Far Cry 4
I was "interneting on the websites" when I stumbled upon a post where someone noted the full Far Cry 4 experience is $90. The base game minus the DLC content is $60, but if you want the full Far Cry 2 package it's $90.
Certainly Ubisoft isn't the only company to do this, BioShock Infinite came with a Season Pass as well as Skyrim, Fallout 3 and other games. That said, it was a bit sobering to see all the cost up front available on day one.
I have no doubt that the cost to make a Triple A game is huge and any chance to get players to pay a bit more if they want makes financial sense but.... $90? That said, if someone drops 60 hours into the game that comes out to about a...
Certainly Ubisoft isn't the only company to do this, BioShock Infinite came with a Season Pass as well as Skyrim, Fallout 3 and other games. That said, it was a bit sobering to see all the cost up front available on day one.
I have no doubt that the cost to make a Triple A game is huge and any chance to get players to pay a bit more if they want makes financial sense but.... $90? That said, if someone drops 60 hours into the game that comes out to about a...
Apparently it is worth $90, because that's what people have been paying for years for this kind of content. There are a few that I think are worth that, for my library. It all depends on what you're into. I'm about to shell that out for Destiny, but I wouldn't have done it for a game like Watch Dogs. Time will tell if I get my moneys worth out of it (if they Alpha and Beta are any indication, I believe I will). No Man's Sky is another that I'd consider spending an exorbitant amount of money on.
Season passes for $30 aren't unheard of. I don't think "the full Triple A game experience" is what you're getting. You're getting the game plus all the DLC they release for it. You can get a full (and hopefully awesome) game for the regular $60.
Oh and Skyrim and the Fallout games didn't have season passes. Though it would have made sense for the Fallout games.
scrypt: Totally, people seem to love buying games like this. I don't mind buying each Diablo 3 or Starcraft 2 expansion. Love those games.
Travis: Season passes are not new for sure, but it just kind of hit me that the full meal deal is $90.
As to the full experience, just check out the language that Ubisoft uses from the Steam capture. "It is designed for any fans and new comers who want the most complete game experience on Far Cry 4." Some words are moved around, but it's not too far off.
Totally right on Skyrim and Fallout, but by the time you bought all the DLC, might as well have got a Season Pass. I think in the end the Season Pass is a better deal, but it still pushes the full game experience to $100.
That's marketing-speak. They're just trying to get you to pony up the cash. Which many people will. I may get Assassin's Creed Unity that way. I got AC4 that way (same price, I think, $90) and put close to $60 in the base game. The DLC felt tacked on, and didn't connect to the main game significantly. It certainly wasn't part of the main game "experience."
Some games are obviously vessels to get more money out of you down the line, but Ubisoft has a good track record here I think. Fallout 3 got well over 100 hours out of me before the first DLC dropped.
I guess it depends entirely on what the "full game experience" means. If it means you aren't going to be fulfilled without DLC, then it's a problem. If it's obviously cut content that they decided to release later just to tap your wallet a second time, it's literally Hitler.
But if it's a great game with more stuff being developed and released later to add to what you have, it's awesome!
Either way could be thought of as a complete game experience. I guess the best question to ask is whether the $60 is fulfilling without anything else. DLC has found a pretty nice spot after a ton of bad press on the worst offenders. Anyone remember horse armor?
That one paragraph was sloppily written. I didn't mean to suggest that Fallout 3 and Ubisoft were at all related, just throwing Fallout 3 out as another example.
Aside-- this could be a roundtable discussion.
Considering that i paid $60 for Borderlands 2 when it came out, then dumped another $45 or 50 for season pass two months later, i can definitely see myself spending $90 upfront to know that i'm getting what i will eventually want.
I compare it to people spending the extra money on limited edition or "prestige edition" kinds of releases for games. Example, Dead Space 2 collectors edition was i believe $80 with all its goodies, and the COD Ghosts Prestige edition was $199. So if a person is willing to shell out that much money for the game with some chintzy goodies then i'd say an extra forty bucks or so for hours of extra content is worth it.
Depends on how much you like the game i suppose, but a game like Far Cry is the kind of game that you want the "full experience" for.
I think paying $90 for the full game and it's DLC is different than a Collectors Edition with physical goods included.
With a game+DLC we are talking all digital goods. With a Collectors Edition you get a physical box, art book, score and more. I think the value, generally, for a Collectors Edition is higher.
That said, Far Cry 3 and all the DLC is an amazing game and I imagine Far Cry 4 will be no different if not better. The question/point for me isn't that some people won't find value in a $90 digital only game.
Again, if it's $90 for Diablo 3 Reaper Of Souls+Score+Mousepad+Art Book+Bluray Making of+Game then yes. If it's $90 for a digital game+DLC.... Then I think it could be, but I doubt the game value would hold up to a less expensive game.
All that said, the game will drop in price over the subsequent year(s) and a Steam Sale will drop it even more. I guess for huge Far Cry fans that love every second of that franchise, $90 really isn't that big of a deal.
And you are right, getting the full experience for Far Cry is what most people want as more of the base game is a totally awesome thing because the game is so much fun.
@Zach_Foster "Considering that i paid $60 for Borderlands 2 when it came out, then dumped another $45 or 50 for season pass two months later, i can definitely see myself spending $90 upfront to know that i'm getting what i will eventually want."
