Pachter: Modern Warfare 2 could sell 14 million

“No-one cares what you do absolutezeroIQ.”

Oh snap I sure got told.

derp.

Pft.

“and they will sell map packs (Something that is unnacceptable).”

Companies charging for stuff they have spent time developing is unacceptable? With an attitude like that you wonder why the emphasis is more on the consoles?

I wouldn’t say that it was unnacceptable, but I would say that it’s arguably taking advantage of having the best game on the market and making money where previously things were free.

If Counter Strike, Battlefield, Crysis had free PC DLC, then I can see why MW2 PC players would expect the same.

It’s the expectation which is a problem though and will be to the long term detriment of the PC gaming industry. This stuff isn’t knocked together by one of the devs in their spare time any more. A single level takes a lot of work not to mention continued support. Why shouldn’t they charge the price of a couple of pints for it? “Because it’s always been free” doesn’t hold.

It’s time gamers woke up a little and smelt the coffee. If you want to go on enjoying gaming progressing as it has done over the years then it’s got to be paid for. Using stuff like lack of dedicated servers to justify stealing isn’t going to help one little bit.

I think you need to look at paid dlc one of two ways.

Your going to get it for free in the box at day one, and the game will cost 90usd to buy.

or:

Your going to spend 60usd to buy said game, and then three dlc map packs at 10usd each.

In the end its gonna be the samething. This is a way of video game downsizing. Gamers are paying more but don’t think they are because they have bought into the idea of “Game expansions” via dlc. I have all but stopped playing warhawk because I don’t have the map pack add ons and thus playing it w/o said add ons leaves me with very few games to chose from and sparsly populated ones at that. Could I buy the add ons? Yes, I could. But why would I want to drop another 15plus usd on that when I could download the wholey new game Fat Princess for the same price? In the end the paid DLC hurts Warhawk sales in the long term because of the same thing I just mentioned. At this point why would you buy cod4 for still nearly 60usd, and then the collection of add ons? You wouldn’t if you wanted to buy MW, you would wait for MW2 and pay just about the same price. Its counter productive. Plus you have alot of people that invested in the CoD MWone addons(spending 90plus usd on the game in all, and they may not be very excited about having to do the samething all over again in such a short period of time. And I didn’t even mention the last CoD WaW, same type of thing, lest that game was a different setting.

I wonder how much map pack dlc effects sales. Or if guys like Patcher even factor that into the equation. Most people buy CoD games for online MP. Why upgrade and respend, reinvest for basicly the same game experience?

@pracer
“At this point why would you buy cod4 for still nearly 60usd, and then the collection of add ons?”

Did you not get a game of the year edition over there then?

The flip side of DLC is that it helps maintain interest in the game and thus develops more sales.

“Plus you have alot of people that invested in the CoD MWone addons(spending 90plus usd on the game in all”

To be fair, only one map pack was released for CoD4.

You touch on a very good point though, which is the real longevity of todays online games. Once the next version is released, you can pretty much forget about playing any old versions, because hardly anyone else is going to be playing. DLC does a similar thing by almost forcing you to get the latest maps, or you’ll keep getting booted from playlists and have fewer options in general to choose from.

The thing is that this is excellent business for devs, because the consumer has to keep buying if he/she wants the best experience.

We can, even now, probably still go and dust off a SNES or a NES and Play Mario Kart or whatever for hours and get the same experience that we got from day 1. Our money that we spent way back then is still offering value, but I think that this is not going to be the case with gaming in the future.

The CoD5 map packs were released for free in PC patches.

Counter Strike has had alot of free DLC, the new payment model for one.
TF2s continuous free updates.
Battlefield 2′s latest patch included 2 booster packs that were previously charged for and an extra map on top of that for free.
L4D free updates.

“It’s the expectation which is a problem though and will be to the long term detriment of the PC gaming industry.”

