March 1st 2010 2:13 pm PT

This is very lame!
Here the original announcement of the Avatar marketplace was that “we will never charge for items” and now they’re to the point where a sale is happening. I like the deal of the week, but I’d prefer to have no deal this week rather than this.

Most likely one of the lamest DoTW I have seen yet.

F-F-F-FAIL

No disrespect Major, overall, the whole avatar thing has been a flop in my humble opinion. Very few games utilize giving avatar awards, and avatar marketplace is simply too expensive for decorations which only grace a SELECT FEW avatar titles and my friends’ “Friends” tab.
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Almost all the avatar gear is extremely overpriced. It doesn’t really do anything special. 320MSP (3 USD) for certain sets? I mean come on. T-Shirts are tolerable at 80 points, but even $1 for what amounts to a plain jane texture seems a bit excessive. I could rant highly about the cost of the pro sports gear, but I’ll give that a pass since I bet you have to pay extra licensing to the NFL/NFLPA;MLB/MLBPA to use the official logos and uniforms.
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I bought a couple things, I admit. However, I honestly have zero intentions of buying anything else. Most of the time I look at the prices and think: ‘No way I’m spending that many points on THAT’. Let’s put it into perspective: It only cost 10 USD for a full blown add-on pack for Borderlands but it’s 3 USD for a couple of JPGs or PNGs wrapped in a texture pack? This is why this “deal” is a slap in the face: Making something with already little to no tangible value cost less doesn’t increase its value, it simply highlights the fact that avatar items cost too much to begin with.

Pa-Thet-Ic

The people buying Avatar stuff and Preimum Themes, you’re part of the problem.

Ehm, what the hell is that!!!!!!, really lame i hope that will not hapen again. What hapened with the arcade games????

For people saying these items should be free.. Remember, much of the time they are paying to liscence the franchises. Star Wars for example isn’t cheap, hence why the avatar items for that series cost so much. Also somebody does need to animate and model them, people don’t work for free. That being said, I’d be much more inclined to spend money on them if they were cheaper.. they should be something to spend left over points on, not a serious investment of money. At first I thought it was 80 points for the armour, which is much more like I’d imagine these things to cost in the first place, but who’s going to spend 240? Let alone 400.

major you should let the people know that this is not a deal to us. Its not even available in Germany so where is the real deal? These guys who are choosing the deals doesnt think about what they are doing…dont they? There is a lot of DLC and many Arcade Games to deal with. I hope that this wont happen again.

Perfect Dark is already only going to be 800 points! Really great price for a game that has a ridiculous amount of content. Even if their strategy is obviously to sell it cheap so people will be more inclined to purchase it and then continue to buy the invetible stream of map packs.

This stinks. We want games!

My how the internet is whiney today. Well, just as I would not complain about discounts on prune juice in my local paper I will not contribute to the tsuami of tears that has come from the quarter pricing of one particular piece xbox live content. The market system is perfectly capable of sorting these “lame” things out without any tantrums required on my, or anyone else’s, part.

@WinterSnowblind: A couple of counterarguments to your points:
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First of all, notice how most of the Avatar gear is tied to games? In theory, the licensing has already been paid for the game related gear through the licensing for the game. Also, licensing doesn’t apply to Microsoft Game Studios games like Halo or GOW. Sports related avatar gear is a notable exception as are the bits of gear with brand names that are not tied to games (eg. Burton, Disney) are also exceptions. I would argue further that, except in some circumstances, licensing may not even be a consideration because this gear is mutually beneficial for both companies: Microsoft gets to provide more “content” while the companies get advertising.
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Secondly, having to animate them justifies the cost? No way. I’d give you some credit for this argument, but I used to make models and textures for Unreal Tournament and Unreal Tournament 2K4 and I can tell you that the amount of work it takes to make avatar gear is minimal. There are three body types for each avatar style, all with an extremely minimal amount of polygons. The amount of animation needed for these items are NOTHING compared to making, say, a t-shirt for all available models in UT2K4. If I had access to a base model avatar rendering, I could probably make a complete, large wardrobe in the time it would have taken me to make a couple of items – not even a complete set – for ONE MODEL in UT.

Besides all of this, it’s amazing to see how many peope actually did the chocobo avatar pet thing (it required to subscribe to whatsoever, wich means time, and time is said to be money) or are using the waypoint stuff and still they complain about the deal.

Simply put people in general do care and actully likes (in most cases) avatar gear. Actually what they don’t like is to pay for it

It sounds pretty funny to me cause as soon as there is something that is liked or wanted by someone, someone else will try to make money out of it. It’s a golden rule in life.

