Pricing Schemes

Since I posted that entry about Infinity Ward's upcoming "Stimulus Package" map pack I've had a chance to not only think about the whole thing but actually learn the price that this stimulus will cost us. Turns out the price will be 1200 Microsoft Points which translates into $15 American and about 15,000 Schrute Bucks.

That's a whole lot of Schrute bucks.

Yes this price sucks, yes its double that of the map packages that were available for the first Modern Warfare and yes out of the five included maps two are actually old maps from that first MW title.

In effect what Infinity Ward, or more accurately Activision, is doing is stealing from its rabid base. Fifteen dollars is too much money for any add-on, regardless of how many hours us players and them creators have invested in the game. Fifteen dollars is 25% of the cost of the friggin game despite the fact that you're not getting 25% more game.

The problem is that Activision does in fact hold a monopoly on the add-ons and expansions for this game. As such they, like the East India Company and AT&T before them, have the ability to charge whatever the fuck they want for their product. I'm not saying this is fair, quite the opposite actually, but I'm saying this is a fact. It's an unfortunate side effect of the online stores and the add-ons market as a whole.

I don't have a problem with paying for extra content but I do have a problem with being gouged for extra content and this is exactly what's occurring here. Actually I'm surprised this sort of thing didn't occur earlier. It seems like at some point we all agreed how much a bonus costume, a bonus stage, an actual game should cost and have been living with these costs ever since. Now Activision realizes that we'll pay just about anything and goes ahead and doubles their prices.

This might be the final stand for the Modern Warfare franchise too. Not because its fans will suddenly feel robbed and stop playing the game but because of the entire fiasco that was the firing of Infinity Ward's head developers. The Modern Warfare franchise will live on but will it really if the games are being created by someone else? I know that Call of Duty games have been developed by all sorts of different companies but this is no longer Call of Duty, this is a whole new beast, one that has far surpassed the original and one who's fanbase will only take so many slaps to the face. This pricing scheme was the second one, we'll see how many more they dish out.