$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.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

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

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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?).

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.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

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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 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.

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I see a lot of posts on here and on the Ubi forums about the people on PC not having to pay for this content.

This is totally ludicris.

The PC patch/map pack included fixes for the game, a map editor, and it made a few campaign maps playable in coop mode.

Does any of this sound like the Chapter 2 content?

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.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

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.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?