How much is a DLC that would remove ads worth?

[Koleax]

This idea is crazy. Let me be the first to acknowledge that. However, I feel forced into this position. It is completely improper to insert television-style ads into a game a year after its release. It is multifariously wrong -- aesthetically, socially, morally, and perhaps even legally in some places.

These ads are purely about money, since they are not inside the tracks and do not affect the aesthetics or even affect gameplay at all, beyond delaying it. So, I assume the only way Sony is going to remove them is with money, which raises the question, "how much?"

I don't mean to ask this question of you, the players, necessarily. What we are willing and able to pay may not even approach what Sony can make through advertising. So, part of my question is, "how much does Sony make from each of us by advertising?"

I seriously doubt it's that much, no where near $10 per person per year. I admit to guessing at that number, but also overestimating. It might even be less than a dollar, depending on how people respond. But, Sony will probably keep the ads in regardless, since sales have already peaked for them and don't have many future sales to lose.

Still, there has to be some price they're willing to take from a consumer that makes them think, "alright, we'll take the ads out for that." I wonder what it is.

Does SL's accountant visit this forum?

[IH8YOU]

When this game was launched, I balked at the price (or lack thereof) - and knew it was "too cheap" then. (to sustain the franchise, and/or generate a profit)

I'll pony up $60.00USD to be able to go online with 1.26 again - ad free, and with the game that biased racing over combat.

I'll pony up $30.00USD for a commercial-free version of what we have now.

[SaturnReturn]

I think it's worth saving a lot of face, preventing the destruction of a long standing flagship franchise by association with such practices, and potentially avoiding loss of customers, fans and future profit, and hence they should offer it for free, ASAP. They probably won't, and if they did it might be too late. I do feel they're onto a loser with this one.

EDIT: Just to clarify that a bit further. WipEout HD was supposed to be (from what I can tell) at the forefront of the technology and demonstrate that digital download games don't have to be 'low budget', simple games. Aside from some perhaps slightly unfortunate updates, I think it's achieved what it's set out to do, up until now. It's fine that they want to establish a way forward for digital game distribution, but with the addition of the adverts, I think they've taken a showpiece and turned it into a sideshow. I think all the hard work on this game up until now is ruined by addition of the adverts, and is probably going to become one of, if not the major thing that people remember this game for. I can't help but think that's going to be far more costly to Sony, SL and the WipEout series than any revenue from these adverts could make up for.

[DawnFireDragoon]

well said saturn.

[AG-wolf]

I'll pay $100 to get a new wipeout game with the handling and engine physics of XL, 64, and 3 combined.

I've paid my $430.00 to play Wipeout HD- I won't pay any more money into a company that has become so detached from its once loyal consumer base that they actually expect people to respect them after all the BS they have pulled in this console generation.

if they're gonna do ads, the next DLC pack should be free. If we buy the next DLC pack, no ads.

bear in mind, people, these ads more than likely also provide income to cover your wonderful "free" Playstation Network connectivity

[IH8YOU]

Let me interject - bringing back XL / 2097 - I will drop $100.00 for that alone, at the drop of a hat.

God how I miss thee, 2097.

[DrMannevond]

Amen!

[Koleax]

WipEout HD was supposed to be (from what I can tell) at the forefront of the technology and demonstrate that digital download games don't have to be 'low budget', simple games.

I don't know. I never got that impression. Like IH8YOU I balked at the price and literally thought, "were they trying to make this a low-budget game?" Even considering the distribution costs they were able to cut by offering it online, it seemed like someone somewhere screwed up.

Worst-case scenario for me is that it was their original plan to use the low price point to lure a large amount cheap-game-buying customers into a good game's installed base, then later expose them to ads for other cheap games. You see, that works as a sort of substitute for physical degradation of a game. Instead of relying on the product to wear, tear, and eventually be thrown away or forgotten, they can now introduce ads that will have the double effect of making the game obsolete and introducing the player to new ones. It makes sense from a marketer's perspective and is completely awful.

Maybe all they intended was to gently remind customers playing a year-old game that there are new games out there they should be playing. In that case, maybe they do not want my money for this hypothetical DLC at any price. They would rather I just stopped playing the game and bought a new one. That would hurt me the most.

Edit: As long as we're talking XL, make it a hi-res port of 2097 and let me use my bluetooth keyboard.

[AG-wolf]

the problem with "bringing back xl/2097" is they can't just run it in high-res and make everything work the way it used to... Well it CAN be done, ePSXe has the ability to render stuff in higher resolution; but if a free emulator can pull it off better than the blurry stretched and NON-upscaled output the PS3 "manages," I certainly wouldnt pay $100 for it.

