even if they havent decided on what each content pack will contain yet, it seems like they’ve priced themselves into a corner by charging the same for each pack. had they only sold it as a complete bundle they’d have more freedom to change their plans further down the line. of course allowing it only to be purchased in full would come with its own downsides as well
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Again, agreed. That’s exactly the reason why - even though I’m not ready to actually go to town on IOI until we see the full details - I’m a little more cautious and feeling a little more trepidatious than some of the more upbeat posters in this thread.
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As much as I enjoy Escalations, I can’t agree with you enough on this. I’m really looking forward to the upcoming DLC and finding out what rewards we get and stuff like that, but I’d love bonus missions like the Holiday Hoarders and the Hokkaido Snow Festival. I know other people on the forum have expressed a desire to see this DLC but alternative versions of Dartmoor and Whittleton Creek would be absolutely awesome.
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It doesn’t really make that much of a difference, they’re essentially just setting themselves a budget and allowing themselves an opportunity to both build anticipation and adjust sales estimates. There’s not really that big a distinction across pricing by item and bundle, since pricing with the expectation some items in bundles will be more popular than others is a standard in pretty much every industry.
Skimming through this thread it seems there’s a huge thread of discussing the game industry in macro with some unfortunate choices of association and assumptions going on so I am going to look into splitting the price discussion into another thread.
So people can discuss the actual DLC in this one.
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i think it does make a difference, giving people an early opportunity to buy all of the packs in one bundle would inevitably lead to people feeling scammed were, for example, 3 or 4 of them significantly lower quality content than the others despite all being priced the same
and people who want to discuss the escalations as they come out will probably do so in a new thread, as they do for every new escalation. i dont really see how the pricing discussion is separable from everything else since theres more to it than just “this is too expensive”
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It’s $10 difference. When the final result of the Sins is full released, we then can compare it to the Gold Addition for an extra ten bucks. I’m not expecting it to be equivalent but good enough according to price point. If it turns out we could have gotten a lot more for the sake of a tenner we will see.
Why is that? They’ve offered a product extra for that money and fulfilled quite well in terms of the Gold pack. If you’re saying they’ve overspent versus the cost, I don’t know is that is the case. And if that is the case, I’m not against them raising the price a tiny bit providing it’s quality content in return. Instead we’ve got content and so far pack one is widely mediocre at best using the one type of mission that doesn’t provide enough repetition (at least on the basis of the freebies.)
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In the era we live in, some people feeling scammed is inevitable - plus it will be inevitable for this anyway because there will be people who feel other sins bundles got a better treatment than there’s did and will assign some nefarious motive to it.
There would also be people who’d feel scammed if they didn’t offer the bundle initially, they bought four items and then weren’t eligible for the bundle. A certain amount of customer discontent is inevitable and is incorporated into almost all modern marketing strategies and contracts. Payment suppliers have acceptable rates for refund etc because it always happens and from a fraud perspective “I have zero unsatisfied customers.” is always a giant red flag.
I don’t care so much for the price discussion as I do the armchair executive statements that are based on minimal information but made with absolute confidence. Stuff like people announcing that since a company is profitable every year it shouldn’t be looking for more avenues to make money, without factoring in that the increased capital expenditure of games means if it doesn’t continue to expand its profit margins it won’t have sufficient capital to remain competitive in the main market (or will have to forgo having safety cushions).
There is a world of difference between saying “I don’t feel like I’d pay $30 for that.” (which again, I guarantee you is a predicted and understandable reaction from the perspective of the studio) to posting “I googled some numbers and I’ve decided the objectively correct price should be…”
Not only is the latter frequently not in line with the forum guidelines about improving the conversation, its also literally of zero interest to the person who’s skimming through the thread trying to work out if people have spotted something to get excited about or if they should feel more confident in their decision not to buy etc.
That’s not what the majorty of us was saying, of course IO-I must make money, we all can agree on that, but for many of us, it is a bit expensive from what they have said we are getting for the asking price.
Is this what we just have to accept and/or is this the new norm in modern day gaming industry you think? Since the title on this thread?
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The gaming industries problems are essentially a microcosm of the capitalist system we live in and, consequentially, they are infinitely strange and complicated - nobody has the answers and no answer applies universally.
This itself is a potentially complicated topic in itself, even if limited only to the current DLC.
Bourbon and I aren’t batting an eye at the price, but Bourbon and I are professionals who have the money to afford it and very much might not have the time to get value out of a different model of content that other people are proposing.
The kinds of features in a DLC pack that you find value in and what value all depend on personal circumstances like:
- How much expendable income do you have?
- How much gaming time do you have?
- What features of the game are most appealing to you?
- What features of the game wear our their welcome real quick?
Trying to decipher this into a universal formula but looking at IO Interactives annual reports or talking about how Activision is actually an evil company (a statement I personally agree with) is largely ridiculous because it has nothing to do with anything from the consumer perspective.
