Capcom we love you, but why!?
There is a creeping trend in the world of game publishing, that the word creeping aptly describes, and that my friends, is “on disc dlc”. For Farmville fans that means publishers create extra content that is on the game disc you just bought for $59.99 retail (more on that in a minute) but can only ONLY (read: legally) be accessed for an additional fee. Now I’m all for creator’s rights, you create something you have a right to a little something from those that enjoy if you so choose to charge for it. Blood, sweat, and tears should be rightly rewarded but this is simply dirty pool.
Let us then break this all down, a disc is created with XY and Z game content, stamped out in a factory, while eager s
preadsheets sing profit and champagne corks fly. Long fingered thumbs await a new experience and it is all there in those grubby hands but… but it’s not yours. Oh the money they took was yours but… but a piece of that disc is ALL THEIRS. A quick lesson in business, the price of a product is largely determined, in the majority of cases, by the cost to the producer of such product. If I’m going to paint your chicken coop and it costs me $20 for a bucket of paint, then I’m within my rights to charge you a reasonable amount over $20 to paint your chicken coop. The disc has been produced, the paint bought if you will, XY and Z content burned forever into round flat plastic, and now a demand for additional funds to pay for what has already been paid for. “and Z” content isn’t yours, no, no, no.
In summary, I am sickened at what I see as a slow massaging of consumers to ready them for the inevitable true home arcade. Where every in game death leads to a demand for more and more of your money. So I ask you… how many? How many xbox live points are you willing to fork over for to complete a single player mission? How many for another round of offline, oh yes, offline play? How many more?
