August 25th 2009 11:01 am PT

No post about the DLC Pinnacle Station for Mass Effect out today for 400 points. There are Mass Effect avatar items also

http://marketplace.xbox.com/en-US/games/media/66acd000-77fe-1000-9115-d8024d5307e8/?of=0&bt=0&sb=1&p=2

I wish we could purchase el-cheapo licenses to activate our installed games to be used without discs, but that wont happen of course. The game DVD’s would need unique DNA like some PS2 multiplayer discs so that the activated discs could be locked out of other boxes.

Or I could make a joke about the 360 having the ability to destroy the discs beyond use.. which is only available in special models today.

These are way too expensive in the UK at £19.99 each or $32.88 US, as was the first batch of Games on Demand, it’s such as shame as for £5-10 I would consider buying quite a few.

All can be had for less than £10 second hand, and if you shop around you can pick even pick them up new, please sort the pricing out.

LOL, £20 for Burnout Revenge!

Better make prices in points. (all regions same price). and lower the prices. Thanks!

These are just bad games to put on GOD.. too early for bad games…

Fifa09 costs 2800 MSP here, its ridiculous considering Fifa10 will be out in like 1 month and half.

Someone at MS has gone bat-$#!t crazy. $20 USD for Burnout Revenge when I can walk down to Gamestop and get a used copy for $10?!? Then I can even take the disk to a friend’s house and not have to worry about f’ing around with the ridiculous DRM.

I agree with Joergen8. We need to be able to buy a licence to unlock disc games that are installed on the HDD for $5-$10. Screw Games on Demand. Like they all say: I don’t like it, so I’m not buying.

No need to be jerks people and remember you are not buying a “used” copy so that 10 bucks that Gamestop is ripping you off for (they paid what a dollar for it?) give no money to the people who made the game. Also you can’t loose your copy of the game much like steam you can redownload any game that you purchased on the service.

Australian Pricing:

Mass Effect: $99.95 (COMON WTF!? YOU CAN BUY IT AT HALF THE FREAKING PRICE BRAND NEW! Price Gauging to the MAX!)

Bioshock: $49.95 (Great game, well worth the price, but dropping it by $10 would place it in a better position).

Burnout Revenge: $49.95 (Never played it, looks cool though, but at that price, I would rather go pick it up for a much smaller price).

Call of Duty 2: $49.95 (An ancient game like this… and you are asking $50 for it? Give me a break, I can pick it up for $20 in the bargain bins!)

Kameo: $29.95 (Great game for the younger audience, and it’s actually at a decent price, I actually picked this game up for $20 second hand, but it’s better priced than the others).

Need for Speed: Pro Street: $49.95 (I personally reckon’ this game was a load of crap, and the only Need for Speed game I wouldn’t buy, so that’s more of personal taste really.)

Oblivion: $49.95 (Great game, Bethesda deserves the cash, however for $10 more you can get Bioshock included in a Double pack deal.)

Perfect Dark Zero: $29.95 (Good game, worth the price, my only complaint is that the game didn’t advance enough over the original perfect dark, and just didn’t feel as Epic.)

Prey: $29.95 (Good price considering the pricing of other games here.)

Rockstar Table Tennis: $69.95 (This game sucks, and it’s fairly old, even worst is that the $70 price tag was the price tag of the game when it launched, price gauging much?)

Saints Row: $49.95 (Yay Saint’s row! Wait, it’s not the second Saints row… Which can be picked up for that same price if not cheaper and it’s a much better game overall.)

Sega Rally: $49.95 (Haven’t played this yet.)

Viva Pinata: $29.95 (This game, despite it’s childish looks is actually rather addictive, and it’s good for the younger audience as well, I have no issue paying $30 for it, although I did buy this game ages ago in a Viva Pinata + Forza 2 double pack for $50 about 6 months ago.)

Viva Pinata Trouble in Paradise: $69.95 (This isn’t worth it, you can pick it up for a 3rd of the price.)

All in all, the Pricing needs a good check, I wanted to buy Mass Effect, however the price is set at a stupid level. (Who ever placed that price, needs to be fired.)
Not to mention that in Australia, Internet doesn’t come cheap, and we are stuck with download limits which is an additional cost over some of the stupidly insane pricing of the Game on Demand. (iiNet and Westnet have Quota free Xbox Live though).