If you want to change how the gaming industry works then you’re going to have to do a lot more than talk on a forum. As mentioned, its a microcosm of the current economic system we live in and those systems have always been complicated.
Assuming you’re not planning on using this thread as a means of launching an alternative model such as Socialism, then before you can even make an informed guess on IO-Interactive’s “greed” or Hakan’s house you’d need to know a lot of information that simply isn’t in the annual reports.
- What kind of long term overheads is IO-Interactive locked into
- What are the predicted depreciations on their assets, tangible and intangible
- How much of the profit needs to go into capitalization, how much of capitalization comes from special pitches such as PS VR, etc
- How many of these pitches can they reasonably expect to line up in the future, based off the reactions to previous pitches
- How many key staff are committed to staying over what periods and how many might need to be replace, how might those changes impact the flow of business
- What conditions in the EU, Denmark and Sweden as well at the world at large may impact their business and business model
All these things matter because they’re important for distinguishing between different studios and models. Activision, for example, has been infamous for always looking for opportunities to reduce creative staff and even spent millions in helping lobby for a very specific tax loophole in order to reduce their future overheads.
Not only is that a much bigger deal ethically and morally, it’s also a huge deal economically since if you’re paying 20% less in overheads on a product, of course you can make it cheaper compared to your competitors and thus skew the market in favour of those who also do such things.
That’s just one of many factors that should actually be in consideration.
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Eh…? No, what do you mean with that?
Yes, from the info I have about the content of said DLC I personal feel it is a bit greedy, it’s not about if I can afford it or not, I can, but right now it looks a bit overpriced compared to the content I’m getting for 300,- NOK which is 249,- NOK away from buying the whole game, in other words it’s over half the price of the base game price.
I don’t care about his house, I haven’t even said anything about anybody’s house.
Must we really consider all these things just for a DLC? If it was a whole game release I would agree.
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I mean, nobody’s forcing you to, but IOI are definitely considering them when planning DLC. It’s straightforward business planning stuff.
That’s essentially the same thing. IO Interactive does not and cannot give out sufficient information for us to make informed assessments like this because many of its business matters will be tied up in confidence and non-disclosure agreements. This is why speculating on the stock market is hard.
I would think he was possibly having a stroke since that would be an extremely irrational announcement for him to make. I also do not particularly trust executive assessments since they are, it turns out, human and susceptible to human fallibility and unforeseen events.
I am sure the executives at IO Interactive have a basis why they believe the price is correct, I am sure a different set of executives would have a different assessment and I am sure if IO interactive were a different company then the basis of facts would be different enough that both sets of executives would have a different conclusion.
All companies need money all the time, it is the basis for limited liability company and all companies tend to adapt based on what money they can expect and what the future is holding. A large number of companies in New Zealand have had to change their business models radically to deal with the changes that the closed borders have caused - there are car rental places now mostly do deliveries, restaurants that never did delivery before that now focus on takeout that can be easily delivered, etc. Some of them are doing better on paper, most of them are doing worse, all of them wish they were doing better and would make changes if they thought it’d increase the amount of money.
What actually creates problems and the perception that companies are greedy is when successsful companies skip obligations simply pad their profit lines such as:
- Amazon, Walmart, etc spreading misinformation and engaging in union busting to keep labour costs down even though doubling salaries for most workers would not impact their bottom line in any meaningful way
- Activision-Blizzard and friends engaging in tax avoidance then using that to fund products that effectively squeeze on the competition and increase their market share, or underprice their products to make the competitors look bad
- Valve, Epic, CD Projekt Red, etc using their money they receive from their storefronts to put freebies in their own games and make them look like objectively more generous studios (thus pushing their sales up).
- Free to Play games essentially preying on people who haven’t achieved financial responsibility through social pressure and manufactured discontent to push their profits up without adding value to their products
Not “over values their custom mission packs”
Literally the entire games market - gamers have limited money to spend and limited time to play games, therefore if you want to sell games you need to priority to people to buy.
Discussion of meaningful things that improves the conversation is essentially the purpose of the forum. That includes things like:
- “Why I like …”
- “Why I don’t like…”
- “Why I think x is a bargain…”
- “Why I don’t think y is worth z dollars…”
Provided they actually include useful information that is of interest to the other forum members.
Posting a tangential rant about your current vision of the game industry in macro is unlikely to be helpful to anyone who is thinking about whether they will enjoy the DLC or not, and not really of interest to anyone who doesn’t think about this stuff themselves.
Posting a tangential rant about the current games industry which contains mostly supposition or goes into nonviable comparisons, talks about how this would be bad if this was a different company or proposes “back in the old days we never had problems” is actively detracting from the conversation.
Well no not if you want to just discuss it as a thing on your own personal basis.
That’s why I split all this stuff from the original topic but left in the people saying things like “I don’t think I’ll get x amount of value on this.” and “I woudln’t pay x if its going to be y, but I probably would if it includes z.” etc.
