Uncharted 4’s post-launch maps and modes will be free

[DivinePaladin]

BraLoD said:

DivinePaladin said:

God of War is a shell of itself lately, whereas Uncharted is at its peak. Plus Sony is the company trying to introduce a VR peripheral with very little first party support and release a hardware upgrade if rumors are to be believed. Sony is still in love with milking their brand to all hell, but in this case they backed away to instill a sense of goodwill most likely and end the series on a high note in every way, even if the multiplayer is still tacked on. 

The question here is how you link Uncharted 4 having free dlc post launch as an indicatior for God of War 4 being littered on microtransations.

Also, God of War is a shell of itself lately? It had literally one major game, a prequel, not even a numbered one, being out of the curve of the original trilogy fame and glory, and that's considered the series being a shell of itself? It's more like a point out of the curve, if anything.

The VR and Neo stuff are out of the topic, but at least from the VR side of things, the confirmed one, Sony is having RIGS and VR Worlds (5 on 1) as new things for the device launch and thing like Driveclub, Until Dawn and freaking Gran Turismo (Sony biggest IP) being worked to VR just as well (probably Dreams as well), I really don't see how you can even try to claim Sony is "trying to introduce a VR peripheral with very little first party support", seriously.

No offenses, I know you aren't a troll or mean bad, but things are getting less sense the further will go here.

God of War: Ascension sold poorly on a CoD-sized budget and a Super Bowl marketing campaign, with a focus on developing Kratos's character that absolutely failed.  PlayStation All-Stars outsold it every month besides the month GoW:A launched even though Sony had already pulled PSAS support, and Sony pushed GoW even harder for a few months to fight this fact.  That's very much a shell of what it used to be.  Hell, the series was already starting to fall apart storyline-wise once Jaffe left, but God of War III's sales and the actually kind of decent PSP games masked that fact for a couple more years.  GoW 4 is going to have a hell of a time making back what will be around a three to four year development budget on top of their cancelled IP, The Order failing*, and studio move.  The only saving grace financially would be to implement a tacked-on multiplayer again to try to recoup that budget.

Uncharted lacking microtransactions needs to be recouped somewhere for Sony, and I doubt it's solely going to be made up by the extra sales the game will have on PS4.  They don't do anything just in good faith; as much as I love them I'm not afraid to admit that.  Where else do you see this cut being made back up?  Just by in-game purchases from people who don't want to put the effort in?  I don't trust that logic considering TLoU had some damn-near pay-to-win guns.  On the Splatoon model cashing out for them down the line?  Uncharted's multiplayer isn't something that's been enjoyed long term by a significant portion of the fanbase even when they released it for free by itself, so I doubt that.  What other games are coming up that have a history of microtransactions?  Gran Turismo is the only one that comes to mind, and I'm sure that will have them as well because it's easy pickin's, especially since 6 was disgustingly designed with "optional" microtransactions that were required unless you had hundreds of hours or did some glitches to earn credits.

As for the somehow-off topic side comment about Sony having a history of milking the PS brand that is soaking through to today's development cycles, a spinoff arcade shooter Until Dawn game and two cross-platform racing games (one of which is GT and likely isn't even really in development VR yet, knowing GT) with PS4 aren't proof of a dedicated push for the peripheral; to the contrary, that's a decided lack of faith when your big launch titles are ports and one spinoff that may or may not even follow what made the original good!  I can go back further to PS Move if you'd like to mention the tendency to milk without putting in hard effort for the success - unless you consider Resistance 3's Move support a launch title worthy of buying a whole device for.  THIS announcement is the anomaly here, knowing Sony, and I'm sure it's done solely as a sort of apology for TLoU's multiplayer being disgustingly riddled with microtransactions, and because the series is over after this.  But that apology will have to be made up somewhere - we've never seen Sony make an expensive apology they didn't make up somewhere else later (outside of the post-hack apology, they admittedly took that one like a champ).

 

*Yes, I know the Order wasn't entirely them, but it's an incubated development, as are all of SMS's non-GoW projects.  But putting effort into incubating these developments costs money, and as we saw with the layoffs, SMS needs to make money back too here.

 

And a quick note here:  I'm NOT saying this is a bad thing right here.  I'd rather have a series I care about do away with shifty practices than one I don't, and getting rid of poorly-implemented microtransactions is always a good thing.  I'm saying that Sony doesn't throw away money without making it back somewhere else.  Maybe they'll sell us a Grounded difficulty again to try and make up for it, maybe the short single-player expansion will be sold as a standalone for around $15 again, who knows.  The best bet is that GoW will hold up its previous attempt at microtransactions in its multiplayer, though.