Major Nelson on GHII DLC, Halo 3, Sony

Boo hoo hoo "interactivity, licensing, and the testing..." Sorry Major, but I don't give a crap about your excuses. I'm sure it costs more than $60 to make a game like Dance Dance Revolution, but the developer and publisher make up the difference in volume. Most gamers won't pay more than $60 for a game, and we won't pay more than $1-$1.25 for a song. Charge more than that and your sales go down, and if you think the solution is to raise prices than you've failed economics 101.

On that Guitar Hero thing...Yeah...um....that's B*llSh*t. The actual gameplay aspects of these track were coordinated for a ps2 version that came out a couple years back.

And if someone says that it's like paying for music, it flat isn't. You cannot radio play or copy these songs. Heck, they aren't even the songs themselves but covers. B*llsh*t

All of the OG material should have been included in the Xbox360 version. NEW material should be paid for. Then you can charge whatever you want.

If it is cheaper to bundle the songs, how about bundling all the songs from GHI together and selling them for 59.99 on a disk in the store. Maybe they could call it GHI:Remastered.

BTW Atari and TestDrive are a perfect example of "how to" support your community and make some cash. Too bad that game doesn't get enough credit. They did some things game-play wise that deserve serious laurels.

i've got no problem with the pricing. while i would like it to be lower or free(and who wouldn't?), it's NOT THAT BIG OF A DEAL. don't pay and don't play if the price is too steep for you. Red Octone Harmonix, Microsoft and Activision DON'T OWE YO ANYTHING. no free songs, no cheap content, nothing but exactly what you pay for.

you paid for GH2, which stated that DLC would be available. they didn't promise a price. you saw the price up front and declined to pay it for the extra content. and it is EXTRA content. you aren't buying GH1. you're buying songs that were also in GH1. there's a big damn difference.

bitching that the GH1 songs should have been included in GH2 on the 360 is FARCICAL. why no outcry when the GH1 songs weren't included in the PS2 version of GH2? it's like bitching that you didn't get GRAW1 for free when you bought GRAW2.

grow up, babies, and vote with your wallet and not your loud mouth.

Major Nelson I respect the guy for what he does, and most of the time he's a robot for Microsoft because he has to be.

I know if you asked him "off the record" about GH II and the 500 point songs that he would be upset about it too.

Considering that these songs most likely are on the disc already and being unlocked by an encryption key makes it all the more difficult pill to swallow.

So we as the general public need to do one thing, don't buy them plain and simple....

Oh by the way.....I had two bad guitars, and Red Octane responded to my email that I sent about it, and they made me out to be an idiot, telling me that I need to unplug the guitar and restart my 360 and all.

I love the game, but I had to return it for a refund finally. Too many problems, not to mention multiple trips to GS to make the exchanges, let alone find one, and the experience with Red Octane sealed the deal.

Screw them and their killer app....they obviously don't care about the consumer and their hard earned dollar.....it's all about the $$$$$$$$$$$$$$.

@Tony Bowman

and yelling out into the e-void is pretty superfluous as well, pal.

@ #5 - So, you'd be aptly happy if they were charging any price? God, I hate people like you. You'll bend over for whatever the company wills you to bend over for.


"THEY DIDN'T PROMISE YOU ANYTHING CAPITALISM CAPITALISM LOVE LOVE LOVE STICK ME!"

This is such junk. I think he should get hammered or the stupidity of the idiot licensing/renegotiation argument that he is stating. I won't be buying any DLC for GH2 until it is reasonably priced and packaged.

It is sad that he can't be a Liaison to the gaming community and is just their corporate mouthpiece where we can "think" our objections are heard.

This is the RIAA at its worst. Corporate GREED at its worst. Microsoft at it absolute worst. As the argument gets repeated about licensing then what is sad is Red Octane should higher better negotiators. They are reselling songs available on other platforms (ALREADY CREATED). The work is done and Microsoft/Red Octane/Activision are just trying to make as much money as possible.

I hope the gaming community remains solid and continues to put pressure on the companies about their greed.

This is so sad

you deem the price to high to pay. i deem the price high, but not too high to pay. i do, in fact, hope the price is lower for future content. i got a free 1600 points card when i got my copy of GH2, so i spent it on the songs. so what? there wasn't anything else out that i wanted, and i know better than to play a waiting game with Microsoft and it's partners.

i have a strict budget for gaming and if future content is more that what i have left in the budget for that pay cycle, then no content for me. if there is money in the budget and it's content i want, i'll get it. it's simple as that.

that's not me bending over. that's me planning ahead, setting a budget and stickign to it, spending what i'm OK with on content i want, when and if i want it. it's called being an adult. you should try it sometime.

====> ( )o( )

funny how the guy throwing the temper tantrum is calling everyone else babies. ah the irony.

Look, I'm not happy about the pricing, either, but to say that for these songs the work was already done, you're wrong. Each of these songs had to have the work done to make them multiplayer (which hadn't been released, if even done).

