Tetsuya Mizuguchi Defends Price Gouging Lumines Live
IGN sat down with Tetsuya Mizuguchi to discuss the release of Lumines on Xbox Live Arcade. Mizuguchi, head of Q Entertainment, has received some flack concerning all of the microtransactions that make up the complete package of Lumines. Here is what he had to say:
So yes, Lumines has this image. It was a successful launch title on PSP and it came in a package, it came on a UMD. And now it’s not. So now people are worried. And maybe even upset that they can’t even get the full pack in one software product. But really, it’s just changing the way we provide the content. So, Q Entertainment is trying to take advantage of the way the XBLA model works. So, in our eyes, the game doesn’t have to come in a package. We just feel like we’re shifting our audience and we’re starting to deal with different people. That’s not to imply the PSP and Xbox Live users are that much different, but naturally, the way we are accepting media, goods, music, and games, we ourselves are changing our attitudes. So we’re trying to follow a new path. So at the same time the audience is changing, we’re changing along with it. We think this is the way of the future.
So the way of the future is the squeeze every red penny out of your average consumer, by chopping up your product and slowly feeding it to them? This is preposterous. The notion of microtranactions is misleading to begin with. It is a way for publishers to hide the cost of the full game in various tiny transactions, so that their audience isn’t aware that they are spending more money than they ever would on any given title. I hope this isn’t the way of the future.
IGN sat down with Tetsuya Mizuguchi to discuss the release of Lumines on Xbox Live Arcade. Mizuguchi, head of Q Entertainment, has received some flack concerning all of the microtransactions that make up the complete package of Lumines. Here is what he had to say:
So yes, Lumines has this image. It was a successful launch title on PSP and it came in a package, it came on a UMD. And now it’s not. So now people are worried. And maybe even upset that they can’t even get the full pack in one software product. But really, it’s just changing the way we provide the content. So, Q Entertainment is trying to take advantage of the way the XBLA model works. So, in our eyes, the game doesn’t have to come in a package. We just feel like we’re shifting our audience and we’re starting to deal with different people. That’s not to imply the PSP and Xbox Live users are that much different, but naturally, the way we are accepting media, goods, music, and games, we ourselves are changing our attitudes. So we’re trying to follow a new path. So at the same time the audience is changing, we’re changing along with it. We think this is the way of the future.
So the way of the future is the squeeze every red penny out of your average consumer, by chopping up your product and slowly feeding it to them? This is preposterous. The notion of microtranactions is misleading to begin with. It is a way for publishers to hide the cost of the full game in various tiny transactions, so that their audience isn’t aware that they are spending more money than they ever would on any given title. I hope this isn’t the way of the future.
Granted, many games are becoming more expensive to produce, and studios need to recoup expenses, but this isn’t the way. You don’t buy part of a book, by purchasing it page by page. You don’t pay for the last half of a movie, just to see what happens. Citing the music industry as the example that microtransactions are building their base upon, is ridiculous. There was a time in the music industry where albums held their weight as a whole piece of art, not a chopped down iTunes download, because, ‘I just like that one song.’
Of course Mizuguchi would hide behind the fact that they were trying to make much more money off of this game, by saying that, “This is the way of the future.” The fact of the matter is they stripped down the content from the original PSP version and is charging their audience to get the whole game back piece by piece at $7.50 a piece for four separate packs. The original PSP had a plethora of skins and songs to choose from, now the XBLA base version has only 12 skins. Also, when you play VS CPU mode, after you finish the first round of the supposed 10 round tournament, the tourney stops and tells you that you have to buy more packs to complete the game. If this is considered quality entertainment and the way of the future, I’ll stick to the ancient past, where you received a game in it’s entirety upon purchase.
Toots
Posted to Video Games on 20 October 2006
· Comments (7)
Other stuff like this: lumines, q entertainment, tetsuya mizuguchi, x360, xbla
El Lame-o!
If microtransactions are the way of the future, I’m getting a new hobby, plain and simple. Something cheaper, like a crack addiction >_>
That guy sounds like he was backpedaling for his life…if you’re gonna rip us off, at least prepare a good sales pitch ahead of time.
People bitch too much. It’s a good game and a good game costs money. Tetsuya had also mentioned that another reason it was done was to keep each download right at 50MB, so part of the decision is Microsoft’s.
I could care less if Lumines was $49.99 and came on disc. Good games are worth the money and it’s up to us as consumers to support good products.
Having said that, I do agree that having Lumines plus three download packs (when available) is not consumer friendly. Just tell me, “Here’s the game, it’s 4000 points.”
They absolutely have their reasons for doing it (though we can debate their merit all day) and we as consumers have our reasons for liking or not liking it, but doing it this way does seem a little under the table, especially for those that don’t know ahead of time how the game and add on’s work.
Personally, I don’t mind. I’m absolutely terrible at Puzzle/Mission, and not really interested in them. Nor am I interested in VS CPU, especially since I have Live.
This means that I have pretty much all I’d USE of Lumines right now for what, $22.50? I paid almost twice that for the first on PSP.
That and I don’t think they confirmed the other two will be 600 points [I heard some magazine claimed 400 a while back, but didn’t see it myself].
But mostly, I have a 100MB Lumines Live despite a 50MB filesize limit on XBLA. I’d much rather have them break the game up and charge in chunks than have the “Base” Lumines Live be the ONLY Lumines we can ever get thanks to MS’s filesize restrictions.
i think the price is fine. i’m probably not going to get the game right now because i want to make sure which packs i want to get.
it’s nice being able to choose what you’ll actually want to play with and help you reduce your cost of the total game. they easily could have made the game have a high flat rate.
i’m also interested in how the artist packs are gonna look, but it seems like we won’t see those until early 2007.
http://gamerscoreblog.com/team/archive/2006/10/19/538076.aspx
I’m with the last three :). Hell, if Nintendo had released the full version of Tetris DS fo rthe full price, and a version with JUST the normal single player mode, and Wifi support, for half the price, I’d have gotten the cheaper version cause that’s all I play of it.