I totally agree. The games industry have been pushing and pushing ways to create margins - the latest tactic is to cut up content and sell them at inflated prices. Whether it’s cosmetics such as bundles in CoD or Ghost Recon, to direct content. It’s all about making less to sell for more. This is IO’s take on that piece of the money margin pie tactic.
CoD sells its bundles at 1.7x the amount of a full DLC drop. You buy 3 skins and that’s the equivalent of the yearly season pass to everything in a CoD game or the game itself. And because games trick people purposely by cutting things up into smaller pieces, call it buzzwords like “Premium”, “Legendary” or " Deluxe" hide it behind their own economy and currencies, and on the surface, looks like a smaller price but when you sit back and add it up you can see the key thing - value. This is why we evaluate the overall value of that content. Ask someone - 3 skins or a full complete AAA game.
IO are doing the typical subscription margin business tactic. Get people to pay in lump some so they can weight up how much content needs to be made down the line so they get their margins. Using content which let’s be honest is a freebie and have been free but instead can coin some money out of it. But what about the content versus price?
- 1 escalation in an existing location.
- 3 reskinned items.
For £4.99 or £4.29 if you get the pack. So by the end, it’ll be 7 escalations and 21 reskins? Compared to a mini campaign or various brand new locations as @BernardoOne pointed out.
So now we’re at the question again. 2 full locations or 7 escalations and reskins?
priced at $29.99 / £29.99 / €29.99 or regional equivalent
More bullshit. $29.99 is like £22 quid, not like for like. So you’re ripping off the UK while you’re at it.
7-part premium expansion
What’s exactly expanding? A few environmental texture changes?
EDIT: I thought of the answer - IO’s wallet.