Determinance screenshot

Live

Things are progressing well at Mode 7 Towers US: both myself and my esteemed colleague have been busy so apologies for the lack of updates.

However, I’m actually here to weigh in on the issue of Lumines Live.  I’m sure everyone reading this already knows the details, so I’ll go straight to my take.

The most offensive thing is that you pay £10 and get a full game mode and four demos.  People would be a lot less pissed if all of the demos were free, and £10 just got you that one full game mode.  MS obviously think that giving you more for your money makes your more likely to buy it, but in this case it’s just the opposite: buying demos is hideously against most gamers’ are used to.  I don’t particularly mind being given the option of paying £10 for Lumines Classic (or whatever), with the understanding that over the next six months there will be five other releases in the Lumines “family”.  Paying money for a partially completed shell is something we’re not used to and don’t like.  The difference is largely aesthetic, but these people are supposed to be catering to what we want.

The real issue here is one that’s misunderstood everywhere I go.  People say that the Lumines Live system gives us choice: that instead of just having to pay £30 for everything you can pay less and get what you want.  Here’s why that’s false: there is no world in which Lumines would ever cost £30 on Live.  No one would buy it.  Microsoft knows that £10 is the absolute maximum they can charge for anything on Live – they have chosen to give us less for it, and nickel-and-dime us later on.

When I buy a game, I want the entire thing implicitly.  I want to explore around the thing and find what I like, and what I don’t, and consider it as a whole.  MS have complete control over the Live channel, and thus competition won’t stop this kind of thing happening.  Luckily the PC space has no such controls, so I believe we’re safe from it in the long run.

Finally, Oblivion mods.  Bethesda get a bit of a pass because (a) they’re mainly doing all the litte expansion packs for the 360 audience anyway, and (b) because they actually listened to the majority (not me, but at least the majority) and tried to find a price/content point which worked.  I can’t imagine wanting to buy a half hour quest for a game like Oblivion, it seems to break the immersion so massively.  I’m all for add-on packs with considerable new content, costing more.

I don’t like these small add-on packs because something we used to get for free has now become commercialised.  I wish it would stop.  But I will concede that there’s a possibility that this entire farce will result in a world where all new games are £10, and are shells.

This entry was posted on Friday, October 20th, 2006 at 6:25 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Leave a Reply