That's one way to twist what I said, but unfortunately, that isn't what I said. You snipped my post, so I know you read my initial sarcasm. It's not silly to spend less. The business practice they are exhibiting is silly. We can and will continue to discuss it even if someone enters the thread and insults our collective intelligence with "you know you can just not buy it, right?" Yes. We do know that. We are not children. It's a practice that goes for FOMO, and even in doing so it does that pretty poorly. It offers nothing of any substance. You can choose to spend less and that is cool and good. We can look at their past business strategy and see that they're offering a game for the price they would have anyway, with extra things tacked on as part of this new strategy. They should not bother with the extra things and just offer the game at the base price.
It's only "spending less money" if you think that whatever price a company gives a thing is inherently justified. Nobody ever gets stiffed, nobody ever gets a good deal. It's a psychotic mindset born of complacency and bootlicking.
Since the early 80s, when misison packs became a thing. And I never said it was "to be nice to the players", it's about making money, just like producing the games in the first place is. By producing games, people give them money to get the games. By producing stripped-down versions of games, people give them less money to get less of a game. By offering both of these options, people have the choice of which version to get, and businesses get the number of sales the stripped-down version would, but with the extra income from people buying the complete version. No they wouldn't. The DLC is budgeted and the prices are worked out accordingly. See above. It's not the complete version of the game you already paid for though. If the complete version costs $60, and the stripped-down version costs $50, and you pay $50, then you didn't pay for the complete version. And if people are willing to pay the extra money for the complete version, then what's the problem there? You just contradicted yourself here. If the full game, with DLC, would be $70, and you don't want the DLC, are you still spending $70? Video game budgets are much, much higher than they were 20 years ago. The games themselves are much bigger, with much larger studios working on them. Inflation has driven up wages, supplies, and goods in general. And yet, base game prices haven't gone up in lockstep; it's only when you include DLC that the game prices match what you'd expect. The game WITH DLC is the base, and you get the option of buying a reduced portion of the game for a reduced price. And just in case you didn't read the response earlier, I'm not saying that they're doing it "to be nice to the players" - they're doing it to increase sales. It just happens to also give you the option of a cheaper version. My apologies, that wasn't the intention. But what if I wanted the extra things? Why should I not have the option to buy the extra things if I want to? Why does the mere existence of the ability to choose cause you so much grief? People get stiffed, and people get good deals all the time. Companies tend to set prices in order to maximise profits; a lower price means more sales but less profit per sale, and a higher price means fewer sales but more profit per sale. If you feel a price is unjustified, then don't buy it. If you buy it anyway, it was clearly justified. Understanding basic economics is not psychotic, complacent, or bootlicking.
I mean, it debatably is, but we don't need to pretend that "basic economics" are at play here. It's just corporate greed, and if you're that determined to ignore it, think of it this way: If you went to see a movie, and two hours in it stopped and you had to leave for fifteen minutes while the "platinum viewers" saw their exclusive scenes, you don't think that would be a little bit fucking stupid? That maybe that's harming the work somehow, or even creating an unnecessary divide between viewers? Because if not, then wow, game publishers should hire you for their PR. You're clearly a champion of manufacturing consent. Also lol "if you buy it that means the price is fair", so you believe exactly what I said you did.
The idea that Colours Ultimate wouldn't be the same base price with the Planet Wisp remixes bundled in, despite every other track in the game being remixed, is complete bollocks. Colours Ultimate's DLC is literally carving bits out of the game and selling them back to us to scrape a bit more money. Even *Forces* was better than that with the originally planned DLC, since models had to be made for that which weren't used anywhere else in the base game. And Origins is also modestly better in that the music isn't part of the base game as far as we know, and it offers actual additional content in the form of hard mode missions, but camera controls??? Really??? And it's not even the price itself, but the fact that the work has already been done and, aside from the hard mode missions and arguably the character animations for the island menus (we'll need to see more first), probably cost very little.
Of course that'd be fucking stupid. It'd also be stupid if the game stopped you in the middle of the campaign and said "nope you can't play this bit", but that's not what anybody's arguing about here. If, however, you had the choice between a 2-hour version of the film for $5, or a 3-hour extended cut for $10... wait, that actually happens! And people buy extended director's cuts all the time! And the content that's on the extended edition was literally cut from the cinematic release! They filmed it all in advance and literally carved bits out of the film to sell it back to you later to scrape a bit more money! The film industry has been nickel-and-diming you the whole time! Boycott director's cuts, they're pure evil corporate greed! Well, yeah. If the price isn't fair why are you buying it? If you're willing to give away X money for Y thing, you must believe that Y thing is worth X money. Basic economics. By that logic, the game itself should be free. "The work on the game's already been finished, they're just holding it back and selling it to us for money." Well, yeah, that's how it works. They already have the goods. You give some money, you get some goods. If you give more money, you get more goods. They made the goods intending to sell it for money. They made the extra goods intending to sell it for more money. Why on earth would it be the same base price if the DLC was included in the base game? Why would they make the same amount of content but sell it for less? Basic economics.
