Apples and oranges my friend, thats specifically why i included this statement in my counterpoint:
Clothes have objective practical value (edit: in fact, clothes are so valuable that if someone goes outside without clothes on, they are arrested. Clothes are literally necessary in order to operate in society. Armor skins are not, yet 343 tricks you into thinking they are.) And one could make the argument that Old Navy has higher quality clothing, therefore the prices they charge are justified that way. I’m not making that argument, I’m just giving an example of how that comparison is a false comparison.
Armor in Halo has absolutely no objective value outside of the game, yet I could go buy 3 pairs of pants for the price of one skin? Do you still want to call predatory monetisation of worthless garbage “effective marketing?”
Reasonable?
It’s not getting into the mind of the customer, it’s getting behind the mind’s wheels of the customer they’re aiming at.
You really did miss a big part of MTX history, didn’t you?
On-disc “DLC” refers to content that was on the disc when you bought it, and you had to pay for, to get access to, despite that content being written on the disc that was in the tray. All you got was a code to unlock it, nothing else. The content’s functionality and assets were already there ready to be used as long as the game got a specific unlocking code.
What you’re describing is an update which force you to download assets, so that you can actually see it in game when someone else uses it against you online.
If you didn’t get the update you would either be regulated to a non-Updated playlists / mode where new characters aren’t available, or you would not see the new characters at all. That’s a huuge difference from on-disc DLC.
Biggest income for developers / publishers come from a minority of the playerbase. I read quite some time ago that some 95%-ish of the overall revenue is from about 15%-ish of a game’s population.
Another thing with that, it’s not sudden changes, it’s small steps, nudging the envelope.
That’s how they’ve come this far, releasing broken games and getting away with it, that’s how they came so far with loot boxes untill EA shoved the envelope too far with BFII. Had they been more careful they could’ve gotten away with far more.
Consider what he’s saying there.
It’s all about getting as much money out of the customers as possible, -Yoink!- be the consequences for the quality of the game, or the user experience.