This is exactly it. It's a predetermined purchase. I knew that when Bioshock Infinite came out, I was going to buy the story based DLC. It's just a matter of when I'm spending the money, now or later. As you say, @jdodson, As long as you have an idea of what you will be getting, this is a good deal. However, if all I received from this were variations on the Clash in the Clouds DLC, that had nothing to do with the core story, I would have felt disappointed and deceived, thus making the purchase a waste of money. In that case, a Collector's Edition would be preferable, since I know, more or less, exactly what I'm getting with my money. A replica statue of Songbird, soundtrack, artwork, etc. have an immediate value, and arguably add just as much to the experience, by extending your enjoyment of the game into the living world. While the digital content will lose monetary value almost immediately, real world objects retain, and sometimes increase in value, based on quality and rarity.
The whole usage of "full experience" or "complete experience" is as @Travis states, a marketing ploy. It's another part of the experience, but by implying a finite perimeter to that experience and calling it "full" or "complete" gives the impression that "there is nothing more than this." This isn't just all of The Next Generation episodes, it's TNG in full 16:9 ratio, with a Riker/Troy sex tape, the entire TNG soundtrack played by Patrick Stewart on a Ressikan flute, Geordi crossing universes to meet Scott Summers and talking visor technology, and, finally, all the information you have always wanted on Guinan and the El Aurian race, and what powers they could possibly have over the Q (*whew...). It's like a Director's Cut or high level Kickstarter campaign. I imagine a custodian of these projects pulling all the files and drawings and sounds into a giant Santa's sack of gifts that you would never otherwise see, but now you can. For $90, or whatever the cost is (likely over $1000 for that TNG bullshit, and I would PAY IT! Everyone would pay for that!).
Having the total price be upfront, rather than trickled over time, is a more honest approach. I don't think the reality of it will, or does change anything, except that companies are becoming bold enough to lay it out there, day one. I doubt most people are like us, though, and they are perfectly happy with the core game. By the time the DLC comes out anyway, most people are usually on to the next.
One kind of neat aspect of the base game + Season Pass DLC is that I picked up BioShock Infinite on a Steam Sale for $9. I started playing the game, loved the hell out of it and noticed the Season Pass DLC was like $20 for some expansions and some in game extras. Since the game was so great, I pulled the trigger and was not disappointed.
So, it might allow a few more bucks to go to the developers a bit later in the cycle where I might not have otherwise.
> Again, if it's $90 for Diablo 3 Reaper Of Souls+Score+Mousepad+Art Book+Bluray Making of+Game then yes. If it's $90 for a digital game+DLC.... Then I think it could be, but I doubt the game value would hold up to a less expensive game.
I still think you're thinking about this the wrong way. The game is $60. You pay extra to get stuff that will be sold down the line. Diablo III was $60 and the one expansion so far was $40. That's $100. If they'd said at the outset, the digital deluxe edition is $90 and say something about "the complete Diablo III experience" it would be no different. You're still getting the same stuff you're probably going to buy for less money, and you can choose to buy that DLC later if you want and just pay $60 now, and it's no different from any other AAA release in the past few years.
To put it another way, if it just had the game up for $60 and the season pass for $30, with no option to buy them together for the "complete" edition, the only difference would be how many clicks you had to make to buy them. The base game only has to live up to other base games.
Ah, I totally forgot what I was going to say to your point, @scrypt.
"By the time the DLC comes out anyway, most people are usually on to the next."
I think this is the key here. It's good business for them, because they get all that money. Like you said, by the time the DLC comes out, many gamers will have moved on. I have had that trouble myself. If I'm already in the mindset for one game I can't easily drop that and go into another game. This just shifts the purchase so people can easily buy everything up front. I think that's really the only thing that's different here.
AND SERIOUSLY, WHY DID THEY NEVER TELL US WHAT POWER GUINAN'S PEOPLE HAD OVER THE Q CONTINUUM?!
Off topic, but I both love and hate that we know so little about the El Aurians. Guinan is one of my all-time favorite Sci-Fi characters because of it, and honestly the reason I like Generations as much as I do (i.e. learning more about her, and meeting another El Aurian). I know most hated it because of the treatment that was given to Kirk, and I agree completely, but I really like the ideas surrounding the rest of the film.
I didn't hate Generations like most seem to. I thought it was good. Not the best, definitely worse than First Contact, but good.
Can't believe I forgot to mention Sony in all of this. Have you seen what they are doing with Playstation Now? The pricing structure there is unbelievable. Granted, it's in beta (open beta...), but upwards of $50 for a 90 day rental? Insane.
http://kotaku.com/playstation-now-is-still-way-too-expensive-1614022375
Yes I did and it's not something I am interested in.
I am unsure why the pricing is so nutty but I can't see that bringing actual competition to the regular model of buying a game anytime soon. Maybe if renting the games was super cheap, but that's not even close.
That's just nutty. I guess it's cheaper than .99 a day, which is what I used to rent games for, but these days that just doesn't work. If you're going to pay that much I think people will prefer to just buy the game. They're competing with the Gamestops of the world-- if people buy used games and trade them back in, it's functionally the same thing and much cheaper than Sony's pricing.
Except that at the lowest rental tier, the cost is about $3 for 4 hours. That's the shortest rental time. 4 hours. I wish it was $.99 a day, or even a couple dollars for a day. That would make so much more sense.
Oh and if you want to talk more about Generations, drop a post in the Forums. I would love to continue the discussion :D