Well if that isn't wilful misinterpretation, I don't know what is. The music in Colours Ultimate was remixed for the base game. That was advertised as a feature. Planet Wisp is clearly an outlier in this regard in a way that can't logically be explained without acknowledging that those music tracks were purposefully held back from the base game. Camera controls for a static menu (which is already included in the base game) is extremely rudimentary, not at all resource intensive and amounts to a quality of life feature, certainly not new content in of itself. Likewise, the sound test is included in the base game and the resources to add in the 3D Blast, Spinball and Chaotix OSTs would've been negligible. Meanwhile, the character animations on the menu islands and the hard mode missions are new content. Granted, when it has been developed alongside the game, I find it eyebrow raising that it was kept separate anyway (and I *highly* doubt any revenue from game OR DLC sales will be going to those who worked on it, likely as freelance contractors), but I digress, I can at least understand the case for those two specific things being sold separately. Everything else betrays an attitude on SEGA corporate's part to skim off the top and resell it back to us. But sure, just suck all the nuance out of what I've said and make a strawman out of me.
Well no, that would be more like Sonic Mania Plus, where they released DLC after the fact. It's still kind of scummy, you're right about that. But maybe you're just not ready for that level of discourse. So nobody has ever bought a thing for more than its worth? Good lord, you're too powerful for SEGA's dipshit PR. You should be deciding on insulin prices instead. This is some Edmund Burke horseshit.
The full game with the content would NOT BE $70. That is our ENTIRE POINT. There is no actual VALUE associated with the extra $10. It is not an extra $10 to recoup dev costs. It is not an extra $10 to give the consumer choice. The extra $10 is just a greedy ask tacked on at the end of development to make a $60 standard game cost $70. This isn't like NiGHTS into Dreams coming with a whole controller for a premium price. This is the exact same game they plan to release at launch for $60, but they raise the price. Your argument rests upon the idea that SEGA's pricing models, as an individual company, are actually based on things like employee hours worked, publishing costs and legal fees, cost of labor, material costs, etc. SEGA's pricing model is loosely based on an industry standard, a standard which is already designed to recoup all of those development costs and still make a profit (assuming the game doesn't completely tank), and there is nothing offered in the DLC that is substantial enough to justify going above that industry standard, even with a rise in the cost to develop games, and the industry standard has already gone up in an attempt to rectify those costs. Nobody is contradicting themselves. What you don't understand is $10 DLC that should already be in the game is effectively just raising the price of the game. The argument "well it would be a $70 game if they included the DLC" is absolutely absurd because it EFFECTIVELY IS a $70 game. Its not extra choice for the consumer, it's an illusion of choice because you either don't get the full game, or you put your head down and fork over $10. If you don't understand why people would be upset about that, I'm genuinely lost. As a silly point of comparison, imagine if a local amusement park (a regular daily-pass amusement park, not a Disney resort type of deal) charged $70 per ticket, then suddenly they begin charging an extra $10-15 for a "Premium Pass" that locks 2-3 specific rides behind a paywall. They are not new rides added to the park that entail any kind of development or zoning costs. They are rides which are already a part of the packaged deal, but they e been removed from the standard ticket price and locked behind a paywall. There is no actual choice there. The only metric by which the consumer saves money is relative to other consumers, ie. consumers who DONT like those 3 rides will pay LESS than consumers who do like them. But every single consumer who enjoyed paying their daily fee for access to the whole park is gonna be pissed off because the park is already charging a standard price and making a heavy profit off of their ticket sales, and other parks are offering access to their entire park for one flat price, no premium bullshit. Customers have a right to be upset at the park for raising the effective ticket price that they charge for the SAME VALUE other parks are giving them for less. So while consumers are saving money RELATIVE to other consumers, by EVERY OTHER metric consumers are losing money and paying more for their games.
