Here's a rather ugly rumor for you all to chew on this morning. Perhaps knowing that Braid and Castle Crashers are two of Xbox Live Arcade's most highly anticipated titles, it's rumored that the powers-that-be are being shrewd and bloodthirsty enough to charge 1200 MS points for Braid, and an unsettling 1800 points for Castle Crashers.
Four Japanese sources (including Famitsu and Xbox.com's official Japanese blog) are stating that these two games will be more expensive than the average XBLA games. This is a rumortoid until we get an English announcement though. If it turns out to be true, you can color me a particularly brown shade of disgusted.
At 1800 points, Castle Crashers would be Xbox Live Arcade's most expensive title, costing even more than Penny Arcade Adventures. Something tells me we shouldn't have let Microsoft know that it was the first XBLA title that we all really, really wanted. Still, I'll wait until the English announcement before I scream "F*CK YOU MICRO$OFT AND I SPELL THE "S" IN YOUR NAME WITH A DOLLAR SIGN" from the highest rooftop.
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Contest:
9:37 AM on 07.30.2008
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Just seems steep.
1600 is $19.99
And paying that much for a game, and not having any kind of case, or art, or anything saying I own the game, other than a digital code that fucks itself anyway if I want to play the game on someone elses xbox, is a bit dumb.
Hell, I thought it would be $!5
The only reason Penny Arcade got away with it is because it was released at $20 on other platforms at the same time.
As much as I wanted Castle Crashers, it is no longer a must buy at that price.
Still, for me, the Penny Arcade game at $20 is the worst offender. Who decided that an episodic XBLA title was worth $20? Sam & Max episodes costs less than half that and they are genuinely funny and rather consistent games.
Add to this the fact that it has very little distribution cost and no manufacturing cost there is no reason not to try and get as many people to buy it (I'm talking cost per unit sold to customer not development costs).
I swear every console seems determined to shoot themselves in the foot by out-pricing their customers on these internet distributed games. I would probably spend far more if these were reasonable.
Sure, I was looking forward to playing Castle Crashers back when I thought it was going to cost me upwards of $15 maximum, but now? Nah, you know, there are plenty of better uses for my $22.50.
or maybe these rumor mongering queers shouldnt quote random numbers off a japanese site and come to crazy conclusions
But the price is definitely steep, and I agree that this might be Microsoft testing the waters to see what kind of feedback they get. Or it's just a complete rumor. I mean, it's coming from Japanese sites. Could be a mistranslation, or someone over there getting wrong information...or it's the price for the Japanese but not the Americans.
Not cool.
Why should you award good gameplay with more of your money? Shouldn't we demand good gameplay from publishers and developers before they get any of our money? The idea of rewarding a developer beyond retail for making a good game is absurd to me -- stop buying garbage and save your money for developers who produce quality titles.
PS: Panda is my hero!
And you don't have to worry about being able to play the game if you RRoD!
Yeeeeeaaaaah. Not gonna happen.
I hope people have the sense to boycott such a thing on principal if such a thing happens.
This could be the beguinning of a new pricing policy in MS, incresing the price of further XBLA games, wich would suck. Since they don´t cost that amount of money, only yhis game does.
Quality is quality, sure. And yep, these may be good enough to justify the price of a dinner, appetizer plus tip at a fancy diner joint. But this REALLY puts me off of buying Braid outright, as i kind of had originally. Thank goodness of demos . . . but that's kind ridiculous.
Also, nice to know that hardcore gamers are also valued cash cows in this waggle-a-day industry though, amirite? :)
Still, 25 bucks for a digital download is pretty steep. For the same price I could get Geometry Wars, REZ HD, and Ikaruga. That won't stop me from buying these games though.
b) I nearly picked up an MS points card on the way home today in anticipation of these releases. Instead I'm going to say
FUCK YOU THE BEHEMOTH and FUCK YOU JONATHAN BLOW. Don't pretend this is all evil MS being evil, I'm pretty sure developers get some say in pricing of their own games.
Money grubbing bastards. "Hey look, our games are the talk of the internet, let's HIKE THOSE PRICES DUDE". Well you can suck my balls if you think I'll be paying that much.
Also, I agree with HarassmentPanda, what's with the 'let's reward devs that make an effort with more money". You should EXPECT good games for the money they cost these days, not be pleasantly surprised.