$15 too much for downloadable content?
 

I could be wrong but Chapter 2 of Ghost Recon: Advanced War Fighter for $15 (1200 points) is the most expensive content out on Xbox Live Marketplace.

While balking at the price, I play enough Graw and anticiptate enough enjoyment from playing with friends to get "15 bucks worth".

They seem to give you a lot for the download but I think that half of that price is more appropitate for most gamers.

I like downloadable content, expansion packs and addons but just hope that publishers don't hold back on the original title to extort more from consumers.

I definitely find it to be way overpriced, but I guess if these things actually sell we can expect much more of this.

Didn't the Halo 2 map pack originally cost $20?

How can you expect a developer to continue development on something and not expect that investment to be returned by way of some form of revenue generating thing. They can set their price at $15 or $20 as long as they are giving you good value for your money. They wouldn't be able to be successful if they continually offered content like two multiplayer maps for that price, or something similar.

Put it into perspective though. This is the price of like a third of a full retail game, yet it is just a mediocre expansion that adds like 5% more to the game. Nobody's saying it should be free, but obviously $15 is a complete joke.

It would have to depend on the content. Does it improve any problems the game had? Add some much appreciated multiplayer maps? Maybe some new single player maps? How about more weapons?

Look on the bright side, they could've easily packaged it as a full retail game and charged you 50 bucks. Expansions are nothing new, as PC games certainly have their share of them and for the most part they greatly add to the original game.

This is the worst deal I've ever heard of. The fact that the game released with only a chapter one shows that this was intended to be included with the game anyway, but they released the game early for full price and are now trying to charge us even more for something so trivial.

At least with the Halo 2 map pack, you get a physical case & instruction manual, bonus videos, NINE maps, and you can install it as many times as you want on as many consoles as you want.

Also, the Halo 2 maps became FREE after 3 months of waiting for those that didn't think it was already a good deal. I guarantee all this overpriced rip-off shit on marketplace won't be free after 3 months.

Fixing any problems with the game should be done in patches and considered maintenance, not content. I wouldn't pay $20 for like 4 maps. I wouldn't pay $15 for some maps and some tiny amount of additional content. I wouldn't pay $10 for a glorified bug fixing patch. But if they want to offer a significant amount of new content, then I can see paying $20 for it. I don't know how many of you are familiar with Diablo II, but the 1.10 patch would be something I would consider the benchmark for a $10 content download.

I'm surprised at the price of this for a GR game. All the previous GR games have had a lot of downloadable content and normally free or I think £5 for one of the upgrades for GR 2. Hell, both Island Thunder and Summit Strike were released for only £20 and whilst the engine is the same as their respective predecessors, they're both full games.

I wouldn't bother with this (If I owned GRAW), not only because of the cheeky price but because from what I've played of GRAW it's a huge departure from the gameplay of the previous titles and I wasn't too impressed at all (Wtf is with that leaning into cover shit and the neon outlines?).

so you'd rather they pushed the release date back and released it all at once?

some people are never happy.

Yes! Why the hell don't developers do that? Was there really some insane reason you needed this game out right now, and could not stand to wait a couple more months? If I'm paying upwards of 60 bucks on a game, I want to see a polished, finished product, not something that's completely buggy thanks to being rushed into production. I don't want to have to download more maps, at a cost, because the developers didn't put enough in there to keep gamers satisfied. Damn!

Well, I'm pissed off. Just heard today that the PC version of this download is FREE. I am sure the PC version has not sold anywhere near as well as the Xbox360 version (trying to create more value for the PC?) but this is really bad PR.

Based on Internet responses, it seems that 9/10 posts are negative on the pricing but it took me around 14 hours to download the update. It was around 780 megs in size. Size withstanding, the servers must have been hammered to take that long.

I was going to try and make a scientific comparasion on whether Chapter 2 really carried enough content to justify a 25% retail premium on the game or not - but free PC release is messed up.

I'll check it out tonight or tommorow to try and see if Ubisoft put in production value that in their mind might justify a $15 dollar cost.

I think that more than 5% has been added to game, some might say 25% if you broke it down feature by feature.

So if they tried to justify it mathematically $15/60 and 25%/100% should not be equilivent in this case. They should have recouped a lot of their investment on the initial sales and an expansions should provide good value to the consumers.

In terms of content, It's published as:

4 New Co-Op Missions.
8 Existing Maps remixed (different lighting conditions)
2 New Multiplayer Modes
2 New Camo Patterns
4 New character faces to customize
5 New Weapons

I haven't played any of the previous GR's but pound for pound you definently believe GRAW gamers are getting less content for their money?

As far as GRAW itself goes, maybe give it more of a chance? It is a good game that got better as it progresses. The "concept" of GRAW is Advanced Warfighting in a futuristic setting. The neon outlines is to signify unarmed aerial vechicles and your team mates giving you real time updates on live targets and their range on a HUD over your eye. This is stuff we will see 15 years from now. Also, leaning into cover is important because you have weapons with camera's that lets you shoot around corners or a safe place to leverage your other assets such as Apaches, Bradley's and Abrams.

