The blowback from the community on the announced pricing and DLC structure for Outlaws has been significant. Youtuber EckhartsLadder had this to say to his one million subscribers:
Are fans pissed? Probably.
Outlaws is a AAA title and the price for the base game at £59.99 / $69.99 is typical for a title of this level. The reason people are already pissed with Outlaws is that there will be day one DLC. This means there is already completed content which is not going to be made available to people who are willing to throw their hard earned money at Ubisoft. If they want the full experience players will need at least the gold edition at £94.99 / $109.99. The fullest experience – the so-called ultimate edition – is a massive £114.99 / $130; almost twice the cost of the base game.
There is, of course a counter argument for the increased cost in terms of the amount of entertainment. This is often referred to as dollars per hour. Reports suggest that Outlaws will take about 100 hours to finish. Is $1.30 an hour unreasonable for entertainment? I don’t think so.
Perhaps we, the consumer, have been spoilt by a culture of expecting top level interactive entertainment for cheap. Are we moving away from this?
Not so long ago Ubisoft’s director of subscriptions, Phillipe Tremblay said that gamers should get comfortable with “not owning their games”. We’ve seen a major industry shift away from physical copies towards more subscription based programs. Perhaps this is the future.
What do you think? Will you still be buying Outlaws when its released and if so, which version?
