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Feeling a bit of sticker shock after watching the standard price of big-name PC games leap up to $60 over night? Well, you're definitely not alone. In fact, you've got at least one friend in a very high place, and he thinks it's high time we put our collective foot down and put a stop to all this bank-breaking nonsense. Oh, but there is one teensy little catch. His solution, you see, involves the dreaded M-word: microtransactions.
“I have trouble working out why free-to-play games have generated controversy – I’ve been doing this for four years now, so it feels kind of normal to me – but I can’t think of anything more exploitative than gating all of your content behind having to pay someone $60,” EA General Manager Ben Cousins told Rock Paper Shotgun.
“How many times have we all bought crappy games for $60, right? And the majority of people in our game spend less than that – the cost of a full-priced game. So what we’re selling is a cheaper than full price game that you can try before you buy. If you choose to buy at all. I honestly don’t see what’s so controversial about that – compare to buying a console, an HDTV, and then a $60 game which, if you don’t like it, you’ll have to sell back to the store for $10.”
Currently, Cousins is deep in the development trenches of Battlefield Play4Free, which – terrible name aside – looks to be a pretty excellent free-to-play translation of Battlefield 2. Granted, it remains to be seen whether BFP4F will use microtransactions' powers for good or for the wallet-swiping villainy perpetrated in Battlfield Heroes. Please, EA, don't lure us in with Battlefield and then spring a trap on us again. We'll only fall for it so many hundreds of times.
Comments are closed on this article
handsomeboy
August 26, 2011 at 4:55am
Nicely written and highly informative publish. Thank you for making the effort to share these experience using the community, it really is appreciated.
handsomeboy
August 10, 2011 at 1:27am
This should be a good post, and I should show my thanksful for your kind sharing... @pellet mill line
newegg911
April 13, 2011 at 6:02pm
A GOOD game with replay value is worth $60. The problem is all games obviously aren't created equal and the one size fits all pricing doesn't work. That's why I usually don't buy games until price drops unless it's something exceptional.
TRYER
March 28, 2011 at 1:48am
I am never going to buy games when they first come out at 60 bucks each. I wait a few months and then go straigh to Ebay. Cut the middle man out of the picture.
Ghok
March 24, 2011 at 1:53pm
I wouldn't pay $60 for any game I wasn't 95% sure would be exceptional. Hard to do that without giving it a try first, and that's not always easy to do as a PC gamer.
I rarely buy games on release day, because I've just been burned way too many times. I don't mind buying something like Portal 2 on release day, because Valve has a good track record and they haven't jacked the price up to $60.
ShyLinuxGuy
March 24, 2011 at 11:37am
So is/are Adobe CS ($1000), Office 2010 Professional ($500) and Windows 7 Ultimate ($250)...and plenty more examples.
I heard that AutoCAD 2011 is around $2500...just think, someone running a $2500 program on a computer which costed less (about $800-900 is what I'm guessing for a good CAD compy).
OTOH, there's open source, some of which are good alternatives, others of which are getting there.
noobstix
March 24, 2011 at 8:32am
As soon as I saw Dragon Age 2 and Crysis 2 @ $60, I too made a vow to not buy it until it goes down (which would take like a year or two). I'm gonna spend that $60 on a 360 game instead. Also, for $60, I could buy the WH40K DoW II collection + Retribution (I bought Retribution for $30 so I think I might try to get into the WH franchise). Even then, I'm trying to focus on getting a new video card since my other cards have been crippled to the point where I can't game for more than 5 minutes.
P.S. Thx Joe for the manual link for posting.
dmonkyking
March 25, 2011 at 4:52am
Agreed. I'm also someone who's not going to pay $60 for a PC game just so I can pay EA's overhead (even though PC gaming is superior). But on a positive note, you can pick up Dragon Age 2 (PC) on Amazon for $39. Not sure why Steam hasn't offered that deal though.
1968Panther
March 24, 2011 at 10:34pm
Considering that everyone knows the PC version of almost every game is better, especially graphically, than any console, if someone has both, I can't fathom why you would rather spend the money on the console version...even moreso considering the two games (DA2 & Crysis 2, both of which I have…on PC) you chose to use for your example…over the PC versions. Graphically, PCs will always be superior to consoles. When it comes to gameplay, especially for RPGs & FPSs, keyboard & mouse use will always excel & exceed that of a console’s controller. It’s for that very reason that developers/publishers continue to avoid making multi-player games, such as Crysis 2’s multi-player, multi-platform. The PC people would Pwn ALL the console players. True, I'd rather spend $50 for a PC game, versus $60, but, when push comes to shove, I'd rather spend $60 on a PC game over $60 on a console game ANY day of the millennium.
JoetheMobster
March 24, 2011 at 6:13am
When games started to come out at the $60 level, I vowed to not purchase anything until it got older and came down. Well, I broke that promise to myself and purchased Crysis 2 on launch day. Man am I upset at myself for breaking the rule....more so because I'm dissapointed with Crysis 2 itself!
also could not comment, so here's the link if you need it:
http://www.maximumpc.com/comment/reply/17790
