Premium Battling

Until its official announcement, Battlefield Premium was a hotly discussed and debated feature. Rumors were flying around like wild, but now that the dust has settled, what are we left with?

Battlefield Premium is purchasable through the Xbox Marketplace or PS Store for $50, providing a variety of bonuses. Out of all the extra revenue options I've seen, this is one of the better ones, but it has one major flaw in it's business strategy.

Basically, if you buy Premium, you get access to all of the map packs when they launch (worth $15 each, or a total of $75 for the set). So if you plan on buying all the BF3 DLC, go ahead and buy Premium now - the bonuses are gravy.
For those not won over by discounts on bulk map purchases, Premium includes a bevy of small features. Server queue priority! A new look for your knife! Reset your stats! Strategy videos! Early access to the DLC! Unique camo!

Honestly, none of that matters. But the discount on buying the remaining map packs? Deal.

This is one of my favourite types of bonus revenue strategies. I prepurchased the Saints Row 3 DLC and the LA Noire DLC, and was happy to do it both times.

So, on to the big business flaw. Frankly, considering the nature of the content, the price is a problem. "But Jad, didn't you say the price was good?". Yes it is - right now.

Imagine a customer who bought Back to Karkand and Close Quarters (two map packs), not wanting to drop the money on Premium. If the quality of Close Quarters draws this customer in, the customer might want to buy Premium, but it's now $50 for three map packs. Ouch! This effect will be multiplied as more and more map packs release.
Hell, this already happened - all those folks who bought Back to Karkand are already punished for doing so, as their $50 only unlocks four map packs, not five.
Ironically, Battlefield's biggest fans (who are the most likely to preorder, and get B2K for free) had Premium devalued simply because they preordered. Essentially, EA should want Premium to be desirable for all Battlefield 3 players, even ones who already bought the DLC. They could have it reactively lower it's price based on map packs purchased. But aside from new players who want to really dive in ("Oh, I just bought this $60 game, and I want to spend another $50!"), Premium's desirability will drop like a rock over time.

So, overall I really like Premium. It's a solid deal to buy map packs I'm definitely going to buy. I like saving money. I haven't used a single Premium perk except the unique camo (and I doubt I'll ever reset my stats), so Premium is a little on the boring side. But if you plan to buy all five map packs (or even if you already have Back to Karkand), Premium is a solid prepayment deal.

Linked List: PSN's Best Selling Games of 2011 List Dominated By Games Not From 2011

Jordan Mallory, over at Joystiq:

There’s on important thread tying those together: none of those games launched in 2011.

Retro is cool now, right?

Linked List: EA's New Theme Park Game Is A Rotten Scam

Jim Sterling, over at Destructoid:

Sixty dollars. It costs $60 for a single in-game roller coaster. And that’s one of the cheaper rides.

But it’s free to download!

P.S.: I’m aware that this is old, but it was sitting in my Instapaper queue and I had to share it. Enjoy your weekend.

Stuff

When I heard the PlayStation Store was back up, I immediately dropped my preparations for a BBQ to go check it out. Maybe stuff was on sale!

Upon arriving at the store, I was right. Some stuff was on sale, and there were some new-to-me games there. I was just about to pull the trigger on the L.A. Noire Rockstar pass when I took a step back from what I was doing, and thought to myself: do I need this?

I’m still working the Traffic beat. For those unaccustomed to the ways of a L.A. detective, I’m a total newbie. Yet here I was, about to sign up for extra missions to play, when the majority of the game still stretches ahead of me!

Will I buy the Rockstar Pass? Probably. I can’t say for sure; after all, I might stop liking the game; it’s happened before. I still might buy it early, as it’s on sale and I’m a sucker for sales. But I certainly don’t need it now, so I turned off the PS3 and went about the rest of my day.

It’s easy to start accumulating stuff. Steam, in particular, is brutal. The constant barrage of sales and delightful games with painless purchasing and installation is literally addictive. And when I say painless, I mean it: from the Steam storefront, it takes literally five clicks to pre-order Deus Ex: Human Revolution.

