Lumines versus will cost you [update 1]

Yeah right these are Micro Transations not freaking full games.

soon.. pay per game..

hmm have a idea.. i create a free downable pinball game.. but you have to pay 20 cent per game.

There is no chance I'm paying that much for an arcade game.

I want this game but I will not buy it if versus mode is not included with the standard game download. I will not pay for features that should be standard and are being held back just to milk more money out of consumers. This is the truest example thus far, short of horse armor, of the slippery slope of microtranactions being used not to enhance gameplay in anyway but just to screw gamers over. I actually would have almost no problem with just charging me $20 right off the bat and giving me the whole thing but charging $15 and then offering this as something extra seems insulting and, as a matter of principal, I will not buy this game. Why can't some of these companies just understand that games like Table Tennis and Geometry Wars have it 100% right. You charge a little less than usual and get a ton more people to buy the game. Would I have bought Table Tennis for $60?Absolutely not. Would I have bought Geometry Wars for $15 day one, after dropping abou $600 for the whole setup already? No. You charge a little less, like they say they are planning to do with Street Fighter II, which is widely rumored to be $5 when it is released, and gamers, and lots of them, are more than willing to give your game a go and love it, Uno being a great example. Just don't insult us by selling us an overhyped game at a much higher price than necessary and then offer us an "extra" download filled with a feature that should be standard on anything sold over XBLA, the ability to use XBL to play along other people.

I smell horse armor.

Lumines is actually a typo... it is supposed to be "Lemmings"... as in mindlessly following the crowd. I've been the lone voice claiming that the whole live marketplace, especially arcade is a poor value. Non-transferrable, non-refundable games with no support.

Pay a few bucks for gamerpics and themes?! Only because Microsoft has locked the 360 down so tightly that we can't add our own media.

It is foolish to pay for add-on downloads to Oblivion, PGR3, etc. (if these were available on CD, that is a different story) What if you want to sell the game? You are stuck with the add-ons. What if you want to give the game away? You are stuck with the add-ons.

Microsoft is a student of history and they've taken a page right out of PT Barnum's handbook.

Having to pay an extra fee for multiplayer support is a bad joke –> No Lumines for me

Assuming the add-on is $5, that would make the game $20. It is a better deal than the PSP version by far; you can play it on an LCD screen that doesn't SUCK! =) *glares at PSP*

Not everyone will use multiplayer, so why require that we pay the extra $5? We sometimes forget that not everyone is using Gold Accounts.

The real problem is how these types of situations will evolve in the future. The horse armor, themes, and gamerpics are what to be concerned about. Those aren't adding features or extending replay value.

Am I the only one that really (and I mean really!) likes the whole XBLA, the microtransactions, the idea of offering games without features for less money. Actually, I LOVE the idea. I really like the ability to buy a game without multiplayer if I never intend to use that feature. People talk about how features "should have been included in the game." I don't agree with that one bit.

Why should I pay for a feature I might not use? I'm a casual gamer, and I cannot compete with 95% of the people online. I don't have the time to spend more than thirty minutes a day playing a game, so I can never get good enough to play online.

I played Oblivion. I bought the expansion for the Wizard's tower. I bought the expansion for the Orrery. I did NOT but the horse armor. It didn't appeal to me. Why should that microtransaction bother me, just because it is available to people that might want it?

Same thing here. Don't be angry because some people (who only want single player or who, god forbid, don't have high speed internet and only downloaded the game at a friends' house) get the game cheaper than you (who want and plan to use the online feature). People that don't play online have been subsidizing the online community for long enough. It's high time for them to get some recognition. Don't flame me because I think MS is forging new territory here, and their marketing has been brilliant. Finally, I play games online with friends. I find it incredibly enjoyable. I would just like the opportunity to not be forced to buy an online component when none of my friends have the game or when a mutliplayer aspect of a game just doesn't appeal to me.

--C.O.

Why be concerned and complain about these add ons when you can simply not buy them? Would anyone argue that Oblivion as it existed out of the box was not worth the price of a full game? So if the developers want to add stuff to keep people playing it and charge for that content, and people buy it. Why is that a problem? I saw that the horse armor was $2.50 and thought it was stupid so I didn't buy it. They released some new quests and I thought that was cool so I did buy them.

