The summer costumes are being sold at $3.99 EACH. The entire SF4 series sold costume packs of 4~5 characters costumes at $3.99 and came with all colors unlocked. You can buy full character roster packs for $19.99. SFxT allowed you to buy individual costumes for 99¢.
Now in this case you can’t use the "part of the money is going to cpt, they never did say how MUCH is going to CPT but that’s a dif discussion, these are going to be the standard prices for premium costumes.
Ok, let’s use the fact that the game, even though it costs $60 to start, is allowing you to get the characters for free via FM (they still haven’t added the daily challenges to get more FM…), charging 4x as much per costume seems a bit extreme still. They continued to release costumes for ultra for a long time after launch. Premium costumes/stages will be where Capcom gets most of it’s revenue, I think paying more is fair. How about $2 or $2.50 per costume? Do a pack of 3~4 for $5, or $6 if the base price is $2.50. That is still significantly more expensive than SF4 was.
Killer Instinct sells their costumes for $2.99 if you don’t buy into their big packs.
I think that the pricing on these costumes is a bit high, anyone else? It’s not a matter of not being able to afford it, it’s an issue of cost vs content as well as comparative to their competitors.
In SF4 I played with almost every character except a few I couldnt get used to (guy, gen). So I bought most of the costume packs.
In SFV I barely play 2-3 characters, so I’d get costumes for those at most.
Adding to that the fact that future updates wont cost money, nor will the chatacters, I think it’s reasonable.
If I buy only 1-3 premiums a year for my main / secondary I’d still spend less money than I did for SF4 series with buying (updates + costumes) / 7 years
I got Laura’s and Mika’s battle outfit and then bought Chun’s swimsuit and suddenly realized I just spent 12 bucks on some textures.
So yeah, will stop for now. I might buy one or two of those Akiman costumes in the works but I defintely won’t be getting every costume for my mains as I did in SFIV.
Ok. It’s still significantly more for significantly less and compared to their competitors it’s much higher. You also aren’t accounting for potentially premium stages like the tournament stage will be.
What if someone’s mains were all in the same pack? Like Ryu + Ken + Akuma. $3.99 for that one pack of three costumes
SF4 = $59.99. SSF4 = $39.99. AE was IIRC $14.99, as was ultra upgrade. So that’s 130. IIRC there was 7 costume sets (6 for super characters). So $28 = 158 total (rounded) over 7 years assuming all of your characters were in one pack. If not you’d be best off buying the complete packs usually as it’d just be an additional $5 for more than 2x as much content. Even if you had to buy each pack individually, AND all of the packs were for vanilla characters = $214 (3x(4x7) = $84 + 130)
SFV = $59.99 + 3 premium costumes ($12) for 2 characters ($24) per year for 7 years ($168) = $228. Same number if you only bought 2 costumes for your 3 characters. You buy 3 costumes for 3 characters for 7 years that number explodes to a total of $312. Imagine if they added another character you turn out to be interested in! Hmm…
And, again, that’s without paying for potentially premium stages. We don’t know if stages will all be FM buyable like Balrog’s and the beach stage or if there will be some more released that are premium.
As I said in my original post, I get that it should cost more than SF4 because you can get the characters for free. However, an increase of 500% is extreme. I’d be ok with $2~$3 and the option to buy packs where the total cost is like 60~70% of what you’d pay for buying each costume individually (so like 1 costume = $3 then a 5 costume pack = ~$10). That’s an increase of 300% on individual and 200% on packs. That also is within the target range of their competitors like Tekken Revolution had or Killer Instinct currently has.
Also, none of this accounts for new comers. It actually is significantly detrimental to new comers who join later. You buy SFV in 4 years not only do you have 4 seasons of characters to catch up on, likely meaning you can’t reasonably buy them all with FM, but you also have 4 years of costumes DLC to buy. Meanwhile, you could buy SSF4 on it’s own saving yourself $65 since you automatically got the vanilla costumes and characters. If you started with Ultra than you just saved yourself ~$90 since you’d get all of the characters from vanilla/super/AE for $40 on top of the new characters. SSF4 was skipped on PC so you had to go from Vanilla to AE meaning you automatically saved $40 there.
So, in summation, you would actually spend more under the circumstances you’ve stated and it could get even worse than it currently appears to be.