Everyone who I have talked to, has agreed with me on that the pricing is just stupid, and combined with the limited sized Hard Disk Drives that are not user upgradable on the Xbox 360, just doesn’t make sense.

For instance if I was to buy every Xbox 360 “Games on demand” game (Average of 5gb of game size) it would consume 70gb, then combined with the Xbox Originals 77.5gb (3.5gb average size) then you have exceeded the Xbox’s maximum storage, then you have DLC like Map Packs/Game Modes/Trailers/Demo’s to fit on there as well.

Hows about trying to price the games at a decent level? Instead of pricing them so far out of pocket to make it a pointless affair, you could potentially even make a larger profit from the sheer volume of sales if they were priced correctly, as more people would be enticed to make a purchase.

Anyway, just frustrated and annoyed at all the Proclaimed “Greatness” that was advertised about Games on Demand only to see it as money making heap of crap which is not price right. (Hint: Lower the price.).

Guys, just like the avatar items, MS is pricing high, seeing demand, getting money from early adopters and identifying some of their market limits. Keep on not buying and eventually prices will come down.

From Microsoft’s perspective, its easier and more profitable for them to lower prices then it is to raise prices. Just look at arcade games and the moaning and complaining people do for games past the 800 point mark (regardless of justification). They’ll try and sell you a $30 GOD and eventually, it’ll be $20 and then eventually it’ll be less. Just be patient.

Way too expensive !

How can Microsoft justify these prices?
Theres no manufacturing costs, no distribution costs. Unlike retail stores they dont have to pay suppliers for the products nor other overheads yet the prices a re considerably higher than retail.

It costs microsoft nothing for people to download, once its on the server thats it yet we see stupidly high prices for old games.

burnout is not that bad 20 bucks for a copy that the developer gets paid for or 20 bucks used at gamestop. I will go for the new over a used any day. Here is the link to gamestop that shows it for the same price. http://www.gamestop.com/Catalog/ProductDetails.aspx?product_id=39219
People support the developer these people put a lot of work into these games the least you can do is pay them for that work

@Cueil are you that stupid, firstly, i don’t know how many people lose games, or even how many games you lose because i have never lost a game, and even if i did lose a copy of burnout for e.g, i’d go back to the store and buy another 60 copies of it, it would still work out cheaper than the games on demand prices, what a tool, go crawl under the rock you came from and keep your under-educated comments to yourself.

support the developer??? why doesn’t microsoft support the developer and give these games a chance of been sold at a reasonable price. at the end of the day, 99.9% of people go for the best value option, and microsoft isn’t the best value, and i doubt it ever will be.

moan over.

Hey Major where is the love for Mass Effect??????? Pinnacle Station DLC 400 points. A must have for any Mass Effect fan. PS: Games on Demand should be $19.99 and Under…..MeThinks!!!

When is BioShock comming to the Games on Demand list? I keep seeing it on the picture at the very front on the GoD tab yet it isn’t there.

@BladeB0y: Don’t worry, in Euro land they seem to be €30, i.e. £26 or $42

Microsoft always suprises me. They just taught me that Austria is no longer in Europe because Burnout is not out here. So that means for me we are no longer Europe and are probably our own continent. Viva la Austria.

Sell them for less then people might actually buy them.

HAAAAAA! $24.99 Canadian for Burnout Revenge.

Count me in as one who much prefers to own a disc rather than a digital copy…and who cares how much someone got for a used copy of a game, if it’s in good condition, and is cheap, buy it. I see people all the time pawning games/ systems, selling to friends, or trading stuff in, ANYWHERE (not just Gamestop) for cash, because they need gas/ food/ whatever. If I have the choice of buying, oh, say Watchmen 1&2, used, for $17.99 (or less with Edge/ promotion/ coupon/ etc), or downloading them for 1600 pts (part 1) and 1200 pts (part 2…which is strangely not showing up in the mp right now), why would I pay 3200 pts ($40)? Brand new, at retail, it’s $20, so who is taking the food from whose table? Burnout Revenge was a good LAUNCH title…it’s almost 4 yrs old, and I am pretty sure EA and whoever else was involved made their money already. One of the theories behind GoD is that it will help drive down “re-sellers” like Gamestop, as consumers have no options with digital content once they are done with it. Look at games like Oblivion, Fallout 3, and GTA IV…you could easily have spent over $100 on DLC, but once you beat all the games, that money is GONE…you can trade/ swap/ sell your discs, but digital purchases are forever yours (and some you can’t even share with your family…AVATAR ITEMS!)

