Capcom arguably has always employed a fee 2 pay model for Street Fighter with its constant upgrades that you don’t really have to buy from them and you kinda do. Now they are doing it again with SFV but in a the most efficient and arguably manipulative way to date. Sure, fight money is free***** and knowing most of us we are gonna grind anyway, not for fight money but for the fight itself.
But this is still an exploit because we are die hards with an undiagnosed addiction to instant gratification. If Alex or Urien are released as DLC, you’re telling me you’re gonna wait and grind 100 hours for them or you’re gonna immediately pay 5 dollars or whatever it is they will charge us to get them immediately. Of course, this all comes down to how much fight money can you make in a given time period, which we don’t know yet for SF5. But going by what’s happening now in the industry, something tells me it will be ridiculous amount of time that will be too much of a test of patience for the FGC and casuals. Yes, I know we don’t HAVE to buy these characters, but don’t kid yourselves they own us already.
This isn’t a rant by the way, this is a just sigh.
*Not really because time = money and you’re still paying, biatch.
I had voiced basically the same worry when the pricing model was first announced. It fell onto the same ears this kind of thing always falls onto. The two responses are something along the lines of
"Well you just want something for free and are acting entitled.“
or
"Well don’t buy it if you don’t like it”
It is what it is, the Free 2 Play market often makes way more money than the standard sales model. If you can double dip than of course the publisher is going to take advantage of that. Fee 2 Pay, Free 2 Play, and basic “service” based games are going to become even more popular, possibly eventually overshadowing many conventional model titles that are based on online multiplayer.
Buying a next gen system, mobile phone or PC in the year of 2015/6 and expecting to not be exploited to some extent is naive. Everyone knows this is where video games are going and the few people that fight it will soon realize that the only way out is to retire from next gen/mobile gaming. There is no winning this war. Triple AAA titles are “struggling” to make profit and whether they actually are or not, like any business they’re going to find a way to make sure they can make money outside of a one or 2 week surge of physical disc sales. If you can make money other than on a short week to month time of people paying for a disc (because how many people are actually buying a game a month after it comes out?) you’re gonna do it as a business.
Being able to add to your profit long after you release a game is ideal (for the business) and allows a game to not have to solely rely on video game sales charts to green light a sequel or generally pad profits. Purely relying on physical disc sales in this age is archaic and no longer ideal for businesses and something they can easily force on customers.
Paying 60 dollars for a game and being locked into a premium experience was for a time when nothing else was being downloaded or could be downloaded to your games. In 2016 that is where you will start with the majority of video games. It’s just the reality.
As far as SFV goes, that’s why they’re doing the betas. They’re not just going “hahaha we will trick you into paying”.
They want to use the betas to see how long it takes different types of players to gain fight money necessary to purchase things. They at least have said that they want to create a medium so that those that play often can get everything gameplay wise (characters/balance updates) without paying money. Those that don’t play very often will most likely have to end up paying for something, but I’m sure they’re going to create a balance so that those who are gaining a lot of fight money don’t feel like they are also in a constant struggle. Those that are putting the time in should be able to feasibly get all the characters for free. Capcom’s goal will most likely be to make money off the people who don’t play very much, but at least they can choose what they want instead of being forced into a full package.
**Long story short if you’re going to be playing the game often, you shouldn’t have a problem. Your cousin down the street who plays it once a week will most likely have to pay for something, but at least he can choose what he wants and doesn’t pay for balance/feature upgrades to the gameplay. This will definitely be on the lower end of fee 2 pay siphoning of your wallet. They could very likely create specific costumes that require real money to purchase, but at least that’s cosmetic. **
I have never purchased a single DLC in my life. I actually prefer the default costume, in colour #1. Let’s see how much you have to actually grind. I already got three characters I’m looking forward to. I’ll be on the lookout for reviews on youtube etc if a character is worth unlocking.
Then ofcourse, it’s a multiplayer game. The DLC content will already be downloaded to your HD once it’s released. I’m sure someone will figure out shortcuts to unlock the characters.
