Gears of War content

Ok, so if we were to decide that this isn't a bad thing that we're being charged for content that the people who actually worked on it want to provide it as free content, the fact is that it's overpriced given the circumstances. Taking a look at the situation: Epic wants to give Gears of War owners 4 maps for free. MS wants them to charge. Are we to determine from this that $10 for the 4 maps ($2.50 each) is a COMPROMISE? Does this mean that MS wanted to charge $20 for these 4 maps and 800 Marketplace points was the happy medium between free and "screw you in the butt" expensive? Not a chance. To me this seems that MS is calling all the shots in the pricing. Let's also consider this: Gears of War by now has certainly sold more than 4 million copies.

From what I understand of the gaming industry from listening to the Gaming Steve podcast, when a game goes on sale it takes about 1 million in sales to pay for the expenses of developing the game, marketing the game, etc, and everything after that is profit. We'll suppose for now that a next-gen game takes 2 mil in sales to break even. As was previously reported, Gears cost $10 mil to develop and has likely sold 4 mil+. 4 million copies times at LEAST $60 a piece (where's the promise of "all MS Game Studio published games will be $50, huh MS?) = $240,000,000. That's $240 million, boys and girls. Base. I know I purchased the collector's edition, I know a friend of mine did too. There is no damn way that MS and Epic haven't both made their money back and then some.

I don't buy this MS sob story of it took lots of money to market for a second. This is GREED. Now let's also suppose half of the Gears owners shell out for the additional content. That's another $20 mil. Rumor says MS makes 50% of the profits of content on the XBLM, so that's $10 mil for them. They made a killing off of the retail game and  they're now hoping to make a mint off of people who will not be able to wait 4 months to play the new maps. Sad thing is, they will. I know it. As seems to be the trend, people on the internet would rather shell out for the content and then bitch about it after the fact instead of having a pair and speaking with their wallet by not purchasing overpriced content.

Point is, $10 for 4 maps is probably on what I'd consider the top tier, just before being way too expensive. Unfortunately, that's what the bar for map pack pricing has basically been set at with games like Perfect Dark Zero. Until a point in time when another company starts releasing similar map packs for less, or until Sony gets off their ass with downloadable content and offers it for less than similar / same content on 360 Marketplace, we're going to have to pay that much for maps. If you think it's too much, stop paying now. Get a friend to do the same. $10 for maps that are supposed to be free is highway robbery. If you'll remember, not too long ago Cliffy B made a blog post talking about 12 maps they had in development that were going to be free. 12. So far we've gotten 2 free maps (courtesy of sponsorship; you rock, Discovery Channel and FutureWeapons!) and 4 maps for $10 (for 4 months' time). Does this mean that by the time we've received all 12 of these maps we'll have had to pay at least an additional $20 because MS will think the rest of them shouldn't be free either because they game didn't sell well enough that they're bleeding money? Think about it. Make excuses, but you're being ripped off whether you recognize it or not. Tell me I'm wrong, tell me why, see if you can convince me.