Microsoft, dont like freebies
- Thread starter blueshift
- Start date
Epic wants to release content for free, of which they had no problems with Raven Down and Old Bones, but this time Microsoft wants them to charge.
Personally, I think Microsoft is being incredibly irritating here - they are really pushing this 'pay for every little thing' agenda, and it's just not good for the gamers. They deliciously retort to criticism with the line 'vote with your wallet' - but everyone knows that doesn't work. We already pay through the teeth on unfinished and unpatched games (most major releases have day one or week one fixes), and now the developers themselves are told they can't even give us their own stuff anymore. It's madness. We're seeing an increasing trend of games that come with all the 'downloadable' content already on the disc, but you have to pay extra to download them! (classic example would be the files that are only a few KB in size, yet give you whole constumes, stages and levels to select from)
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If I was Mark Rein, I would have told Microsoft to **** off, and ported Gears of War to the Playstation 3.
Personally, I think Microsoft is being incredibly irritating here - they are really pushing this 'pay for every little thing' agenda, and it's just not good for the gamers. They deliciously retort to criticism with the line 'vote with your wallet' - but everyone knows that doesn't work. We already pay through the teeth on unfinished and unpatched games (most major releases have day one or week one fixes), and now the developers themselves are told they can't even give us their own stuff anymore. It's madness. We're seeing an increasing trend of games that come with all the 'downloadable' content already on the disc, but you have to pay extra to download them! (classic example would be the files that are only a few KB in size, yet give you whole constumes, stages and levels to select from)
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That's an example! It's well known that the algorithms and coding for Expert Mode was already on the disc for Kameo.Bonjour said:
If I was Mark Rein, I would have told Microsoft to **** off, and ported Gears of War to the Playstation 3.
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http://gearsforums.epicgames.com/showthread.php?t=567201&page=2
"Epic thinks the way to maximize the return on Gears of War is to give the maps away for free and Microsoft thinks the way to maximize the return on Gears of War is to sell the maps. So what we’ve agreed to do is to put these maps on sale at a reasonable price then make them free a few months later. They did this with the original Halo2 map pack and it was a huge success. Lots of people bought the maps and lots of people downloaded them when they became free. That’s what is going to happen and it seems like a fair compromise for both companies and a win-win for Gears players."
From Mark Rein
Sounds like a good agreement to me, not overly fussed about new maps but when they are free i will pick them up.
Also the new gametype called Annex will definetely be free and will be available on all current maps.
"Epic thinks the way to maximize the return on Gears of War is to give the maps away for free and Microsoft thinks the way to maximize the return on Gears of War is to sell the maps. So what we’ve agreed to do is to put these maps on sale at a reasonable price then make them free a few months later. They did this with the original Halo2 map pack and it was a huge success. Lots of people bought the maps and lots of people downloaded them when they became free. That’s what is going to happen and it seems like a fair compromise for both companies and a win-win for Gears players."
From Mark Rein
Sounds like a good agreement to me, not overly fussed about new maps but when they are free i will pick them up.
Also the new gametype called Annex will definetely be free and will be available on all current maps.
Found a bit more info on this new gametype...
A fourth multiplayer mode, called "Annex", will be available in the next patch for Gears of War. In Annex, you win by keeping control over key map locations, or objectives, long enough to collect a winning number of points. Every map has two to five identified objectives available for capture, with one objective active at a time. Objectives are based on map weapon-spawn locations and have a potential value of 60 points toward either team’s score. Teams collect those points by maintaining ownership of an objective until all its 60 points have been distributed. Every second that a team controls an objective, the team gets one point. When an objective falls to zero points, the next objective is selected at random
Source...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gears_of_War
Halo 2 'King of The Hill' anyone?
A fourth multiplayer mode, called "Annex", will be available in the next patch for Gears of War. In Annex, you win by keeping control over key map locations, or objectives, long enough to collect a winning number of points. Every map has two to five identified objectives available for capture, with one objective active at a time. Objectives are based on map weapon-spawn locations and have a potential value of 60 points toward either team’s score. Teams collect those points by maintaining ownership of an objective until all its 60 points have been distributed. Every second that a team controls an objective, the team gets one point. When an objective falls to zero points, the next objective is selected at random
Source...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gears_of_War
Halo 2 'King of The Hill' anyone?