Counter-Strike: Global Offensive had a pretty good model. The maps and weapons were free. If you wanted to paint your gun like a kindergartener, it would cost money. Plus the money would go to the pot of the next tournament as well. I’m hazy on the details since I never paid anything outside the base price.
My opinion is that if I’m paying for a game at full retail price, I shouldn’t have to pay anymore to get the complete effect of the product. This means all characters should be available to me without having to pay extra. Unlockable conditions are annoying, “however fun”, as it is, and I don’t support the idea of unlockable characters.
USF4 was beautiful in that regard: Any character you wanted to play was already there on the character select screen. I don’t know why Capcom feels like they need to depart from this method of availability.
Anything cosmetic like costumes, or stages, or music, fine. Have that be paid DLC. Like folks have been saying though, it might not be worth the grind if it’ll take you like 20 hours to unlock each character. And then we’ll all have to shake our heads at Capcom yet again.
This. If it were up to me, I’d end this thread right here.
People need to understand some basic things about the economics of video games. First, the cost of making video games has gone up over the years due to a combination of factors, such as the complexity of the games being made, as well as natural inflation (which raises the prices of everything as time goes by). Second, the price of video games has not gone up since the 90s (especially in the US, but this affects prices worldwide as well). This means that it’s much harder to recoup the costs (let along make money) from a single video game, which is why we see the need for premium content so that these games can continue to make more money beyond the initial sale.
USFIV was beautiful, sure. Starting from Vanilla then paying for Super, then AE then Ultra? Not so beautiful and a lot of people on the internet verbally and visually pointed out the lack of beauty in it.
SFV should work where after you pay your 60 dollars, as long as you play the game more than 2 days a week you should be able to get all other characters for free. Which will have you spending at least half the money you spent if you paid for every version of SFIV since Vanilla.
USFIV is not one game. It was the after effect of 4 different paid games that only people that entered in Ultra would find beautiful. That’s like saying Super SF2 on Super Nintendo was beautiful after already paying for World Warrior and Turbo first. It was only good if you didn’t buy the first 2 games at 70 to 80 dollars a pop a year or 2 before.
yes I wasn’t defending USF4 in the slightest. Still has redeemable qualities, especially for somebody that didn’t pay for the previous versions. Not me. I paid for the previous versions, and then stopped playing online after 2012. So I had less motivation to buy USF4. And USF4 isn’t my favorite SF4 title either, it just did some things right.
Yes, buying a 2010 game used for 5 bucks today and paying another 15 bucks to upgrade it automatically to the current tournament version of the most famous and played FG in the market is obviously an abusive thing from Capcom.
No one can deny that, apart from Vanilla SFIV not being upgradeable do Super (it was a 2009 game after all, that wasn’t ready for that kind of DLC), everything else Capcom has done with SFIV was excellent for the consumers (both regular and tournament players).
We get SSFIV for 40 bucks (not full price like ArcSys games)
We get AE DLC for 15 bucks (with lots of new characters and content) one year later
We get Ultra DLC for 15 bucks (with lots of new characters and content) two years later
Not to mention the free updates like AE2012 or Omega Mode.
You can upgrade to the latest version without having to buy the intermediate DLC like Destiny…
Think about it: how many games in the console market are still supported in such a way after more than 5 years (since SSFIV was launched)?
That’s fine. Was just trying to explain that you already did pay for those characters you saw on your screen with 3 other games essentially.
You had a decent argument, but USFIV in itself doesn’t really relate to the message you were pushing. No fighting game has all content available on its first release and this is a nice way to ensure that people who play the game often enough can receive all gameplay based content for free.
The problem with the updates is that having separate titles smelled too much like the old system where you were forced to pay full price for each update. So even if existing owners just needed to pay for DLC upgrades, everyone just assumed that Capcom was requiring everyone to pay $40 each time a new update dropped.
Let me see if I’m tracking… You pay 60 bucks for a full game. There is no on disk dlc meaning all content has to be generated after the initial game is created. You then expect said game company to balance and update the game not only with new characters, but also updates that add new fight mechanics, stages, balance updates ect ect for the life span of at least SFIV and you want them to do it for free?
Oh and they give you an avenue to play All that for free ( after the initial purchase of course) and you still complain? Mind blown