@KP ScuzzyBunny: Money hardly isn’t gone once a game has been beaten but luckily, those who sell their copies as soon as they do are a godsend to some of us Gamestop is notorious of selling used games for 10% off their RRP (after having bought them from idiots for 80% off their RRP) but why bother? Buying a game to keep is almost as cost-effective as renting, as long as you show a little patience and know when and where to shop.

*Lower G.O.D prices!*
An extra $10 for a digital version is crap.

Why is FIFA 09 not available in the UK? Its easily the most popular country for FIFA.

Yeah I’m wondering why FIFA isn’t available in the U.S., either. It’s not our most popular sport, sure, but there’s still a lot of soccer (football) fans here.

Lower the prices! This is sooo ridiculous.

I’m going to have to join the chorus going “lol, what’s up with these ridiculously high prices?”

Not buying any of these, Far too expensive at €30, please lower them to €20 at least.

Digital copies = CHEAPER than non-digital ones. You guys still don’t get it.

£20 is far too much. I can’t get these games on disc from £5-10.

All I can think about Games on Demand is what a waste of resources.
The people that were sat in their offices thinking of ways to rip the lining out of our pockets could have been put to use on actually adding USEFUL features to the NXE update.
I’m seriously considering not renewing my gold LIVE this year. I just can’t stomach the thought that my subscription fee is paying people to think of more ingenious ways of extracting cash from us instead of giving us what we truly want from them.

Every week we get to read the same posts from the same dumb muther F@#Kers. It’s real simple you mental midgets. GO TO THE STORE AND BUY A COPY OF THE GAME but, it always comes down to saving a dollar with this group. MS will never win over the cheap@SS dumb@SS muther F@#Kers. Trying blaming yourselves for not having good paying jobs.

@CARNAGE RULES

I’m sorry but male prostitution isn’t as profitable everywhere as it obviously is where you are. People like to pay… I don’t know… reasonable prices for things in most places.

Charging MORE for a digital copy than a hard copy is the height of insanity.

sort your business model. you guys are completely out of touch with reality.no one is going to pay those silly prices. well, im not. i fear the day games distribution goes fully digital. already having nightmares about it :S

@ ChargingMuffin
go get a life,loser. and stop insult people. at over 100000+ Gamerscore, you really need to go outside and breathe some fresh air. and eat less sugar, eases on the anger.

Great. More over priced games that you can buy at the store much cheaper AND have a hard copy of it.

I really hope Games on Demand fails unless they lower the prices. I know I won’t be buying anything when I know I can get it cheaper. I would much rather have a physical copy anyway so that I can trade it off when I’m finished with it or even let friends borrow it.

I have to agree with @Pemalite

Australian prices are a joke. I can go on Ebay and buy any of these games brand new for about AUD$20-$30. There should be one price for all of these $29.95. Why would I pay more when Ebay is cheap, it gets delivered to my door and I can resell it when I’m done.

@Pemalite
Don’t buy from the money vampires at EBGames or Gamestop at all. Buy your games brand new on Ebay for 1/2 to 1/3 the price of retail – even for new games; only cashed up fools pay retail prices. Also, you can easily import unedited R18+ games and unreleased games (I got Fallout 3 and Rockband 2) from the UK and they work fine on our consoles.

Load of old overpriced shite.

Major, Lego Star Wars was advertised as a 25 August GOD release in Australia. It’s not on the store at all.

I am waiting to buy that game. Have the plans changed? Is there an official calendar or site which lists the planned releases by region? I’m also looking at getting Fallout 3 soon, and would prefer it as GOD. It’s pretty difficult to plan purchases when you have no idea if a game will even be available on GOD, let alone what date it might arrive.