Most of you have no idea the amount of work that is necessary for doing any kind of game development, and to say this is just easy, piece of cake, no work required BS are wrong.

Still, it's too expensive for what I think is fair, and I'll be voting with my wallet.

Let me get this straight... He knows the songs are more expensive than they really ought to be, and he thinks bundling 3 of these overpriced songs together is a solution? I accept that could reduce the per-song price, but if I don't want one or two of the other songs in the bundle, I (just speaking for myself here) would rather pay a bit more per-song and be able to select the songs I want individually.

Another reasonable option would be to have a downloadable pack ala the Shivering Isles Expansion for Oblivion - all (or even most, if there are rights issues) of the original GH songs for a single $40 download. I'd even buy it if some of the GH II features (like co-op play) were not available for the older songs.

As it stands now, I will not be purchasing any DLC for GH II unless changes are made, and I was one of the earlier signers of the petition, which I urge anyone who is upset about this DLC strategy to sign ( http://www.petitiononline.com/GHIIDLC/petition.html )

I can't believe i'm going to say this.. but...

You're paying a dollar more to interact with a song?

And that's a bad thing?

If it were cheaper to bundle them in packs, why not bundle them in a five pack to make them even more cheaper? huh?

And maybe they'll bundle in some english lessons. "more cheaper?"

That petition will do nothing. The Bioshock petition was obviously a marketing scheme to get people to love them. I'd buy the songs if I had the money, $2 a song isn't that bad, and I get to play it over and over again. . .

So you don't have $6 in your wallet, D-bag??

Nelson says that bundling was **probably** done to bring the cost down. By working on three songs at once, rather than individual songs, Red Octane could **conceivably** cut down on development costs, thus reducing the price to consumers.

Don't sound so sure there do we Major?
There was a set amount of songs that were worked on, its up to you how to distribute them. or you couldve taken a vote to see what we wanted, let alone in a bundle.

of course they put one good song with two we dont want. pretty greedy MS

Tony Bowman,

Serious question - I'm not here to flame I don't do that... You think these prices are reasonable, so, by that logic, if GH1 were re-released on the 360 without the guitar controller, would you be willing to pay $98 for it?

@19
Being that major works at xbox.com, i'm pretty sure he doesn't have the full specifics.

Peter Moore and the Red Octane guys might be the ones to give that information.

I hope the outrage is interpreted the right way to the people in charge. The outrage stems from the fact that people want the items but they feel they're getting dealt with in bad faith. I don't think we're a bunch of communists who demand lower prices but we feel we're being intentionally ripped off.

The biggest mistake wasn't the pricing but the bundling. $2.00 a song isn't so bad, but you can't pay $2.00... you have to buy $6.00 packs.

If it really is so expensive to license songs and such that $2.00 is necessary then offer the songs individually so people can pay $2.00 for exactly what they want.

The backlash is just to demonstrate to whoever's in charge that the lack of purchases aren't from lack of interest but lack of interest at the current price (the main reason being the exhorbitant price per song when compared to the actual game).

I'd actually like to know who's to blame for this Microsoft, the publisher or the "music industry".

Anybody who doesn't think these are a bit overpriced isn't thinking about it enough. You pay $2.08 per song for the extra content, but...

You paid $89.99 for Guitar Hero II and a guitar controller. There are 74 songs. That comes out to about $1.22 per song, if you assume you get the guitar controller for free. A more realistic assumption follows.

If we assume $30.00 is to cover our purchase of the guitar controller and $59.99 is to cover the actual game (standard price for the Xbox 360), then that amounts to 81 cents per song. Not to mention the fact that unlike the Guitar Hero II set list, these songs were already used in a previous game, and aren't even "new" material (even if they did have to be reworked a bit). For a game that had great promise in the area of downloadable content, that's disappointing to say the least.

You can make all the excuses you want, but apparently they were able to get us NEW content for the core GHII game at 81 cents per song, and are now charging us $2.08 to download old songs. I'll still purchase GHII, but I'll be opting for Frets of Fire instead of downloadable content for sure.

The funny part is that it's exactly like the Democrats and taxes: "If we raise our rates, we'll get more money!!!1!11!!" No, retard, if you charge more, there will be less activity (in the economy in the case of taxes, or on Live in the case of DLC). If these songs were individually available for ~$1 (maybe up to 100 points), they'd sell like hotcakes. Even if it were a bundle of two good songs and three mediocre ones for 500 points, they'd fly off the virtual shelves. Probably the biggest business mistake is that at a cheaper price, they could probably re-sell them to people who already own GH1 on another platform, while now, you'd have to have no concept of the value of a dollar to buy GH1 tracks a second time. It's a shame -- DLC was the reason I was all ready to buy GH2 for the 360 instead of the PS2. Now, I'll probably opt for the cheaper option -- I can get GH1 *and* GH2, probably with an extra controller (wireless?) for the same price as GH2 plus the available DLC. There's no such thing as "corporate greed" -- you owe it to your shareholders to maximize profits -- but there's definitely such thing as a bad decision, and that's what we have here.