To reiterate what Capo said, yeah. Getting your money's worth is always a nice perk, you know? A solid finished product is ALWAYS better than some half finished crap. Expansion packs are one thing, but charging that much for a small bundle of content seems silly.

Tony brought up that point that it's a sizable amount of content. Expansion packs tend to be about or almost as big as the original product, this is not that big an update. 5 bucks seems reasonable for what you get. No more.

On a side note: This is one of the things I was scared of when Live went with the MSP system. I was hoping it'd take a bit before developers pushed out half finished games and started charging extra for the other half. I have nothing against map packs and the like, but this seems like a large chunk of content that easily could have shipped with the game had it's release been pushed back a tiny bit. This seems like a huge money grab. Lame. Especially since it won't ever go free later on like the Halo maps eventually did.

I'm not saying it's a bad game, it's just not traditional GR. Online, the guns with cameras are known as noob cannons coz you damn near can't be hit when you're using one and personally I find the most fun parts of GR are the sneaking around in the bushes outflanking your enemy rather than calling in airstrikes and shit. GRAW is too hectic really.

Also, you could hide behind cover perfectly well before by standing behind it and using the lean button. Having to attach yourself to cover is helluva annoying.

The contents of that bundle is what was given away free for Summit Strike pretty much. Looks like a shameless cash in to me...

I LOVE the concept of the marketplace and XBLA but I'm also scared about the point you brought up. If you release a full featured product and then develop a full featured expansion pack for release later that is fine. Where the finished product starts and the expansion starts later, who knows? I guess it will be a product by product comparasion that users will vote with their dollars. It will be hard for them to make this content as a free download later as people have already paid money for it. :(

As far as extra content goes, the Graw chapter 2 is the most ambitious yet with an ambitious price tag. Truth be told, there isn't a whole lot of XBLM content out there yet. With more games and more content, I am sure publishers will have to compete for those dollars. Any guesses on how much Street Fighter 2 will run for?

Edit: I was mistaken that PC users got the same content for free.

http://forums.xbox.com/5015786/ShowPost.aspx

So not quite the same. I'd complain about the map editor but the XB360 is not a feasible platform to create maps on. ;)

It's basically console gaming turning into PC gaming, what with the unfinished products being shipped.

but nobody was complaining that GRAW was 'half finished crap' back when it was released. I thought it was well received by the gaming community and IMO its one of the best xbox circle games yet.

Well, I thought GRAW was crap for the same reasons Shin did. It takes the Ghost Recon out of Ghost Recon. Lame. ;_;

Although you are correct in stating that it was widely well recieved, it is clear that since it's not been out that long that this content was either half ready or at least in some stage of development as the game went Gold. I could be compeltely wrong here but it seems like this sort of thing could have been added to the final game code with just a short delay in release.

Then again, the game could be completely modular and easy to create new content for, much like Oblivion. I could be completely wrong. I don't really know. It just feels like a ripoff. I dunno how else to say it.

Like I said before, all the other GR games has DL content released soon after they came out. The difference is we only once had to pay for it before (and that was only £5).

Agreed.

That's what hurts most about this DL content, the fact that it is overpriced, and it seems that much worse when compared to the overwhelming plethora of free content that was given away with Ghost Recon: Island Thunder and Splinter Cell & Pandora Tomorrow. It just seems like a drastic departure from their old ways.

And there's no way in hell I'm gonna waste 1200 points on "re-lit" maps. Nope, not gonna happen.

Are any of the maps now in compete darkness like Bunker Hill:Redux in Summit Strike coz all the best matches happened there. Siege games in total darkness are so tense, especially when everyone has a silenced weapon.

Of course, not necessarily $15 worth of awesome...

To add my two cents, I think that it's ridiculous that companies think they can get away with such outrageous pricing. $15 isn't really that much money, but in the context of full games that cost $20, it certainly seems more than a little ridiculous.

You also have to remember, it took them relatively very little work to produce that content. They didn't have to develop the engine or do much technical work at all. It was really just content creation, and any experienced developer knows that is usually the quickest and easiest part.

That makes the price all the more painful.

COD2 just realized an additional map pack for 800 points. The map pack includes 5 new maps. I dont have COD2 yet so I have no idea how the quality is but it seems in relative terms that this recent pack is more expensive than Ghost Recon's.

Well, just to put this down, I absolutely loved GRAW, but hated every other Ghost Recon on the market. The Co-op was great, even multiplayer is terrific to me.

Anyway, in my opinion, I don't give a damn if the PC has benefits or not, if it's free via PC, it should be on a console. It's like a father feeding his own kids a dinner, and giving a piece of bread to his step-child. You can't really favor the other. Of course if you have to get paid but in my opinion the only way you will make money is if you expand (which is what their doing)...when you make people pay for expanding is fine but to make one realm pay and the other is a load of crock. Expanding is teriffic because it will draw in more customers because some think "hey this game is bigger than before so maybe it's better/more fun than this game. their not expanding for no reason!" And I stand by this with Elder Scrolls: Oblivion. I will not buy any of that on XBL...but I have bought some XBLA though. :)