Ridiculous LIVE Games on Demand Prices Slightly Less Ridiculous
One of the most bizarre things that has stayed steady since it was implemented is the absolutely off the wall pricing of Xbox Live’s Games on Demand service. For snarky asshole video game news guys like me, it has provided more easy rimshots than the Brittany Spears is crazy/Lindsay Lohan is on coke/Paris Hilton is a whore Holy Trinity of Jokes has for hack late night comedians. Major Nelson and the folks over at Live have taken a step to deprive us of a cheap pun by dropping the prices of Civilization Revolution, Prey, MX vs ATV Untamed, Saints Row, and BioShock to the $19.99 price point. Which is actually in line with the price a new copy would cost you if you wandered into a Wal-Mart after a night of drinking grain alcohol from a mason jar.
This was the one thing I really think Microsoft botched with the 360. I mean, other than the fact 11 out of 10 of them explode if you look at them too hard. They had a real good shot to do something interesting with Games on Demand if they didn’t have such a insane price point on most of the games. I remember when it first became prevalent, my friends and I were flipping through the games laughing at the fact they wanted $40 for Halo 2 when Halo 3 had already been out. I understand bandwidth costs money, and downloading a 4-7GB file isn’t free on Microsoft’s end, but it probably isn’t so much that it justifies a $29.99 price point for Assassin’s Creed either.
Moving most of the games down to $19.99 puts them competitively against the prices on Steam, and to me Steam is really the dominant service for this, so that is a good thing. The difference is that Steam finds a way to deeply discount many titles, as anyone who took advantage of their Christmas sale will tell you. Even now for no real reason, the fantastic King’s Bounty: Armored Princess (Ripten review coming soon, cheap plug) and the equally fantastic King’s Bounty: The Legend are on sale for a total of $15… for both. Combined. I don’t see Live do any deep discount sales, and even if they did I couldn’t imagine it being on anything worthwhile.
Just to put things in perspective, you could download two of the best Strategy RPGs in recent history on Steam for half the price that you could download Call of Duty 2 from Xbox Live. No, not Modern Warfare 2. Call of Duty 2. As in 2006s Call of Duty 2.
Although honestly they probably left it that way so we would all still have something to make fun of them for. Can’t have game journalists quitting the easy jokes cold turkey. Aw. Major Nelson, you are the sweetest.
[Source: Kotaku]