If your life depends on getting a movable camera in the menu of a video game compilation then I'm seriously concerned for you. Otherwise I think it's safe to say these things are not the same. Not even going to bother with your ad hominem - I'm trying to keep this civil. All of this is false. If they had already released the game with the content, and then updated it to remove some content and make it paid DLC, then your theme park analogy might stand. But that's not what's happened. You say "this is the exact same game they plan to release at launch for $60, but they raise the price" but this isn't true - they have NEVER planned to release the game with the extra content for $60. They haven't made the content, and then post-hoc decided "oh we should take this out and charge extra for it lol". The pricing, DLC, and everything is usually pretty much decided before development even starts. The game you're getting for $60 is the game they planned to release for $60. The game you're getting for $70 is the game they planned to release for $70. My argument has nothing to do with employee hours, publishing costs, legal fees, cost of labour, material costs, or any of those. I mentioned them once to explain that games should be more expensive than $60, but my argument is entirely "what are people willing to pay?" Let me put it this way: imagine a world where DLC doesn't exist. There are two options: a) the company doesn't make the extra content, and sells the game at $60 b) the company makes the extra content, and sells the game at $70 These are the only two realistic options. Without DLC, this choice lies with the company. With DLC, this choice lies with the consumer (which generally also benefits the company by virtue of the fact they get the sales of option A, with some additional profit from people choosing option B). You seem to think there's a mythical option C: c) the company makes the extra content anyway, and sells the game at $60 That's right, this evil scummy money-pinching corporation, when not given the opportunity to sell you extra content, will just make it anyway and give it away for free! Because that's what evil scummy money-pinching corporations do, right? Why would they make the extra content and sell it for $60, when they could also... not make the extra content and sell it for $60? Clearly they believe people will buy it without the extra content for $60, because they're currently selling it without the extra content for $60. Why would they increase costs, however marginal those costs actually are, when they could just... not? Option C does not exist. The existence of DLC, even stupid shitty ones, is not preventing you from getting option C, because that was never on the table to begin with; it's allowing you to choose from A or B instead of the company choosing for you. But since some people have started getting vitriolic towards me (again), I'd suggest we continue this in PMs and save the thread from shitting up too much.
An interesting point which I think isn't discussed much is when game publishers try to rip people off and fail. Lol. A really good example was Halo Wars 2, an RTS which had an entire game mode made around paying for objective stat increases through microtransactions. That's my favourite kind of microtransaction/DLC carving, because its so blatant and worthless in entertainment that it just completely fails. No one buys into it and it forces the company to change their mentality. SEGAs kind of similar in that their DLC carving practices are almost entirely worthless. Sonic Origins really takes the cake. Extra animations with the 3D islands. Camera control of the 3D islands. Some music from Spinball. Lol, who even cares. I'm only buying the Digital Deluxe because I'm a loser Sonic fanatic. But I find these kinds of DLC carving, while obviously clearly wrong, almost adorable in a way because of how laughable it is. Would much rather have this cluelessness than what you get in other games where major characters are locked arbitrarily. It's a case where SEGAs ineptitude is actually good. And it's even funnier because its better entirely by accident!
I dunno, seems like if that were true you would have actually engaged with the thing I said rather than the obvious joke I made based around you happening to hold an innately poor philosophy. Also, not what ad hominem means.
It is pretty funny lol, but at the same time it makes me feel a little sad for the devs because the negative PR this price model is already getting kinda hangs over the work they did to get these features into the base game before they were cut / "carved out". But it definitely is way better than a "Knuckles in Sonic 1 DLC" that raises the price of the game to $50, or some absurd bullshit like that. Mania Plus was a perfect example of what I think is good DLC. SEGA sees the game is performing well, they allocate extra resources and dev time for the development of new content, which comes with a price tag that is completely justified when you realize post-launch content means they have to pay their employees (or in this case, contractors) for longer, take on extra production and marketplace costs to release the patch, allocate extra dev time specifically for Mania Plus, etc. And the product we got was tailor made to complement the base game: two fun new characters with unique abilities, and a new way to replay the game's stages with new level layouts, palettes, and mechanics. Releasing Mania Plus as a packaged product was even more surprising. chef's kiss I would hope that Sonic Frontiers gets a similar treatment - content that is thoughtfully developed as a complement to the finished base game, not content that was developed as part of the base game and removed per the producer's / director's / director of marketing's request. Also, re: the Denuvo thing, anyone have any idea whether SEGA is gonna swerve on this one? I feel like they can only take so much negative press before they realize it is just a terrible idea across the board, but I don't know how close we are to that tipping point, if we're close at all. It's never stopped me from buying a good game, but goddamn I want this game to at least do reasonably well and I feel like this is just jinxing it. Then again, Mania still sold well, but could it have sold... better?
Please stop arguing about DLC practices for games that aren't Sonic Frontiers in this thread Spoiler or at all
Specially when they're arguing about different things but mixing things up in a way it seems like they're talking about the same thing. I think both sides are right. And yes, this topic is for Sonic Frontiers, doesn't seem like a good place to start the DLC wars.
To get off of this DLC conversation, it said that Ian Flynn only penned the story, right? Does that mean he only made an outline or what? I was listening to some old discussion and someone brought it up.
I was wondering about that. Didn't the other writers say Sonic Team provides the outline and they did the rest?
Something like that! They were given a general idea of where the story should go and the writers were basically there to punch it up. I think Lost World was the only game where they fully wrote it themselves if memory serves me correctly. I don't know if this also implies that they're the ones to create Zavok lmao
