Tresob wrote:And the argument about adding the cost of the upgrades to the actual game isn't old. It's true. DLC, upgrades, and expansion packs are all ways that game companies trick you into paying more for the game than you ever would originally. Think about the fact that almost all of the new characters being released in the DLC were already made by HMS. We know this because they were either pre-order exclusives or because images of them appeared in the concept art. What HMS and other companies are doing is developing content that could be included in the game, but waiting to release it later so they can charge you more. It's the same thing with companies that release "Episodes" of video games. They actually make more money than if they released the whole game at once.seem more attractive.
This isn't the case for all games and is very difficult to tell when it actually is, though I think it is true for the pre-order characters in this case, which became DLC.
What I see there is that they said, "well, they aren't playable in SP, so why include them when no one else but the femmes are?" So they made them pre-orders. I frequently get an odd low-class glitch (it doesn't seem to impair the game) with the pre-order charcters involving their weapons sticking out in vehicle mode, which I attribute to a lack of testing time. I imagine the rest of the DLC characters were not close-enough to bug-free at the time of release, and the maps may not have been finished for whatever time reason - bugs, collision geometry, finished textures, you name it, and simply were finished up afterwards when they decided it'd make good DLC. And then they threw the pre-orders in there to help make it worth the $10.
Then again, Tieger was very concerned about money at Botcon. He made it sound like everything was on a "success" basis. "If we make enough money doing
this, and if it's popular enough, we'll do
that." But, he could've lied. They could've had it all done but withheld it for DLC regardless on success.
My two cents. :S
AutobotMR2 wrote:That's the problem, it's takes a lot of time to make new characters. It's only been a month since the last DLC, they can't have made five new characters, their alt-modes, their animations and their voices for Escalation in that time.
I understand it has only been a month. But Marvel Ultimate Alliance did it a good way. They created 2 new characters, and the rest were like these...already designed and rendered, or they were carried over from another console version i.e. PS2 or "hint hint" DS...the DS renders are there they just need to upgrade the details and better quality character mapping. That's all I'm saying....and they pushed that out in the same time frame...2 months....after the games release.
I'm afraid not about DS. That would look aweful on PS3. It is a bit more difficult than that. First off, wasn't the DS developed by another company? So High Moon doesn't own those models. Secondly, to get the DS models looking like they even moderately fit in in the PS3 game, I think a whole remodeling would be in order. It's not like they were made at a reasonable poly count and then just made the DS models as low LOD meshes that could be used on the PS3/360 later. So making the DS characters available on the 360/PS3 would be just like making any other new characters, effort-wise, minus the 2D design time.
Just out of curiousity? What's the amount of players you see on the 360 version? PS3 at release was seeing 4,000 at peak hours, but dropped to about 2,000 by the time I last played. The quadruple XP weekend bumped it back up to 3,000 for those three days though....
I'm afraid it feels like HMS may think the DLC will make them more money than fixing the PS3 problems - which it theoretically does, since fixing the existing problems doesn't attract new players, it only keeps existing ones. The problem is, that we're seeing here, turning away some players from even buying new DLC, thus less money in their pockets in the long run. So the question is, is HMS in it for the long run of this particular game? I don't think so based on what we've seen here.
edit: trying to fix the "quote" coding....
Let's do some tomorrow then
(Yea, I am serious, though I doubt anyone of influence would read, let alone take a chance with some random internet person. 
)
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