if I looked five random PS3 reviews right now 4 out of the 5 of them would mention some bugs. That is unacceptable.
And yes, I’ve played plenty of N64. Please point me to these bugs. We aren’t talking random, ultra-rare shit like that jump-in-the-wall-in-the-castle Mario 64 bug, we are talking about the numerous game-breaking style bugs I’ve heard of in Fallout 3 even though I haven’t even touched the game yet.
Andy, why dont you name some of these “game-breaking bugs” that you speak about. I think people notice bugs now because they expect everything to be perfect and look perfect. Before we played games to have fun and now people play games to critique every last bit of it. Honestly, there have always been bugs and there always will be, but I havent really come across anything too serious on the ps3 personally and i own over 30 games.
However, back on topic I agree that DLC is getting out of control. I was going to get SC but DLC has turned me off of it
On the PS3 several missions in Fallout will lock up. In one where you have to repair a collection of robots to defend a town the robots will not be there reloading does not help. It is also possible to get locked in the ending boss room with no ending boss. Not to mention all the little bugs, can’t see the preview face when you go to get a hair cut, frequent lock ups. LittleBiGPlanet one of the tool functions does not work properly settings, levels, costumes some times don’t save. Issues getting online, there are a couple in Fable to but I didn’t cover that one so I can’t give specifics.