*Note that the information above doesn’t include the prices of Colors 1-10, which will be purchasable with both Fight Money AND Real Money, as well as prices for M. Bison stage and the coming Akiman’s Chun-Li costumes
This is soo fucked up. I was hoping to see capcom blaze new trails with things that HELP players like better training mode options, more lifelike AI in arcade mode, better netcode than what ggpo can provide, better game…
But the only thing they are blazing new trails in is how to gouge their customers. This free to play pricing they’ve done is completely fucked up.
They’ve gone and assumed that no one would have bought all the stuff at a lower pricing so they are trying to gouge players for 1 item here and there. They are trying to recoup profits not via sales volume, but via high prices.
I knew they were stupid as a company before but they’ve seriously lost the plot. Fuck this company with a rusty jagged spoon.
Yes the high price points are silly, and are having the opposite effect for me of just making me a lot more picky on what I buy.
I bought a few costume packs for SF4 even for characters I didn’t really play since the price point was low enough for me. Now it is too high and I won’t even by a costume for my main unless I know I will absolutely use it beyond a 1 week novelty.
This is the f2p model though so if you’re a value-conscious consumer you are no longer the target audience, as it’s all in the name of milking whales.
The thing that is dumb is that some of these “premium” costumes look cheaper to make than the story costumes. Premium costume makes me think of different special effects. Like an evil Ryu costume would have his fireballs have a purple tint to it. Stuff like that. I would pay $4-5 for that.
Some of these should be like $2 at most. Then again, League of Legends has $10-20 skins(doesn’t matter if it’s a f2p game, the price is high), lol.
But it doesn’t bother me really, we have been getting constant updates so far and anyone who thinks “should have been in from the start” can go kick rocks.
I can’t agree more. A lot of great points. Thanks @Fatal1ty_93_RUS for the list. Its absolutely ridiculous. There’s that much content and they still haven’t fixed simple things with the game. I don’t have words strong enough to express how mad I am.
I can’t remember who said it, but its had the opposite effect on me. There’s going to be very little I buy from here on. In the past I’ve given them my wallet with little thought and they’ve finally fucked themselves with it. Its just a shame. However I don’t expect my choice to make any difference to Capcom and to be honest I think they deserve to fail for how disrespectful they’re being.
If ppl online could see the modded outfits I wear I would seriously never buy an official outfit from capcom… With that being said, I refuse to spend actual money on outfits for my characters FM or no deal
I’ve paid a total of about $43 for this game
Including 3 premium paid costumes
I’m good
Sure it is high
You don’t have to buy it though
It doesnt give you any advantage or access to anything that affects gameplay
It’s worth noting that those 10~20, way overpriced, outfits usually come with unique graphical effects for skills and new voice lines on top of the new model itself.
Also LoL doesn’t have a $60 buy in to start playing. The inflating cost of stuff, mostly the free stuff, is one of the main reasons I quit playing that game years ago.
Yeah, but did you play almost every character within the first 5 months of SF4’s release or did you play almost every character after several years? What I’m getting at is, in 2 years I doubt you’ll be playing 2 or 3 characters, you’ll probably be playing most of them.
SFV probably has the best pricing model in the franchise. Capcom has effectively eliminated the boring, economic pricing model that was just too easy for players to spam across DLC packs. In SFV, the higher prices coupled with lower value proposition force players to use nuanced decision making in clutch moments, leading to much faster-paced costume and colour switching for players. This idea is simply breathtaking in its execution. Gone are the days when players could simply spam the Checkout button with no additional thought. SFV is closer to the OG feeling of spending your last token and then finding out the punch buttons don’t work properly. Similarly, when purchasing SFV and it’s accompanying DLC, players have to commit, just as OGs had to in the old days.
I commend Capcom for their refined approach to DLC and I look forward to 7 more years of this bullshit.
I can’t care too much. The prices on DOA5’s cosmetic stuff is even more outrageous, but it’s like it is. It’s there for the “whales”.
Long as they keep the gameplay content free I feel I’m still getting my money’s worth. Cosmetic stuff isn’t of high value for me. I’ll just get the cosmetics I specifically want and just keep getting free characters/game modes. I’ll leave the pricing for things that aren’t necessary for gameplay up to the company.