Are companies gearing up for war with the consumer?

As it stands, a clash between consumer and corporate interests seems likely and it is unknown what the inevitable fallout will be.

[bigmalky]

Trying to aggressively make anyone hand over money while treating customers like idiots is going to end up suicidal for these big companies.

I think the mainstream media needs to get as involved with all AAA gaming, as they did with SWBFII and EA... It'll catch up with them one day.

The problem is the casual consumer, who doesn't read about these bloodsucking practices.

[annoyedgamer]

The mainstream media is engaged in their own war with us consumers. They will side eith EA/Activision/Ubisoft.

[GottaBjimmyb]

Geez spyro having its content be partially digital is really not that big of a deal, you guys over-dramatize everything.

[Highlife]

@gottab
Really if you buy a disc based game wouldn't you expect it to be on the freaking disc.

[GottaBjimmyb]

Expect, sure, but what difference is it really? You cannot play these games without downloading the content off the disc and onto the harddrive anyway, so not sure why you are so much concerned where the file originates from if it just gets copied to the HDD anyway.....

[Highlife]

@gottab
Data caps and getting what you pay for

[agent4532]

The gaming has been very pro corporate. The gaming media was pissed when Valve cave to the demand of PC gamers refusal to pay for mods. The media also demonizes gaming key resellers like G2A. G2A is like the old gaming store that made profit from used games. The media refuses to inform consumers about "The First Sale Doctrine". 90 percent of the time it sides with corporations. It was the gamers that fought back against EA in regards to microtransanctions that put pressure not just on EA but on the gaming media as well.

[Leeroyw]

Most game reviewers are all given free products, codes, promo materials and God knows what else to promote and review their code and its supposed to be even and fair?
Everywhere else this is regulated. But not gaming.
I don't trust most journalists to be honest anymore.

[Cueil]

if the "gamers are dead" articles don't instill distrust in-game journalist then I'm not sure what will... no matter what side of the GG fence you were on. These guys have never been on our side... only their own and those who hook them up

[CyberSentinel]

If money was Activision’s only concern, they could of just released the game for full price.
Honestly, I would of preferred to buy this trilogy from limited run, and pay more, then to have them damage Spyro’s futures this way.

[Profchaos]

They could of charged full price and released it episodically and I would have paid full price for each version. So I'm pretty happy with the 3 in 1 bundle

[agent4532]

Tell that to Australian, UK, Japanese gamers. They pay between $80-$100.00 US dollars for games. Now do you think these gamers would want to pay $110-$120 US dollars, hell no. Games like Hellblade, Ori, The Forest, Divinity Original Sin franchise have proven to be profitable despite its lack of $60.00 price tag. Is greed plain and simple

[Profchaos]

I am Australian I paid 69 Australian dollars to pre order the re ignited collection via psn.

If your paying that much your crazy. At least for spyro.

[FinalFantasyFanatic]

I always use online stores like Ozgameshop and with their discount system it works out pretty well for me since I buy alot. I also stalk Steam and PSN for sales too, I only pay full price for niche games, games I really want or deserve the money.

[CyberSentinel]

Even if they released the game at full price, that doesn’t mean the game will stay that price forever. Prices usually drop pretty quickly, (New and Used) and we would have all 3 games on physical media.
All gamers would have to do is wait for a price they are willing to pay. That’s why I said, release at full price.

Activision knows this, that’s why they are doing it this way. As good as Crash’s sales were, I’ll bet to Activision, it was a disappointment.

[The_Hooligan]

That's what I usually do when buying a game. Just wait for it to drop in price unless I really want a particular game on first day (Spiderman - can't wait to play that one). But some games never go down in price for years, especially when it comes to Nintendo games but like you said if people just wait long enough and have patience they can game for cheap.
This is just an opinion from me, a cheapass gamer lol

[FinalFantasyFanatic]

@The_Hooligan,

Oh Nintendo games, I'd have a much bigger collection if sales happened more often.

[monkey602]

You can't go to war against consumers. You'll lose.

Don't bite the hand that feeds

[Gridknac]

Like the article says, if we don't buy it, they won't do shit like this. If you could ever get the majority to stick together and stand against these practices, we could bring it all to a grinding halt. I think its time to get away from a standard $59.99 for a new game and use a more common sense approach. A Fallout or Skyrim type game that you know your gonna get a 100/200 hrs. of playtime out of, bill me the full $100 upfront. I will gladly pay it. Then if in a year and a half the dev wants to add something or revisit something in the game, go for it. A Madden or COD(insert any annual release) needs to stay @$59.99 price point. Those games need to give maps away for free to keep the player base engaged and then supplement through MT for cosmetics. There has to be balance. Base game prices have not went up since the 360 launched. Publishers have been led to these practices by trying to keep under the $59.99 despite skyrocketing dev costs. Having said that though, does not mean there should be a base increase for all games, hell some need to drop some because of the piss poor condition they launch in! But pricing definitely needs to be tied to amount of content within.

[InTheZoneAC]

you act like single player games don't bank millions in profits. There doesn't need to be an increase in game price.

[agent4532]

Rising dev costs. Come on, weren't gamers told over and over how digital distribution would cut game development costs. Gamers today have been promoting games for free since social media launched; tested games free of charge and also ended up funding games that AAA publishers refused to publish. Gamers have become part of making a game than just being consumers for free. PC gamers must fix shoddy or broken ports due to AAA game developers refusal to fix them. You want to talk about rising dev costs. That is baloney unless the whole digital distribution ✂ game costs was a lie

[Platformgamer]

crash and spyro deserves a better owner, let's kill activision guys!

[PiNkFaIrYbOi]

Nothing here, getting a 404.

[Tross]

Apologies, it's back up now.

[agent4532]

IWhat greedy game developers want to get rid off is "The First Sale Doctrine". For this law allows consumers to legally purchase used physical products, trade, resale, share, etc. They are also pissed with how some of these features are starting to appear via digital. For example, digital refunds which are mediocre at best due to all the hoops and loops the gamer must go through, the ROM community under attack by Nintendo, the demonizing of G2A or sites that resell gaming keys.Is because consumers refused to buy into their shady tactics.

[AK91]

I honestly feel like it’s game journalists are the ones who appear to despise the consumers.

There are certainly some companies that don’t care about their consumers and just try to scam as much money as possible from gamers but I feel that journalists are making it appear as though WW3 is about to happen.

[FinalFantasyFanatic]

They can act like dicks if they want, I'll just withhold my money and not buy their products, hopefully everyone else has a similar mindset, then it'll make a good punishment for trying to treat their customer's so horribly.

I don't even resell my games, I just collect them and put them up for display in my house, as for Spyro, F*** them, I'll buy it when it's on a deep discount for this crap.

[Einhander1971]

The customers always right, eventually it will bite these companies in the ass.