Xbox One

    IMO then developers should voice their concerns to higher-ups. But even so you can't just complain about it and expect it to change. I'm not necessarily in favor of it either, I miss the time where you could get a game and an expansion and that would be it. But if the current model overtakes that in terms of financial gain, then there's no reason to revert to an earlier stage. If I had my own company I would know to do things differently, but then again I would consider my way of doing it a niche and not what would be expected.


    The bottom line is, if a majority of people financing the games are buying into microtransactions and dlc, then you have one of two options: Don't buy games that enforce this, or create a new standard where you will get even more financial gain than with microtransactions and dlc. Unfortunately it is not likely the latter is going to happen anytime soon, so the best you can do is just to not buy into the former.


    I also think there's an issue here with entitlement; that some "gamers" feel entitled to being fed an entire experience for whatever amount of money. I think it might be time to admit that the games industry is heading towards a point where the old school game players are not necessarily the target demographic anymore, and where that role is being filled by new teens/tweens, fratboys and gamer dads. I'm guessing this is why people from the AAA industry have begun to break off and become "indies" (but not really) and are making their own things because they don't feel validated as the demographic for the games they are making. I would probably do the same if I happened to be working on Halo 15 or Killzone 27. There is only so much a guy can take.


    My personal prediction for what's going to happen is that we'll begin seeing such a disparity between AAA and indie games that a new category is bound to form. The in-between games that are neither AAA but at the same time they are not indie. In essence, people who want a niche fulfilled from the AAA industry but at the same time have the means to get funds to create it as they see fit. I'd like to call these "A" games - not AAA, and not indie. I think the first Kickstarter games we've seen (Obsidian, InExile, Robert Space Industries) will fall into this category naturally, and with their success I can only predict that it will be an established category by the time we hit 2020.

    Charging $60 upfront for a game and then charging extra to progress faster/unlock content is BS, because - as TotalBiscuit said - you can't trust designers not to add friction to extract more money from players. When the game is F2P at least you haven't paid anything yet. They are testing what they can get away with and the worst thing that could happen is that extra revenues for these microtransactions make up for the decrease in sales, so that it makes perfect business sense to continue pushing for this, because the majority of players don't know any better/got used to the practice. To make this clear, I have no problem with players being able to spend as much as they want on a game they love, but don't charge for the game upfront.

    yep I have a massive beef with microtransactions in full price retail games, I wouldn't care so much if they are released 6 months after launch, but even small DLC's kind of cheese me off as a gamer, I always loved expansion packs ... whats wrong with an expansion pack?


    It's usually the pay to unlock, have an advantage stuff that cheeses me off the most, We also remember the day where skins, models and all that where free to download so I'm not sure I will ever truly get used to paying for cosmetic changes unless they are REALLY good.


    The money I paid on DOTA2 was just to support the game, I bought a few items to say thanks for the game, not to gain any advantage ... but that's mostly because it's free to play

    Quote from Sentura

    I also think there's an issue here with entitlement; that some "gamers" feel entitled to being fed an entire experience for whatever amount of money.

    Excuse me but, i don't think this came out well. Sounds totall wrong actually.

    Now, I get what you mean about customer choice but there must be a certain amount of fairness.

    I also agree on the target audience argument, but then you have to have the courage to change your strategies to deliver your product.

    You can change your strategies all your want, but if you don't end up making money you can't drive a business. The games industry is still just that, an industry. It doesn't owe you anything, you pay for what you would like to have/see/experience. Your demographic might not be central in all of this, which is exactly what I meant by the entitlement argument. In many, if not the majority of cases of today's most mainstream video games, none of us are the target audience anymore. So if we expect ourselves to be we're just going to get disappointed. Whether you think it is morally right or wrong is irrelevant, because it will happen regardless. Which brings me back to the first point about changing strategies: Why would people change strategies if they are already profiting from the way that they are doing things? Any potential investor or publisher doesn't care about where the money is coming from, as long as there is a lot of money coming.


    I don't disagree with the notion that it is "evil" in the sense of corporate greed, but the only way you can change the minds of publishers is to show them an even bigger pile of money.

    External Content www.youtube.com
    Content embedded from external sources will not be displayed without your consent.
    Through the activation of external content, you agree that personal data may be transferred to third party platforms. We have provided more information on this in our privacy policy.

    I never thought I'd say this, but I quite like the new Kinect. It seems to work much better than the old one. I use it a lot for navigating around the dash and apps, I rarely use the controller unless I'm actually in a game. The snap feature is pretty cool too.


    I still feel like a knob sat there talking to my Xbox though.

    Ignored all posts just to say: Anyone who plays Titanballs on this is a spastic. Whatever. I said it. You're a woman. Touch my balls I love you.

    Quote from Vilham

    Considering they just bought alll external IP's they could not likely.


    True! Microsoft just bought Gears of War, etc, these rumors are so false it hurts.


    Expect Amazon to become bigger and bigger in the industry in the years to come tho, they really feel this is a powerful industry they do not wanna miss this chance on, and I say bring it.

    I dunno if you've missed, but recently there were (more) rumors about Amazon putting out an Android console this holiday season.

    They got the writer of some of the Halo novels on board, which said months ago, when the word got out, "i wouldn't be there if something exiting wasn't going on".

    I've heard that MS will/should sell Xbox out... i personally can't see it happening, dunno why they should; they have a multi-year plan, they have product integration and, above all, Xbox+Kinect is the setup leading, more than all, to the "house of the future" plan that Bill always had in mind.

    The story a few weeks ago was that a bunch of shareholders wanted to cut loose the Xbox, Bing and Surface divisions, but going from that to actually executing on it seems like something that would take quite a while. It's definitely interesting to see what Amazon does next after acquiring Double Helix, pretty odd move on it's own maybe, but it's likely the first of many. If that's just going to developing games on Kindle then that'd be a bit less exciting tho

Participate now!

Don’t have an account yet? Register yourself now and be a part of our community!

Register Yourself Login