Preview Of Sony's Microtransaction Plans? Options

[KAGE360]

There's horse armor and then there's the kind of microtransactions that Famitsu is reporting (via: Beyond3D and the vitriolic NeoGAF). According to the Famitsu inteview with Kazunori Yamauchi, Gran Turismo HD will have two SKUs on the PS3. One of these games will ship with no cars, all of them will be purchased via microtransactions.
The other, Gran Turismo HD: Premium, will ship with two courses and 30 cars, with an additional 30 cars and an additional two courses online at a later date. The Premium game is being considered a prologue to the PS3's eventual Gran Turismo 5.

The microtransaction-focused game, Gran Turismo HD: Classic will be the online-focused entrant into the GT-series. In this game, players will (reportedly) start with no cars or courses available to them. Instead, they will need to purchase their stable of cars and courses to race on. The pricing reported in the Famitsu piece indicated that cars would cost between 50-100 yen ($0.43-$0.85) and courses between 200-500 yen ($1.71-$4.26). There are approximiately 750 cars and 50 tracks available for purchase in the GT: HD Classic. Let's do the math:


750 cars for $0.50-$1.00 (Sony will round-up, don't you think?)
50 tracks for $1.50-$4.50
A complete copy of the game will cost gamers somewhere between $426.50 and $975, and that's without factoring in whatever Sony decides to charge for the menus (since that's all you'll get with GT HD: Classic).

Does this sound a little familiar? It should. Phil Harrison alluded to a possible future like this one last June in OPM.

I'll give you an example; Kazunori [Yamauchi, producer of the Gran Turismo series] would kill me for this: Imagine Gran Turismo shipping on a disc with one car and one track. And then you can browse, online, a dynamic circuit of vehicles that's growing every day because either the car manufacturers are adding new vehicles or we're adding new vehicles. And you can see a specific-type car that's being called up and say, "I think I'll play with that one. Let me download and play it." Maybe the business model allows you to play it for a day; maybe the business model allows you to own it forever. But that content is now yours on your hard drive. Or [maybe you could download] new tracks, new music, whole games.
Now, is it possible that the game will be a full-priced title with a built-in download system that allows users to download cars and tracks equal to the number of the game's retail price? We hope the model ends up similar to this. However, right now, details are extremely sparse, and Sony has to have an answer to these questions -- most of the people who can answer are over in Tokyo, we'll update if we hear back.

Welcome to next-gen.

http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3153775

[Deftech]

holy pond sausage what is sony thinking?!

If thats true....

[incognegro]

suddenly "horse armor" is a distant, insignificant memory !

WTF are they thinking.....maybe if they made the disc free and then charge everybody after that it would seem like less of a rip off.

lol........maybe not

Why didn't they give a small amount of cars for free and give u the option to sell and dump the ones you dont want and buy new ones?




This post has been edited by incognegro: Sep 21 2006, 04:38 PM

[grim_d]

thats beyond rediculous.

[Kira Yamoto]

holy pond sausage what is sony thinking?!

If thats true....

not Sony, but instead the producer of GT. I guess this is what Polyphony is giving us for an online game. It isn't bad, but for the hardcore collector it would cost him/her as much as a 360 haha. I feel for those people. But anyways if one took a cheap approach, I think they can get away with a pretty good number of tracks and desireable cars for about the price of a full game. If they'd go even cheaper the price of the game would be even lower because it's you, the gamer, that chooses how much it will cost.

At least this is not GT5.

[incognegro]

when u think about it.....this is what u do now, offline with these types of games. You have certain amount of cars to choose from (you dont start with cars in ur garage), you earn money so u can buy new ones that you like. Only this time ur using REAL money (which is gay) what about cars ur just trying out? Also do u even have the option to sell currently owned cars? Do you have to buy the parts too? Do you have to pay to wash ur car like in GT one?.....lol

This really is a huge rip off.....please ppl dont buy into this or else this might become the norm in the future.


On a side note, this seems similar to MS's option of choice approach they are using to sell 360's. If you dont want a HD DVD drive then dont buy. Now if a Sony fan (the same ones that say its better to buy a a system that already comes withe everything) actually think this is a great idea. Wouldn't that make them hypocrites? Not starting a flame war but just an observation.

This post has been edited by incognegro: Sep 21 2006, 05:19 PM

[twistedsymphony]

How does that work if you're playing online?

PGR3 has had 2 car "packs" since its release but each pack offered 1 free car... if you downloaded any car it really downloads the whole pack and just unlocks the one car, the reason is so you have that car stored locally and can play online against people using that car. The reason for the free one is so you don't lock yourself out of being able to play with people who have any of the cars in the pack (you can join in those games without purchasing any new cars).

Also if games on the PS3 are going to take up so much supposed space due to the HD graphics then how fast will a game with no tracks an no cars fill up your hard drive?

If something like GTHD shipps with litterally 0 graphics and we must download them all, and we are to believe that the game content will fill most of a 25GB disc due to 1080p graphics then either we sit and wait to download close to 20GB of data (even if some of it is locked) so that we can race against anyone, or we only download what we need and then we can only race against people that have purchased the same things we have.