They need to analyze everything it was that made the old games so good, and work from there. Sure Pulse and HD have loopy tracks, AG ships that go fast, and weapons... but the physics of hurtling those machines down hills and around corners was what made it exhilarating; coming through a tight s-turn segment in a Qirex, scraping the entire edge of a banking corner in Icaras. Everything was tight, intuitive... The first three games had amazing acceleration, momentum, and speed physics too... Pure, Pulse, and HD threw all of that out the window. Collision/bumping/scraping were perfected in the first games as well- fairly balanced in their forgiveness and punishment; yet now if you so much as breathe on a wall, your ship sticks to it like a magnet and the other people on the track are gone.

i got distracted as i was typing, so im gonna stop

[ProblemSolver]

... bear in mind, people, these ads more than likely also provide income to cover your wonderful "free" Playstation Network connectivity

Well, we don't need any dedicated servers from Sony to play WipEout HD online,
seriously. We don't need them, the leaderboard isn't working at all and anything
else is just crap. The level-system isn't worth a thing, neither are the badges.
Sorry, but that's the truth.

So I would be very pleased if they would decouple WipEout HD from the PSN
if they claim that their PC-386 consume too much resources to maintain some
small data sets.

... Worst-case scenario for me is that it was their original plan to use the low price point to lure a large amount cheap-game-buying customers into a good game's installed base, then later expose them to ads for other cheap games. You see, that works as a sort of substitute for physical degradation of a game. Instead of relying on the product to wear, tear, and eventually be thrown away or forgotten, they can now introduce ads that will have the double effect of making the game obsolete and introducing the player to new ones. It makes sense from a marketer's perspective and is completely awful. ...

Might be true. What I don't like is simply the fact that today there is no
stopping from ruin anything. They simply just don't care because there are
enough fools out there willing to buy anything.

Ads have taken over TV and ads will takeover Gaming. TV is dead, Cinema is
dead, and Gaming is next in line. I think we have about two or three years
until serious gaming / game-development is trashed altogether. The quality
of today's games are far behind of what we had in the past. Only a few games
can hold the former quality standard, but they will vanish quite soon.

I don't know, but WipEout HD might be the last Wipeout with such a quality.
And if you think about it, WipEout HD can be considered as the closure of all
previous Wipout games, i.e. I strongly believe that WipEout HD is the last
game of what we know as Wipeout.

[phaeton_pl]

I know what you mean guys and you are all right, but...

Personaly, I don't mind ads at all, I really don't care as Wipeout HD/Fury is the best game i ever played and the price is incredibly low. Since the beginning i was wondering how they will make a profit with such a low price??

OK, there are ads in the game now, I'm not happy but the game is still as good as it was. I just hope - more money = more DLC


As my fellow racer klocki_LEGO said last time, "they should play some youtube vids from Yeldar, Pac or Leungbok instead of showing ads".

I lol'd but this is crazy idea

[leungbok]

I thought about something like that (not for our vids, hey ^^), i heard about a stuff on X-box live arcade that could allows to see some ingame live videos (a working "spectator mode" lol), to record them and to share them with the community, it was linked with youtube if i remember well.
I saw that in a tv's feature. Maybe someone here knows exactly what it is about ?

[Koleax]

I don't know about that, leungbok, but you can certainly share and download complete game replays through the leaderboards. DOA4, Forza 2, and Rez HD are examples off the top of my head. Not every game does, but surprisingly many. Duke Nukem 3D is another one, I think.

[lunar]

Personaly, I don't mind ads at all, I really don't care as Wipeout HD/Fury is the best game i ever played and the price is incredibly low. Since the beginning i was wondering how they will make a profit with such a low price??

I agree Wipeout HD is great value for money, but if they didn`t make enough money then recouping it this way is not acceptable. I think the problem with accepting the presence of this type of advertising is that it is an attempt to change the very nature of ingame advertising and how far it can go. That is why so many people object - it stretches the boundaries of what is commonly accepted and justified. It changes the rules. If this is a success it will spread to all games. With Pure`s Puma packs you could feel the advert gave you something back - the DLC itself. The original game you paid for remained the exactly game you paid for. With billboards in game the advertising is embedded from the start and fits into the game world if done well.

With this HD ad campaign, it`s not so much that it ruins our escape from real life, I`m fine with real life, it`s the fact that it leaves very little time when somebody isn`t selling me something. Advertisers have found some time in our lives when they aren`t "reaching" us and this is a cynical attempt to exploit it. This shoehorns advertising into a new space and asserts that our previous belief that the "game world" is our private space and generally not open to blatant commercialization is a false belief. That`s one reason why it upsets people, I think. I have to watch an advert to play a game I paid cash for - how can that ever be acceptable? It`s the future though, if enough people accept it. People will think gaming has always been this way - you pay for the game and then you watch ads. It doesn`t have to be that way, I think.