Yeah, I agree. And this, bdh et al, (if you’re still out there) is why (hardcore) PC gaming has to change if it’s going to keep growing.

There are still player funded dedicated servers available for games as old as Kingpin and Unreal Tournament. Theres still people playing these games and those people are willing to pay in order to play them.

Try buying a first gen 360 game that has matchmaking and see if theres anyone online to play with. Dead or Alive 4, or Perfect Dark Zero for example. My guess is both will be completely dead. With no server window to check out player counts you are completely reliant on whatever the game finds for you.

Sorry my bad, I am getting CoD MW and CoD WaW mixed up.

And yea I agree with ya G1GA. I think eventualy will be paying into cloud like services where you will get the dlc for free as long as you keep paying. Because … wait for it …

Advert:

“Now for your enjoyment, grab the Map for Call of Duty States of War, for FREE. Thats right I said free.” -Proudly brought to you by Coke a Cola.

Gonna be like comercials or something, that will run each time you boot up the game. You wait will be something like The Guild, brought to you by Sprint. Good show btw.

But I think it will all be paid online subscriptions like TV is now. Sorta like cloud but different then we envision it right now.

@absolutzero

Sorry friend I play on consoles these days. And in that world ya gotta pay for most DLC.

“With no server window to check out player counts you are completely reliant on whatever the game finds for you.”

Not true for plenty of console games.

Having some free DLC is a nice gesture by the devs. Several games have released previously paid for content for free on consoles too (RSV1/2 for example). You have to look at it in this way though – it’s a nice gesture – it’s not your right to get this stuff for free.

I understand that completely, im not one of those I expect all this on a plate guys, I was just replying with a list of free DLC thats available on the PC to illustrate that it is out there. Theres precedent for it, even in the same series one game ago.

If it changes, it changes thats not really bothering me all that much, theres paid DLC available for Killing Floor for example.

Companies charging for stuff they have spent time developing is unacceptable?
Companies charging for stuff that people create for free is unnacceptable. Check out the UT3 forums. You can find douzens of high quality maps (probably more than a thousand in total), sometimes even with custom assets. Making a map is simple, cost almost nothing, and can be done by pretty much everyone after three hours learning how to use the tools.

What is unnacceptable, is that a publisher sells that kind of things that everyone can create.

I’m sorry, but the post launch support is what you expect from the pricetag of the box, especially for a game like this that is overpriced. Map packs are created most of the time before the game is released and selling them serves as a bonus for the publisher after the release.

What I’m saying is not that people shouldn’t be payed for their job, it’s that the profit margins on map packs and DLC in general are unnacceptable, especially with a game like Modern Warfare 2 that is going to sell millions of units and yet only cost 20 million dollars to produce.

I’m willing to pay 50€ for a game, and I do that all the time, but I’m sick of this business model where the biggest games like Modern Warfare 2 have huge profit margins and take advantage of the stupid userbase by selling loads of DLC, and where other games struggle to recoup from their development costs. (mostly because of publishers fees)

Once the next version is released, you can pretty much forget about playing any old versions, because hardly anyone else is going to be playing.
Have you ever tried to play Counter Strike 1.6, Tribes or Quake III ? There are still people playing them. And if I remember well, there are more people playing Unreal Tournament 2004 than Unreal Tournament III.

As for Killing Floor, I totaly agree with that kind of DLC, because it adds a non-gameplay related element, and allows you to support the developper if you want, but don’t force you to do so.

But I’m against paid DLC which adds gameplay-related content, because that’s just a way to hide a higher price which is not justified. Publishers have been rising the prices for several years now but they haven’t really raised the development budgets of the games. They have only been increasing their profit margins. And I’m sorry, but we don’t have to follow that tendancy.

It’s not the PC Gamers who have to start paying for more things, it’s the console gamers who should stop paying for random crap. And no, PC gaming is not going to die because there are still PC gamers who are willing to spend money for quality games made for the PC, as long as the price is reasonnable.