I’ve bought several games on Steam that I haven’t played for more than three hours: Terraria, Capsized, Just Cause 2, Magicka: Vietnam, EVE Online, Counter-Strike: Source, Zombie Driver, Dogfighter, King’s Bounty, Company of Heroes … these are all games I’ve purchased on Steam for dirt cheap, because at the time I thought I might want them. I still do, and I like to think I’ll play some of them (King’s Bounty & Capsized in particular).

But today I dutifully checked the Steam store and saw Red Faction: Guerrilla for five dollars. Five dollars! How can I not buy it at that price? I rented Guerrilla, it was great. This would be cheaper than what I paid to rent it. Just five dollars to buy a game I want.

Sometimes, we buy stuff we want, but don’t need. That’s cool, I like doing that. My money won’t go with me when I die, so I may as well enjoy it. But how much is too much? DLC for a game I haven’t finished yet? Level packs for a multiplayer game I’m not good at? New characters for a fighting game I’ve stopped playing? Digital costumes for my Sackboy or Avatar? Games I won’t play, but I’d like to? Where do I draw the line, and say: “I don’t need this”?

Thankfully, I didn’t buy Guerrilla, nor the Rockstar Pass. Hopefully I can stop accumulating stuff I want, and start saving space on my hard drive (and my bank account) for things I need.

Thanks, Capcom. Thanks.

After installing the Shuma Gorath & Jill Valentine DLC for Marvel vs. Capcom 3, you get this:

Parental Controls

I know I’m behind the times with this, but this is just idiotic. Head to the Washington Post for the full story, but these quotes should give you the gist of things:

Over the winter break from school, 8-year-old Madison worked to dress up her simple mushroom home on the iPhone game Smurfs’ Village. In doing so, she also amassed a $1,400 bill from Apple.

“I thought the app preyed on children”, she [the mother of the child] said. “Note that the Smurf app states it is for ages 4-plus”

Apple said it tries to prevent episodes like Madison’s by requesting a password when making in-app purchases. And parents can change settings on Apple’s gadgets to restrict downloading and transactions, Apple spokeswoman Trudy Muller said.

But parents say changing those settings isn’t easy or obvious.

Yes, the settings are easy and obvious. It takes four taps to reach the parental restrictions on an iOS device. It’s a bit more complicated on a console, but it’s still fairly easy. The parental restrictions are in no way hard or complicated, assuming you actually try to find them. I didn’t find those links above by my encyclopaedic knowledge of my console operating systems, I found them by Google searching for them.

Children, for many reasons, don’t always completely understand what they do. Even giving an older sister your iTunes password (which is what happened above) is asking for this sort of stuff, because your iTunes password can be used to buy things from your credit card without your consent. When I put it that way, it looks like such a horrible idea. So why do kids know their parents’ passwords? Because these parents are lazy. It’s much easier to say “Just type in ‘password’, I’m trying to watch American Idol!” and assume your kid won’t buy anything stupid because he’s such a good boy. My message to anybody affected by this is the following: blaming Apple, or Capcom (the developer of the Smurf game), or Microsoft or Sony or Nintendo or anyone but yourself is just passing the blame because you’re too lazy to get hands-on with parenting. You wouldn’t give your kid your credit card at the mall because he might run amok, why would you give it to him when he’s in a digital store full of things to run amok with?

Are the “Smurfberries” a scam? Not at all. A scam is defined as fraudulent or deceptive, and there is nothing fraudulent or deceptive here. It’s certainly not the best thing you can buy with your money, but Capcom is completely up-front about the cost, and your credit card is protected behind your iTunes password, PSN profile password, or Xbox profile password. To say that the app “preys on children” is more deceptive than this app; at least the poor app isn’t using fear-inducing buzzphrases to make a news article. Supermarkets “prey on children” by putting candy bars at the checkout aisle too, and kids sneaking candy bars into shopping carts is something parents have dealt with for ages. And they deal with it by not giving their kid their credit card. Because while the app might be for kids who are 4+, your credit card isn’t.

Am I too harsh? Or do you readers agree with me?

Complete Railworks DLC Pack - MASSIVE SAVINGS

Oh man, only $200 for just over $1000 worth of downloadable content! The savings are so big I feel compelled to purchase this!

(On a side note, I’m sure there’s some dedicated collector out there who is pissed).