As far as paying for a Wipeout HD that doesn`t have ads goes, I think we all already did.

[infoxicated]

The decision that brought adverts into the game were most probably weighed up in the same way as when the Coke advertising in Pure came around and when the decision to have downloadable ships in WipEout Pulse that could not be used in multiplayer was made.

These decisions are not made in isolation. There are influences outside the studio, be it from marketing or from it being corporate policy to introduce these things.

What you have to ask yourselves is why WipEout?

Why not Killzone? Why not Little Big Planet? Why not Uncharted 2? Why not Motorstorm?

These are all Sony published titles that could equally bring product placement to the masses. Can you imagine Nathan Drake turning to the camera and saying "Hi, I'm Nathan Drake. I don't shave much, but when I do it's Gillette that I use - the best a man can get"?

What about a cut-scene in Killzone 2 where a couple of Heghast have the following exchange;

"Man, my sore throat is really hampering me today?"
"Have you tried new Strepsils? They're out of this world!"

We don't see these things because somebody involved in those games has refused to let their title be cheapened. Ultimately, the responsibility for why there is advertising in WipEout HD - a game that you've already paid good money for - lies with the Game Director and the Technical Director of WipEout.

It's their call. If they put their foot down enough and protect their game from corporate exploitation, then it doesn't happen.

So in this case - WipEout HD, the game, is a victim as well. It's been the flagship HD title that the development team have crafted to tight restrictions, given the 1080p promises that were made so early on. How do you think these guys feel - many of them probably aren't even on the team any longer - that the game they worked so hard to create is now the poster child of corporate exploitation?

Lashing out at "the developers" - that unseen, abuse absorbing entity that internet warriors love to hate - is missing the real villains in this. Why not check the credits next time you're playing the game and find out where the blame really lies?

//and now, a word from our sponsor

[kanar]

You guys summed up the things well. I've nothing more to add, except the fact -maybe it has been said before- playstation network is free, and maybe the Hd/pulse servers are costing a lot to maintain up & ready. So these ads were implemented maybe to lower the costs. Which is not cool for us I agree.

[abukii]

Kanar-- AGREED, brother

[Xavier]

I'm embarrassed to admit that I'd pay even more than the "regular" retail price for a prepetually-ad-free Wipeout HD. Wipeout games aren't things you play for a few months and then forget about -- you come back to the again and again over the years. If the ads remain forever, I'll be despising them and refusing to buy the products they're peddling long after I would have forgotten about whatever money I spent to acquire a pristine, ad-free game back in 2009.

And Wipeout is one series where ads really ruin the experience. In a baseball or soccer game, the game is attempting to replicate the real world (and its sports leagues, athletes, etc.), so a sudden commercial just makes you feel like you're watching TV rather than being in the dugout. A minor fault compared to entering the entirely-fictional and fantastically-realized 23rd century that is Wipeout's aesthetic masterpiece of a setting, only to be wrenched back into 2009 ugliness at regular intervals. Wipeout deserves better than this.

[Spilskinanker]

Like IH8YOU and Koleax, when I saw low price of Wipeout HD I was worried. As phaeton_pl and lunar mention, at least in the short term, it does make Wipeout HD a great value for the cost, but I agree with ProblemSolver's fear about, in the long term, Wipeout HD being the last of the Wipeout I know and love.

infoxicated really hits the nail on the head. Though Studio Liverpool takes their marching orders from Sony, after purchasing the company in 1993, Sony probably now owns the IP rights to the Wipeout Franchise. A given Sony's recent $3 billion loss, the pressure is on to make more money. So I suspect there is only so much resisting one can do.

Personally, I only play a few games other than Wipeout anymore and I've never bought a Playwhatever until Wipeout has come out for it. So in my mind, like Koleax's. I'm already paying a few hundred dollars. And it's been worth every penny. The things I have experienced while playing multiplayer Wipeout and prescribing to the Icarus motto...

There are options, a DLC version as is being suggested here, adding the ability to pay of ad free online play, allowing for P2P network play so they don't have to support servers, smarter ads (Fat Princess is the absolute worst game Sony could be advertising over and over to me), I hope someone out there wises up.

[Connavar]

I agree with phaeton_pl, Wipeout HD/Fury is one of the best games I've ever
played, I think it's the best game I've been playing in the past 2 years, I rank it
as high as classics such as Starcraft, Counterstrike, Streets of Rage 2, Monkey
Island, Ninja Gaiden Black, Devil May Cry (1) ... the best of the best.

Having ads now is very unfortunate but at least I still have a blast playing this
game, given the choices, I take a GREAT game with ads any day over a worse
game without ads.