When Ms introduced the micro-transations people feared the worst, they feared that most of the games elements would be left out intentionally so that you could buy them separate and that you would get nickel and dimmed for more then the game is worth (assuming they charged you less up front for leaving things out)... people started getting nervous when horse clothes cost $2 in Oblivion... people didn't bite and the marketplace sort of corrected itself and newer downloads were reasonably priced... Then people cried wolf again when GRAW released a $15 map pack and you could play against people who were using it if you didn't have it yourself.... but most other games have offered their add-ons at a reasonable price...

If the scenario in the above article is to believed then Polyphony Digital is delivering what the consumers feared would happen 100 fold worse then they actually imagined.

I'll tell you what, I gnashed my teeth the first time I spent $5 in the XBLM I HATE... I repeat HATE paying for goods with no tangible item. I refuse to download my music... I refuse to download PC games online... I wont download movies when the come available and the only reason I download XBLA games is because for the most part I have no other option (that retarded collection MS just released doesn't count). I will continue buy physical copies of my entertainment until the market leaves me no choise...

I'll stomach a worthless $5 party game as a download but there's no way I'm going to pay $60 for a download, nevermind more then the console. ... Here's hoping a new version of Enthusia comes out to combat this atrocity.

[thepissedoffman]

not Sony, but instead the producer of GT. I guess this is what Polyphony is giving us for an online game. It isn't bad, but for the hardcore collector it would cost him/her as much as a 360 haha. I feel for those people. But anyways if one took a cheap approach, I think they can get away with a pretty good number of tracks and desireable cars for about the price of a full game. If they'd go even cheaper the price of the game would be even lower because it's you, the gamer, that chooses how much it will cost.

And again you prove how little you actually know. Polyphony Digital is an internal developer at Sony. That means that this is what SONY is doing. Sure, maybe the producer of GT came up with the idea but at the end of the day it is Sony that decides what Polyphony Digital does. This is very bad IMHO because they are now forcing us to pay MUCH more for the same content through micro transactions.

If this does happen I will not buy a PS3 period. With all the back tracking that Sony has done in the past year and the $600 price tag I was going to wait a year or two anyway. If this turns out to be true this will prove to me that Sony has totally lost their marble's and I will want nothing to do with them until they regain their sanity.

At least this is not GT5.

It may not be GT5 now but if this proves profitable you can bet your arse it will be in GT5 and you can bet your arse I will never play another GT game in my life.

[grim_d]

I'll stomach a worthless $5 party game as a download but there's no way I'm going to pay $60 for a download, nevermind more then the console. ... Here's hoping a new version of Enthusia comes out to combat this atrocity.

you could always put your hard drive in a box and write "live arcade" on it..

[maxlifo]

If this story is true it's a f*****g joke.

[Exist2Resist]

Wow, sony really doesnt give a shit about the consumer, if this is true than GT is f'n rip off. Definately not buying a PS3, a happy 360 owner. And soon to bee Wii owner.

[yourM0M]

this is insane....but this is also $ony.....but who knows probably has no truth behind it

[Kira Yamoto]

lol I laugh at some of you guys. You honestly think this is Sony's doing? Sony wouldn't give the go ahead if the producer thought it was a bad idea. Polyphony has a lot of creative control, and this is what they wanted to do, so they gave them the go ahead. As I said, it wasn't Sony, but Polyphony. Polyphony is the developer. Sony just pays the bills, they are the publisher. What I see here is yet another reason to nitpick at Sony b/c of your hate for them. I know that most of you think Forza is better. If you really don't like it that much then DONT USE IT. I'm not. I don't exactly agree with this model either. I'm just gonna wait till GT5.

I bet that Sony gave Polyphony the go ahead just to see how profitable game downloads really are, and then build from there. I highly doubt this is going to be in GT5, even if it is profitable, they are not going to cripple their flagship series by removing the product from a user that has no internet or has no need/want to use any sort of online material.

[incognegro]

lol I laugh at some of you guys. You honestly think this is Sony's doing? Sony wouldn't give the go ahead if the producer thought it was a bad idea. Polyphony has a lot of creative control, and this is what they wanted to do, so they gave them the go ahead. As I said, it wasn't Sony, but Polyphony. Polyphony is the developer. Sony just pays the bills, they are the publisher. What I see here is yet another reason to nitpick at Sony b/c of your hate for them. I know that most of you think Forza is better. If you really don't like it that much then DONT USE IT. I'm not. I don't exactly agree with this model either. I'm just gonna wait till GT5.

I bet that Sony gave Polyphony the go ahead just to see how profitable game downloads really are, and then build from there. I highly doubt this is going to be in GT5, even if it is profitable, they are not going to cripple their flagship series by removing the product from a user that has no internet or has no need/want to use any sort of online material.

This coming from a guy that said the publisher has the absolute final word...lol

How can it not be sony's doing? I mean Sony owns the company and they couldve easily said "no thats ridiculous, we would never do that to our consumers!" and Polyphonic has no alternative but to listen and go back to the drawing board. Instead they let it get out of hand.

After saying its not sonys fault, you then say "i bet sony gave the go ahead to see how profitable game downloads really are". WTF? Contradicting urself in the same post?

Why do u always defend sony even when they are wrong?

This post has been edited by incognegro: Sep 22 2006, 04:54 AM

[Deftech]

bro, its falling on deaf ears, err on blind eyes in this circumstance, don't bother.

My wife is a Kunoichi, Im going to unleash her in here soon

Go Ayaneeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!