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Witcher 3 "Expansion Packs"
Here's my take on the devs of Witcher 3's new payola scheme.
You can not expand that which is not even done.
What these expansion packs are, are expensive new pre-orders without actually pre-ordering. How so? It's a pretty fair bet that all the people climbing over each other to buy these things are likely now expected to purchase the actual game itself without putting down even a penny towards the final price of the actual base game. I believe in preorders what you paid towards it actually came off the pricetag later yes?
Did they even state what they plan on selling the base game for? Or is everyone just ASSUMING it will be the standard 49.99 or 59.99? What if it ends up being 79.99? They don't have an obligation to sell it at any particular price after all, unless they've explicitly stated what the final price will be. And then they can just cut important parts out of the base, base game, to add to a higher tier of the base game. Yo bro, just tellin' ya this isn't out of the realm of believability with the kinds of things that have happened in the past few years alone.
*edit*
It does look like it'll be the 49.99/59.99 online at least, for the base base game. The collectors edition doesn't even have a price tag yet but I can't see it costing less than 100. In-store prices are sure to go above the online pricetags either way. They almost always do. Well, the expansion pass tacks on 19.99 anyway to the required pricetag of those who purchased it regardless making their total price in the 69.99/79.99 range as it is.
Also, I did find it funny that there's a 30 day money back guarantee on the expansion pass! Awesome... except that there's still a month or more before you can even buy the base game and see if you want the expansion pass. And I doubt people will get to the DLC content so quickly to be able to make a decision. I wonder if this means that the people buying it now will be SOL come release day in May if they regret purchasing it a week after playing it. (Actually, given the expansions themselves won't be out til much much later this year and next... HA. :p)
You can not expand that which is not even done.
What these expansion packs are, are expensive new pre-orders without actually pre-ordering. How so? It's a pretty fair bet that all the people climbing over each other to buy these things are likely now expected to purchase the actual game itself without putting down even a penny towards the final price of the actual base game. I believe in preorders what you paid towards it actually came off the pricetag later yes?
Did they even state what they plan on selling the base game for? Or is everyone just ASSUMING it will be the standard 49.99 or 59.99? What if it ends up being 79.99? They don't have an obligation to sell it at any particular price after all, unless they've explicitly stated what the final price will be. And then they can just cut important parts out of the base, base game, to add to a higher tier of the base game. Yo bro, just tellin' ya this isn't out of the realm of believability with the kinds of things that have happened in the past few years alone.
*edit*
It does look like it'll be the 49.99/59.99 online at least, for the base base game. The collectors edition doesn't even have a price tag yet but I can't see it costing less than 100. In-store prices are sure to go above the online pricetags either way. They almost always do. Well, the expansion pass tacks on 19.99 anyway to the required pricetag of those who purchased it regardless making their total price in the 69.99/79.99 range as it is.
Also, I did find it funny that there's a 30 day money back guarantee on the expansion pass! Awesome... except that there's still a month or more before you can even buy the base game and see if you want the expansion pass. And I doubt people will get to the DLC content so quickly to be able to make a decision. I wonder if this means that the people buying it now will be SOL come release day in May if they regret purchasing it a week after playing it. (Actually, given the expansions themselves won't be out til much much later this year and next... HA. :p)
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$59.99$47.99. There is a 20% discount being applied, part of which is, supposedly, a "loyalty discount" or whatever, because I already own TW1 and TW2[1]. And the "expansion" pass is currently showing at $24.99 for me. So, all told, if I were to buy TW3 and the "expansion" pass (which I'm not), it would cost me $72.98 for the "complete" game (assuming there won't be more DLC coming at some point in time later on that they haven't announced yet, which will obviously drive the price for the "complete" game even higher). And that's if I buy it now, since the price will of course go up soon after launch once the week or so of "new game discount" is removed. Assuming all of the discount is removed, the game would cost $85, if I bought the base-level game and the season pass... excuse me, I meant "expansion" pass.That's just for the base-level game, as there is indeed a "collector's edition" which costs (as of the writing of this post, anyway) $150 (http://www.gamestop.com/pc/games/the-witcher-iii-wild-hunt-collectors-edition/115387), and is, apparently, only available via pre-order. (As an aside, I fully expect that we'll be seeing most of these being resold on eBay or wherever within a day of release for upwards of $1000 or more.) There seems to be a whole bunch of little physical doodads and whatnots included with that, which is how "collector's editions" used to be (http://kane-magus.livejournal.com/562541.html), but I also have no idea how much, if any, of the base-level game itself they cut out of the base-level game to be a part of the collector's edition, which is how most "collector's editions" of games are nowadays. From what I can tell right now, there has been nothing cut out, which if true is at least one minuscule point in CDPR's favor.
That said, however, there is, as you say, no guarantee whatsoever that they won't be changing the price between now and release. I was seeing some people in the thread for the "expansion pack" DLC complaining that they'd apparently already increased the price on the
seasonexpansion pass thing just within a day or so after announcing it. To be fair, I've only ever seen it at the $24.99 price, so no clue if what those people were saying is true or not, though.Yeah, no, in any case, I'll be waiting for a "game of the year" edition or whatever you want to call it to come out in a few years, and for that to be severely discounted before I even remotely consider buying into this at all, assuming I ever bother at all, given that I still never finished TW1 yet and haven't even touched TW2 yet.
[1] - And for which I used my CD keys from the boxed versions I bought years ago to get downloadable versions from GOG.com for free. I will give them that much credit. Nowhere else have I seen anyone allowing that sort of thing, before or since. Anyone else would make you pay full price again to get the online version.
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What in the actual fuck.
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I'm looking at it myself right now, and it -still- says $19.99 for me. With the Canadian Dollar tanked again the way it is, I don't know why the price I'm seeing should be anything different from what you see, let alone less than what you see. Just screenshot it as well in case it's ever needed. ;)
As for the collectors edition, I guess they didn't feel they needed to remove even more from the game than the $24.99 worth of content they've already pulled.
Also, I thought they said "if we do this, we'll make sure it's big and worth the price!" ... 24.99 on a 59.99 is almost 50% of the price tag... is the base game really that small? Granted, this isn't being as much as an asshole as NIS and other jrpg makers are being with their 2.99 dollar unlocks (and 50-150 dollars of unlockable DLC per game) but not being the biggest asshole on the block doesn't automatically make you the nice guy.
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Anyway, here's what I'm seeing for prices on the GOG site on my end.
Witcher 3 base game (with discounts applied):
Witcher 3 expansion (no discount applied, apparently):
Witcher 3 base game + expansion (again with no discount applied, apparently):
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It's even on the main page for gog.com right now for me as one of those deal thumbnails. The bundle they show below that comes out to like over 90 dollars tho - as it expects you to buy Witcher, Witcher 2, Witcher 3, and the Expansion Pass. (Which of course is "no thanks.")
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$114.96$108.96, including prices for TW1 and TW2.Witcher "series" bundle:
Witcher "series" bundle (not logged in):