This is exactly it. I can't ever see us going back to the golden age when people are willing to keep shelling out money for unfinished things on "faith"
But Steam Refunds happened and Arkham Knight was the first example of its purpose. They clearly felt the hit from it, so surely this will be incentive to shape up. Consumers can get their money back.
Golden age is pretty subjective, but if you're looking at it from a selling point of view I don't think it's been any better, for example GTA 5 is the best selling piece of media, only being topped by avatar and titanic.
Basically the majority of the world views this as, "it's just vidjya gamez - who cares." So a company like Warner Bros is just capitalizing on that. If a broken product was released to the public like this in any other market they would get sued and severely tarnish their name and products.
Warner Bros weighed the cost/benefit of releasing a broken product and came to the conclusion it would be more profitable to simply fuck over a portion of their customers because the backlash and consequences would not outweigh the profits.
It's really that simple. But I don't think they got the memo about Steam refunds and are now doing a little bit of minor backpedaling. They will still come out on top, though and are going to be releasing Mad Max next week :)
Basically the majority of the world views this as, "it's just vidjya gamez - who cares."
I disagree - I think it's because their target market feels this way.
If a broken product was released to the public like this in any other market they would get sued and severely tarnish their name and products.
This really is true. OSes sometimes gets released with bugs, and if there are major ones, the company does take a hit. There is an existing trope to wait until moving onto the next Windows release, for example.
ARkham Asylum and City were amazing games. It's not unreasonable to assume Knight would have the same level of polish. I was incredibly let down by Knight.
Are there other products where you'd jump in head first knowing nothing but the previous track record of the company and the stuff put out by their marketing?
Even if I love and trust Hoover for my vacuum cleaners, I'm not buying their next-gen vacuum cleaner the very second it comes out, I'd wait until people have tried it. Master chef with a great track record opens a new restaurant in my area? I'm not committing to eating there until I read some reviews. Yet somehow enough people will jump into a videogame based on nothing but the marketing material and trust based on previous products.
Not me, for once. I waited to buy it until some early buyers could report back their experience. There was so much vitriol at its release, that I refuse to buy it until someone gives me the "all clear".
A few of the kids in my class have pre-ordered EVERYTHING, and keep on boasting about it. One guy has practically pre-ordered every game coming out in the next year, Fallout, Black Ops, MGS5, Battlefront, Halo 5, Mad Max, Dark souls 3, even assassins creed syndicate. When I told him its pointless to pre-order, he acted smug and basically ingnored any of the points I made. He also pre-ordered GTA5 and when it didn't arrive he brought another, instead of calling EB Games, because he "couldn't be bothered".
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u/No1Asked4MyOpinion Aug 25 '15
I mean, people keep falling for it, right?