KNiVES said:
It is like Silver Membership now. For a while now those who pay for Gold get demos, trailers etc early, those who don't pay and have Silver have to get *** download (for free) about 2-4 weeks later.
I don't agree with MS charging for the maps if the creator wants them to be free tbh. Stinks of hypocrisy.
When EA started having DLC packs that "unlocked" game modes or bosses in numerous 360 games the official stance seemed to be, from MS, "We don't have control over what game devs release on marketplace and what they charge for it"
Now it seems they can control the content and the price.
I don't think a closed network where Microsoft dictate the prices and content (which it now seems they do) can be good for the community in the long run. Plus I seem too recall it has always been stated that the extra stuff for GOW would be free. Whilst it was free you could understand that maybe they were forced to rush out the game and leave bits out but they would repay you by making this content free. Now it doesn't seem so.
that is all
rp2000
KNiVES said:
while it is a reasonable compromise the fact that the compromise is one of a developer being told by the platform holder to provide after-sales extras for monetary value only is one of the most worrying trends to appear in gaming. While I am no way saying this will be a 360 only problem the fact that this dev has been made to go against one of their core practices by ms in such an open manner, is this an example of an abuse of market position by ms?
So how many more do they have to sell to make up for the millions they lost to begin with?
Why would they give content away for free? It's a business with the sole purpose of making money, not some kind of charity for gamers who get their knickers in a twist if they think they are missing out on something for free.
If people like GoW so much a couple of quid for some additional maps is good value. If you don't like it enough to pay then hang on a few months for the free version. /shrug
Why would they give content away for free? It's a business with the sole purpose of making money, not some kind of charity for gamers who get their knickers in a twist if they think they are missing out on something for free.
If people like GoW so much a couple of quid for some additional maps is good value. If you don't like it enough to pay then hang on a few months for the free version. /shrug
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People dont seem to realise that Mircosoft gaming devision is still in the red by millions/billions and will be sometime before they are back in the black (dont have exact figures sorry). Also Mircosoft spent millions on advertising and publishing Gears of War so why wouldnt they expect maximum return on a product they invested millions of their own money into? If you dont want to pay for the maps simply dont 
Although it looks like they are going to do the same thing as Bungie did with the multi-player map pack for Halo 2. Pay a premium to get it early or wait a few months and get the maps for free.
Turns out that they have had 4 maps ready for months now and they havent been able to release them because of this dispute with Mircosoft, but it looks like it has been solved (I think!) going by whats been said on Epics forums so we might see them soon
Although it looks like they are going to do the same thing as Bungie did with the multi-player map pack for Halo 2. Pay a premium to get it early or wait a few months and get the maps for free.
Turns out that they have had 4 maps ready for months now and they havent been able to release them because of this dispute with Mircosoft, but it looks like it has been solved (I think!) going by whats been said on Epics forums so we might see them soon
Soldato
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Athanor said:
Its not their content to give away or not the actual owner and creator of the content wanted to give it away free, but m$ force all console owners to use there propietry systems to update content. Meaning that the content owner cannot distribute the content in any other way.
Kreeeee said:
You don't understand my arguement of what M$ is thinking.
You buy Windows = you buy 360 with xbox dash.
windows update free = xbox dash update free.
Now, you buy Blizzard StarCraft = you buy GOW.
You pay for StarCraft expansion pack = You'll pay for GOW expansion pack.
Problem here is MS wants you to pay although they don't own the content. Probably because the end users are using MS live service to download it so they want money for their service.
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They are near enough identical game modesrp2000 said:
The issue here is that BroodWar expansion pack = 3 new single player stories, a ton of new multiplayer maps and a few new units for each race. I'm happy to pay for an expansion pack ala GRAW1 where it is an expansion pack but paying for a mere 2 new multiplayer maps and a new game mode is retarded.wiltonson said:
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