But if you want to speculate on the business side of it - well if you want to play the game, you’ve got to learn to play it right.
But from the business economics perspective, the only major difference between the whole game and the dlc is that the dlc is going to have a much smaller potential market (since to buy the dlc, one must own the game but not vice versa) and so does need to have a higher price/cost ratio to be viable since its going to have less sales.
But even that gets into complicated questions of projections of sales of the main game, projections of sales of dlc, how many people may refuse to buy the main game on “principle” and how many may now buy the main game because the dlc makes the total potential value of interest to them, etc.
Then of course, to work out the relative costs you’d have to know things like how IO Interactive is capitalizing this. If its just from sales then that’s different for them if they say took out a loan or if its being part sponsored by Epic Games so they can get more info on DLC sales models. If it was sales then it raises the question of did they budget in advance or after they saw the sales spike? Did they run this project to keep some teams working while they pre-produce the other projects or did they do it purely as a product piece?
As I said, this stuff is infinitely complex.
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My only beef is that too many who make the claim that IOI are evil because they are not giving away more free content, and charging their customers for their product.
The video game industry is at a cross-roads, where almost every AAA video game has major cost overruns, and too many video games are now brought to market in an overly buggy alpha build. Covid has made it worse, but it was bad before COVID.
There are too many working at video game companies with major burnout, with very young employees with mental burnout having to work in “crunch” for years. The majority of video games released on Steam are never purchased, even though many small indies spent years putting together their best effort.
H Abrak discussed how he had to pull himself off the tunnel traveling in his car between Malmo and Copenhagen, out of stress and fatigue in putting together Hitman2016 and dealing with its failure and aftermath. When Forest Swartout Large joined the team after Sapienza was released, she was asked to step in and take over with Marrakesh because everyone at IOI was burned out after Sapienza. After spending four years in development of Hitman2016 after Absolution in 2012, it was depressing how almost no one bought the episodic release of Hitman2016.
IOI had Square Enix knocking at the door, telling them that they were headed to a big failure with Hitman2016. IOI picked themselves up, kept going and negotiated with Square Enix to keep their Hitman IP and put together Hitman 2 on a small budget. They have come out surviving, but it wasn’t easy.
IOI has listened to their fanbase and produced a high quality, polished product in Hitman III that most enjoyed. I feel for this little company, and I think that more should have faith that they are not out to cheat their customers. It is almost offensive to listen to discussions that IOI are “evil” and out to scam their fanbase, when all they are doing is both run a business, and create a product that they love themselves.
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I just think it’s possible to acknowledge that season passes have always been a gross practice without being weird or conspiratorial about it
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I don’t know, I like to have a pack that includes all extra content when I come to the conclusion the base game is very fun. Such packs are usually less expensive than each DLC on it’s own.
I value games by the time I invest in it. In the case of Hitman, I guess it would have been worth to spend twice as much as I did since I replay things often and spend much time in experimenting or contract mode. Which is why my personal value of stuff like escalations, which I rarely play, is much lower than a map with contract mode access.
It is easy for me to see that my preference is only indirectly relevant to the prices IO puts on their products and that I am not the average Hitman player.
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A bit off-topic, but can I use this post to rant about the pricing of the Deluxe Pack? Need to get this off my chest.
(Prices in Indian Rupee)
Standard Edition - 1419 (what I own)
Deluxe Edition - 2129
Price difference - 710
Now you’d expect that the price of Deluxe Pack would be somewhere near that price difference or a bit more than that, but nope it’s almost 3 times the price difference at 1899. More than the base game itself! I’m sorry but how does this make sense? Is IOI trying to tell me that 6 escalations and some items are worth more than the whole freaking game?
So, anyway, I patiently wait for the game to go on sale and that finally happened a few days back on Epic Games store. But guess what, every single Edition and Access Pack are on sale except for one - the Deluxe Pack. So, now hilariously the Deluxe Edition itself costs lesser than the Deluxe Pack for the next 2 weeks. It’s like they don’t want me to buy the Deluxe Pack…
Screenshots of pricing -
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There are absolutely games/genres I love enough to know I want everything that comes out, so saving a bit by buying it all at once ahead of time is a nice option. Don’t know why that would be considered “gross” when if you’re not down for that you could just wait and see if the content is for you?
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I would perhaps try and contact someone about this. That price seems extraordinarily high, to the point it surely must be an error
The Deluxe Pack being ~50% of the price of the standard edition is what it’s been for basically all regions I’ve seen (so the 710 difference you initially calculated/stated seems about right). I doubt IO/Epic are trying to do a 300% price hike just for Indians on this one specific pack
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@IOI, you must fix this…
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Yeah, I remember there were problems around launch with the Epic store in other regions having ridiculously inflated prices. They finally fixed it for most places though.
@Adil15101 post your issue in this thread and tag Travis.
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