Marketplace Price Gouging

litheon attempts to defend Marketplace pricing.  It's actually quite amusing.
http://www.majornelson.com/archive/2007/08/14/in-game-content-guitar-hero-ii.aspx?PageIndex=6

"I'll try an appeal to logic here one last time.

First, these songs are licensed differently than any of the music you can download from an online music store. The current precedent for an individual song is generally 99 cents US, and seems to be widely accepted among online music stores. Seeing as there is no precedent for legally downloadable songs on an online-gaming distribution network the labels owning rights to the music being sold can really charge whatever they would like to without repercussion. That's not to mention that the songs you purchase online will be laden with DRM, which prevents you from using the songs exactly how you want anyway.

Now there's R&D for the actual programming behind the song. The content-creators need to make four difficulties that have to be programmed individually for both the lead and rhythm/base (so a total of eight different sets of frets for one song), star power needs to be added in for each of those parts, and each guitar stroke needs to be synched correctly with the music that is playing.

Now QA comes in. The content-creator will either have an in-house quality assurance team or they will hire a third-party team that will make sure the content is up to the quality standards of the label, and to the standards of the content-distributor (the Marketplace).

Then licensing comes back into play. You know that agreement they made so they can get the songs on the marketplace? Well now the label is going to want to make sure that their agreement is being held up, and that the song complies with the standards for that band's branding.

After that comes certification for the content's distribution. All of the technical certification requirements (TRCs) for the content to be distributed need to be run through. If any of the requirements fail it goes back to R&D, then QA, and maybe even back to the label to ensure their agreement is being held up. Keep in mind it is going to cost more to certify one piece of content at a time (like downloadable content), as opposed to an entire package of content (like a retail disc).

After it is certified it goes "Gold" and is cryptographically signed to indicate it has been certified and is played on a retail Xbox 360 console.

Once all is said and done the content needs to be deployed for customers to download. Microsoft uses Limelight Network's services to cache the content globally, which is far more expensive than having a single download point for all of the content that you would have on something like a website. Keep in mind your Xbox Live subscription does not at all help to pay for the bandwidth of a third-party's content distribution, as Xbox Live members that have a silver membership can just as easily download the content.

Keep in mind this content is being distributed so the content-creator can make at least some profit on it,

Now every single step in this process costs money, as there are labor and capital costs every step of the way.

All of this leaves the consumer with $2.17 US per song. That's not bad considering all the steps involved in getting it from the content-creator to the hard drive of the consumer.

Now keep in mind they could lower the cost per song by bundling more songs in each pack, but that would increase the price per pack. The way they are distributing allows them to keep the price at least a little bit reasonable, and lets the consumer have a choice in the packs they want to purchase. For people that like My Chemical Romance they will probably buy this pack, for people who don't they can just leave it aside.

Also this game has yet to be released on any other next-generation console, and the PS2 version does not support downloadable content; and when you're trying to make a logical argument it generally helps to use actual evidence rather than pure opinion and spelling the name of the person you're arguing with correctly wouldn't be a bad idea either."

If you are like me, you never have and never will pay 500 points for a Guitar Hero II song pack.  As much as I love the game, the price is outrageous.  500 MS Points = $6.25.  That means purchasing the original 48 songs included with Guitar Hero II from the Marketplace would cost $100.  That would of course be sans guitar and game disc.  While litheon attempts to use workflow to justify pricing, I am just not buying it.  They have a cash-cow hit on their hands and they are milking it for everything its worth. 

If Gears of War weren't the #1 the game on Xbox Live, would they have attempted to justify charging for the new maps when Epic very publicly stated they preferred the content to be free; however, Microsoft would not let them.

The point system is also very lucrative.  Most consumers don't easily equate points to real dollars.  Thusly, it becomes easy to overspend and forget exactly how much you are spending.  Why do you think arcades have moved to tokens rather than quarters?  Once you have purchased the points, they have your money whether you use it or not.  It then becomes easy to justify the purchase of something since the real cost becomes obscured by the points.

I have bought my fair share of Marketplace content, but I have to draw the line somewhere.