Would love some feedback on this.

@ RuairiAU

I actually don’t have a dedicated games store near me (Nearest one is about 8 hours away), only a single Kmart store that sells Xbox 360 games. (And they never have anything decent anyway), hence Games on Demand would make sense for someone like me if the prices were at a decent level.
I’m also the kind of person who doesn’t resell there games, so I now have a fairly sizable collection, and resale value isn’t a big issue.

The Prices are so funny

I picked up fifa 09 new for £6 a few months ago
and Pro Street for like £8 new about 9 months ago

Why on earth would i want to pay £20 ($33 US)
for games that i can get new on dvd for less than a third of the price

@Pemalite
Hey I’d like to download games on demand – but they’re having a laugh; so I’m voting with my wallet. I reckon M$ is bowing down to pressure from companies like EBGames because they’re eating into their second hand market. That’s why I’d advise everyone to buy their games from places like Ebay – this will force everyone to be more competitive.

£20? Microsoft have got ths all wrong, games like burnout paradise and bad company still sell brand new for about £20 in the shops so they are offering an alternative and the price makes sense. But games like perfect dark, burnout revenge and call of duty 2 are ONLY available pre-owned, Microsoft should go super agressive with the pricing on these old games and destroy the bottom end of the pre-owned market.

Or they could just list all the games at £20 each and grumble about pre-owned games

Hey Major what about Test Drive Unlimited? It should be live on 08.11.

Lego Star Wars has now shown up. Thanks to the guys.

I would still love to see some kind of online release calendar or something similar.

These aren’t $10 games, so they’re less likely to end up as impulse purchaseds. Creating a little bit of demand prior to release wouldn’t be such a bad thing i’d think.

sorry ..but those games are overpriced…

What a bargain, £20 each for old games worth about £7, how Microsoft spoil us with these great deals.

guys, in case you are still not aware of this, its microsoft, or any publishers, dream to KILL 2ND HAND SHOPS. No more cheap games. the day will come when, years after release, a game can only be bought at his launch price. The publishers salivate over this. they cant wait for that day to come. thats about when ill give up playing games.

Yeah, I know they (the 2nd-hand-shops) are a pain in the arse for them… But with this pricings they’ll never get rid of them. Well only when we all get too lazy to walk/drive to the next retailer and the internet finally runs at full speed everywhere.

For me it’s cheaper and way faster to drive to Gamestop. I only receive 1.5Mbit here lol

Well for all the players maybe taking a 2nd look at this. Don’t buy. There’s a new Fifa coming in like 1 month. A new NFS as well. And if you really want the good old times with this games search on Ebay or drive to your next 2nd-hand-games-retailer.

No other market bitches and moans as much as the gameing one

you dont see samsung moaning you sold your used tv to buy another tv
its the way of life

and as such games dev’s should suck it up also
Someone sells theyr game and puts that cash towards another game
either way they get money back

if they try this crap to much it will push fans away
and they wont get any cash from them

example
any game that pretends to add extra content via a dlc code in a new release
which could have easily been put on the disk
i buy used to ensure they get 0 cash from me

any publisher that retires games (yes im looking at you ea)
I only buy used if poss

its not just me doing things like this
and it all adds up

No money from me MS. I’ll just buy cheaper used copies instead, and MS and the developers get NOTHING. Oh well, price them cheaper and you’d get $10 a pop instead of nothing.

Major,
Seriously now, what are you honest true feelings here??.
I know your never going to be able to post such things, but I really seriously as one adult to another, would like not only your opinions, but also what EXACTLY is being discussed regarding these prices worldwide, because I for one really would like to be treated with a semblance of intellect..NOBODY and I repeat nobody is going to buy these games at these prices, its not even an attractive proposition..DRM problems, no physical copy, everything points to a horrible sale, and on top of it all, is a ludicrous price point.

Me for one would really like to know what is being discussed in the back rooms of MS, and you know what, if it really is something like, “lets just keep them overpriced and take what we can”, then I for one would respect you all more, then just constantly making us out to be idiots, if your hoping gamers are going to pay these prices.thats what makes it worse for me..that they really think we would pay this price..and one final thing, I would love to know what the developers think.