Lumines for the PSP was $30 when it came out. It's still $20 today. It is by far the game I play the most on my PSP. It was worth the $30. I have never played the multiplayer mode. So $15 for an XBOX360 version sounds like a bargain. And if I decide to try the multiplayer for another $5 then I will...or I won't. But I like having the choice. It is up to the individual user to decide if $15 for a non-multiplayer enabled Lumines is a fair price. And then speak w/ your wallet.

PC games have been selling mods and expansion packs for years and no one seems to have an issue with that. Just because you can download something from the XBL instead of buying a physical box, doesn't mean that content has any less value.

I don't think it's fair to say anyone is "subsidizing" online play. The only ones subsidizing it are the Gold subscribers that are paying for it. Not only that, but plenty of other -- cheaper -- XBLA games offer online play at no cost. And 360 games have a standard retail price whether they have Live play or not.

Online multiplayer *is* a standard feature. That's a hallmark of 360's entire strategy. Like I said, I'll pay for it, especially if it's only another 5 bucks, but it's a disturbing trend for XBLA games.

This whole direction the 360 is going is just so sad.

For years we've had mods on the PC for free, but not we have a system that can allow developers to dump out free content as an incentive to buy their overpriced $60 game. But instead, they offer it for an additional charge on top of it.

If I knew they were going to charge us at every corner ahead of time I wouldnt have dumped nearly half a grand on this console and spent $60 on each of these games. It's a crock.

Yeah, I'm gonna stick with my Hexic and Geometry Wars. Paying like $10 for Bejewled was as high as I'm willing to go with these little puzzle games. Let them sell Lumines for $20 on the PS3 Live-wannabe service; their fanboys are used to getting it up the arse in the pricing department anyway.

too much money, too little being offered...

pass

Attention game devs!

You do not have endless stores of goodwill you can convert to money. Squander the value of that goodwill account and it will take you years more to make that back. Is the quick profit worth it to you?

Also, many Xbox fans have never played Lumines, which means you have ZERO goodwill to convert to money with that crowd. Your conversion rate with them will be DISMAL.

You already have to pay to play online (gold subscription) and now there's a possibilty of having to pay again so you can use a game you've already paid for on the 'paid for' subscription service! And if you've followed that then you'll realise...

They're havin' a laff!!!

Please help me understand, but you're all just complaining to complain... yes? I just took a quick survey of online retailers found some interseting details. Used Lumines for psp = $17.99 pre-oder lumines plus for ps2 = $29.95 new lumines for psp on ebay = $24-$30.

So in other words, with the exception of a USED copy for psp, Lumines, complete with online multiplayer, not to mention all of the graphical improvement that no doubt comes from the transition from a handheld to next-gen console is going to cost LESS as in EVEN WITH MULTIPLAYER IT WILL COST YOU FEWER DOLLARS TO BUY/PLAY IT ON 360 THAN ANY OTHER CONSOLE... you're complaining? why? Seriously, spell this one out for me in little words, becuase I just don't see the down side here...

I love the people on here doing mathematics and business to try to justify this crock of shit we call "micropayments".

What I would like to know is,where is the money for Live going? I have to pay for pretty much every single thing on the Xbox,so where is my $50 for Live going? It can't be to keep the servers running smooth,because it takes me about 4 hours to download a game demo whereas it would be about 30 mins for the same demo on my PC.

This "micropayment" shit is a JOKE. They want me to pay $60 for a game,then MORE for a .gif file? These people are literally CHARGING you for a 4kb .jpeg and then saying it's "extra content". How about including it because I paid $60 DOLLARS FOR THE FUCKING GAME? Arcade games I can understand,but now these fuckers are claiming to charge me for GAME FUNCTIONS?!?! It's like saying that i'm going to have to go buy WWE Smackdown for $60 and then pay for match types like Hardcore matches,2 out of 3 falls,ect because "not every player wants these matches".