The smartest move should be to offer both a game, dlc and avatar gear as deal of the week, so people that dont have the given game can pass the dlc but still spend some points on a full arcade or avatar gear. Anyway, the DOTW is condemned to fail to some and appeal to other as people have different interest and is virtually impossible to keep everyone happy in a such big community.

Me still thinks people will be eager to get more avatar gear as soon as there will be more avatar games out there.

On a side note, it’s sad to see how people gets judged by what they buy. People is free to shove their hard earned bucks to their *beep* if they want to and there’s no excuse to judge that since anyone else earned those for them.

LOL….. this all reminds me of the song by “Insane Clown Posse” called “Hellalujah” For just $600 we can heal this boy. For just 600m$p you can download this junk.

@RuairiAU
— And in the same way, it could be argued that you shouldn’t have to buy shoes with a Nike logo on them, all you’re doing is advertising that brand, therefore they should be free. This arguement has been around forever, it makes no more sense now than it when used against other products. In the end, people buy avatar items because they want to make their virtual avatar look cool. Like I said, I do agree items should be cheaper, but expecting them to be free entirely is ludicrous.

No Deal for Germany yay…

Again we get nothing (like the Biohazard 5 VS Deal).
Yeah sure the Avatar Deal is worse, but we don’t even get the chance to complain about lol

(Instead we can complain, there’s no deal at all hrm..)

“One more thing…”

Please don’t give us Avatar “Deals” anymore ><” (It’s a waste of money to actually pay for that..)

@WinterSnowblind
I object your reality and substitute my own. I’m not the lone voice saying this, look around mate; everyone is complaining. Avatar clothing, themes and gamerpics are of no real worth and only serve as advertisments for upcoming content. You may think putting snazzy shoes on your avatar is worth your pocket money, but I’m an adult and I work for my cash.

I think that all avatar pieces shouldn’t be “free”, but should require you unlock through various achievements Much like Halo waypoint, Left for Ded 2, and Splosion Man have done. (Those are the only ones I know of personally). I also think the same should go for Premium themes because if nothing else when people buy this stuff they are paying to advertise that product.
Deal of the week should be exclusively for down loadable games such as Arcade and Originals, and game ad-ons. Also games on demand, but only if they change it so you can buy them using the equivalent in points. (Game cost 19.99 or 1600 points)
On that note I will be awaiting Monday for the map pack and earning achievements while I wait.

P.S.
Comments are not directed to Major Nelson, but to the people he can relay this message to.

Major — here’s some feedback for you to pass on to the appropriate people. I doubt they’ll listen, but it’s worth a try –

I think that we should see three deals of the week each week: one on a game, one on DLC, and one on an avatar item or a theme. There’s plenty of content in the Marketplace at this point to be able to support all three, and I think that you’d see an exponential increase in sales.

I know that I, for one, generally only end up buying on a deal when it’s a game. I also consider most Live games overpriced for what they are, so with few exceptions I’ll generally *only* buy them when they’re on sale. That being said, I have bought a number of the games when they’ve been on sale — even games that I would probably not have been at all interested in otherwise. Therefore, at least from my personal experience, the sales are a great marketing tool for selling me games.

On the other hand, I have bought very little DLC on sale. That’s not to say that it doesn’t ever happen, but the honest truth is that when I want DLC for a game, I want it when I’m actively playing the game — I don’t want to wait for a sale which may or may not ever happen. Occasionally DLC going on sale might cause me to revisit a game, but generally not, because if I liked the game enough to bother, I’ve already bought the DLC anyway.

I have positively no interest in avatar items, and will never pay money for them, on sale or no. The few that I have (Beatles Rock Band t-shirt, Splosion Man t-shirt, Sherlock Holmes outfit) were ones that I received free with games or through other promotions. Honestly, I just don’t care about my avatar that much. Likewise, I have no interest in themes — when I turn on my 360, it’s to play a game, not to sit and stare at the dashboard.

My point in my specific example is that you are considerably more likely to make a sale to me on a week that there’s a game on sale than at any other time. I’m not saying that I’m interested in every game, or that I’m always going to buy, but the odds that I will go up exponentially on any week when the deal is a game. On the weeks where you don’t offer a game — well, thanks for saving me money that week, I guess. Though I don’t think that was your goal.

That being said, I can see that some people might have different priorities, and might care more about DLC, avatar items, and the like. Fair enough. So hey — offer a deal for me *and* a deal for them, and then we’ll all buy. Who knows, you might even get some people who will buy a game *and* a DLC, or a DLC *and* an avatar item, or some other combination, and make even more money. I can’t see how offering more deals each week could be anything other than a complete win for Microsoft.