Major Nelson Frames the GH II DLC Discussion 71
Yesterday we discussed the mighty expensive Guitar Hero II downloadable content. Some readers had serious complaints, and their views jive with a lot of other commentators out there. Prior to an event related to the game Joystiq had the chance to sit down with Microsoft's Major Nelson, who attempted to frame the conversation and point out the difficulties associated with this project: "I used to work in the broadcasting industry and in music for a long time and I know that content is not linear. It's not like you go to iTunes, and you're buying the same thing. There's testing that's involved, and there's also licensing involved. There's a lot of elements involved. When there's music involved, that brings up a lot of licensing issues ... You have to consider the Leaderboard. People like to say it's the same [as on the PS2], but the licensing is not the same. You have to re-license it. It's a different platform. While on the surface it may look fairly simplistic, and people are saying 'XYZ should be done,' but we're not Red Octane. I work for Microsoft, and we're just the conduit at this point."
It's a free market. (Score:2, Insightful)
New Gears Maps (Score:2, Insightful)
So... perhaps Microsoft is just a conduit in this particular instance, but I'm starting to suspect that they're still involved in the decision making process.
And don't take my argument the wrong way -- I think everyone deserves to be paid for their work, but I also believe that the creators of content should be allowed to decide what they should charge for that work. Certainly, a body that would benefit from that work simply due to its existence should not be included in that decision.
It seemed like only a couple years ago, buying a game meant becoming part of a community, especially when extra content could be created by the fanbase as well (Half Life, Quake, etc). Your price of admission to the community (and any updates that were released for it) was the game.
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
How is GH different than Karaoke Rev? (Score:1, Insightful)
Music based game revolving around licensed content (check)
Original was PS2 exclusive (check)
Later ported to the XBox (check)
Additional songs available on XBox Live (check)
Karaoke Revolution's price Per song = 1.00
Guitar Hero's Price per song = 2.00
Nelson says that Red Octane sets the pricing and that Microsoft is "just the conduit at this point". Wait a minute, didn't MS *force* Epic to charge for Gears of War content [gearsofwarrealm.com] they were going to give away for free? How does a simple "conduit" have pricing authority with Epic, but they are blameless whenever their customers feel they are getting overcharged?
You can't have it both ways MS, either you're just a passive middleman, tacking on your bit for offering the content, or you are at least partially responible for setting pricing. Which is it?
Whichever is most convenient at the time it would seem...
Re:Snookered (Score:3, Insightful)
Thats like saying you already own Office 2x for the Mac, you deserve to get Office 2x for the PC for $39.99. Different systems, it doesn't matter if it is mostly the same. Don't buy it if you already own it, it is for the people who don't already own it.