As much as I try,every day that passes makes it harder and harder to defend the Xbox 360 and Microsoft's idea of gaming. This shit makes me sick. Pathetic.

Sorry to double post.

Hey guys,I forgot that you can play music videos and stuff in the background of this game. But guess what guys?! I bet you everything you have to use "micropayments" for that too! You know that stuff that you get online free from MTV.com and VH1.com,those music videos? We get to pay for those too! YAAY!

I mean,Microsoft has to pay for the bandwith to host these musicvideos so of COURSE we will need to pay for them. Wait,I pay $50 a year for Live plus VH1.com hosts them and it's still free? You guys are crazy talkers!

The two problems, in my opinion, are that they are just using the multiplayer add-on as a way to get around the price restrictions on live arcade games and that live costs money in the first place. I can see why the makers of lumines want it to sell for around $20 and if they sold the hwole thing for that price I would be more than willing to buy it. The problem is that Microsoft has set price restrictions thus far on how much arcade games are aloud to cost and I don't think they should allow people to snake around these restrictions. Either change your policy and make it known or stick with what you've got and don't let people sneak around it. If they want to seel it for more, they should have to pay the price to make it a pressed disc with box design and all.

The second issue I have is that Microsoft charges us $60 a year for an online service that uses our own systems as servers in our games. Sure they use tons of their own servers for marketplace content, but they make money off of what they sell on marketplace. They're charging us money to use a service that's designed to make us spend more money. Whatever sort of handshake servers MS uses to set up live games, they aren't supercomputers and there shouldn't need to be that many of them.

Dear Microsoft, we've gone along with your screwed up live system for this long because you've done such a good job at taking care of us in the past. You've made sure the only headaches I get on live are from 12 year olds. Either get back to work and better police what developers try to pull on your service or stop screwing us over with the price.

Luke, you misunderstand how live works if you think there are no servers involved except for storing marketplace content.

There are in fact hundreds, if not thousands of servers that power xbox live and make it what it is. Sure we host individual game sessions on our 360s, but how do you think the track our stats, how do you think we find other users to connect to, how do you think the VoIP(aka chatting) works?

Your $60 a year pays for all of those servers, the staff required to maintain them, and developers who are constantly making improvements and changes to the xbox live service.

I am really amazed that there is not more outrage about this. I remember the horse armor thing and everyone got pissed, and the fact is: that was what this micro payment system was designed for! It is designed to sell you a texture pack for $0.50-$5.00. And guess what, people will/have/always buy it!

However, the micro payment system was not set up to sell part of a game at a time. These people need to either charge $15 and give you the entire game or charge $20 for the entire game but release it on a disc. At $20 for the game a publisher has become too greedy for XBLA. Saying that we are going to give you the game for $15 and charge $5 for online play is shit. If that is seriously the case then I demand that the $5 bit be at least 1/3 the file size of the game itself (because we all know the code is going to be in the $15 game and they are just going to have you unlock it by paying $5 like they unlock the demo’s to the full game in XBLA.) This is not episodic and does not add new quest, it is an update (like co-op online in Kameo) and should be free with the game. Moreover, this game should be no more than $10. They are not pouring extra development cost into conceptualizing, designing and programming this game. It’s a freaking PORT!

If Tetsuya Mizuguchi is a gamer at all, he needs to step back and look at the precedent he is about to set for the industry. He is about to take us down a slippery slope full of marketers and snake oil sales men. What if from now on you have to pay for every Oblivion update (not new quest mind you, I mean bug fixes and the such.) What if Bioware had charged for every NwN update because “it added functionality to the game” (yeah it made it freaking work the way it was designed too.) I am not saying that this is going to happen, I am just saying that charging per “feature” will lead down a road where charging for and “update” is a true possibility. So why don’t I just have my pay check set to direct deposit in your account Mr. Mizuguchi, and you give me a full game with life time support on day one.

I still remember a time when you bought a game for $XX.XX and you got all the updates and tech support for free.

This is false information . MP is, in fact, included.

This is an inaccurate article. Live is included.

Sweet, thanks!