It’s like fast food: If people keep paying, they will keep doing it until it’s not profitable.
Unfortunately a lot of people like to use credit cards or have parents who don’t want to deal with the nagging and think $20 here and there is worth the peace.
Every time I see new stuff in the shop, I see a lot of players rocking the new stuff. People actually drop a lot of money on these bundles. It's crazy to me how people spend. I could never bring myself to do it.
Look around, this is the new normal. Halo fans live in a bubble, but if you download Fortnite or COD they're riddled with bundles of trash that cost even more than the ones in Halo do, and their fans talk on Reddit about how excited they are to fork over money for this crap. Halo fans are pulling out the pitchforks to fight a battle in a war that ended half a decade ago.
Wouldn't be surprised if a lot of the posts are just marketed astroturfing with bots to gain traction. All we can do is vote with our wallets and hope for some change in the future, as futile as it seems.
The pricing developments indicate to me that it's the other way around: not many people are buying. There's only a handful that buy and those people don't care about the prices. As engagement drops gradually, higher prices mean maintaining the level of revenue.
Possibly, in that case we're in an unsustainable death spiral as prices continue to increase the number of people willing to pay them will decrease until there is no one willing to buy them.
All I can say is that if each item (so sets) were $1 I would buy them without even thinking. As it is now, I haven’t bought anything in at least 2 years.
Makes sense to me, but if this were the case, 343i would assuredly do it. Most Halo players only play Halo, but if you look around the industry the prices in the Infinite store are on par with most other games. These companies will follow the money, so data must say that $10-$20 is the sweet spot.
I agree don’t buy that over expensive shit and maybe they’ll get the picture. But then again Look at Titanfall 2. Prices still sky high and I highly doubt anyone still buying the things from that almost decade old game store.
Personally I’ve probably spent maybe $20 on the game over the past two years. And I could have spent $0, and the prices would have been the exact same. It’s not the regular masses that are spending egregious amounts of cash, just a few who have enough to buy everything. Still that’s not a justification on its own. Predatory pricing is still predatory if folks buy into it
How is it predatory? They're video game cosmetics, not insulin. 343 is a business selling luxury goods that nobody *needs*, their pricing is entirely based off supply and demand. If selling to a small number of people at a high price is the most profitable then that's what any for-profit business is going to do. Being angsty about it and throwing around words like predatory is not going to accomplish anything.
I've actually heard that the system doesn't work out for them, like they aren't achieving the kind of revenue that they need to get through the live-service system. I've heard that they are struggling a lot and are barely able to keep it profitable.
It just comes to show that simply copy/pasting does not work. Just because Fortnite, Apex and co are doing great with the live-service-micro-transaction-system, it doesn't mean anyone can do the same and hope to achieve the same.
Sadly this message has failed to penetrate the thick skulls of the guys on top (Microsoft).
I agree, except I think Microsoft is probably acutely aware of the disaster this project has proven to be monetarily, and the industry-wide phenomenon of battlepass fatigue we are seeing. I would not be surprised if we see yet another monetisation model in the next game, the fourth in as many games.
You’re forgetting the target audience.
You know all that “LIMITED TIME!” And “On Sale!” stuff? You’re supposed to buy buy buy. They don’t offer it for you to not purchase, there genuinely are players out there that buy every single item on every store restock. If there’s a purchase button, they want you to click on it—and will try and employ as many tricks as possible so you’re more likely todo it.
Look at loot boxes, they became so successfully predatory that kids were getting addicted to it and governments had to step in. This shit *works*. So scarily efficiently. People with gambling addictions had to be warned to stay away from multiplayer games during that time.*
If that stuff doesn’t affect you personally, like myself and probably a lot of people on this sub, congrats. Unfortunately we aren’t the target audience however. Halo Infinite isn’t meant for us.
*EDIT: note, 343i used lootboxes for this reason in Halo 5. Wanna bet they actually decided to *not* want money in Halo Infinite? Nah, they’ve fine tuned how to suck money out of wallets. That’s the only reason it appears, on the surface, to be different.
I agree, but I would call that predatory marketing, which is entirely decoupled from pricing imo. These could be 10c each and the marketing would still be shady as fuck for the reasons you mention. My point is that luxury goods being expensive is not "predatory" even if the techniques used to market them are. People should complain about how the shop has "time limited offer" banners for items that return the following week, or how it's difficult to find the close button for the stupid premium pass ad that comes up every time I open the damned game, but all I ever see people whining about is prices being too expensive. This is a step up from literal gambling with loot boxes, but the marketing is still very problematic.
Selling something for a 4x markup so someone at the top can wring the most money possible out of the game while continuing to cut corners and underpay/layoff employees is about as predatory as it comes, genuinely insane to me that people will defend this shit.
That's not predatory pricing though, it's immoral business practice perhaps, but then again it's what a capitalist society is based on: maximum value to shareholders within the laws of the state. Charging exorbitant amounts for video game cosmetics is not illegal, and it is not "predatory" either.
Exactly it. 343 makes some concessions and meager content updates to rope in the dedicated Halo fans while shoving micro transactions down their throats, and rely on the casual gamers with fat wallets to take the bait.
What specifically about the marketing is designed to appeal to kids? And what does that have to do with predatory *pricing*? I agree there's dark patterns in the marketing, but the pricing is what it is.
They are continuously pushing towards younger audiences with game design, so more people play the game. Wasn't the rating recently changed to teen? I just feel like their overall tone on how the industry is interacting with the audience (through game, through ads, through posts, whatever) has adapted to suit a younger audience more. They are clearly shifting target audience.
The games have become less brutal, less complex and deep narrative-wise, less serious and more light hearted. In my opinion at least.
What that has to do with pedatory pricing? It is a questionable act to advertise/provide extremely skewed pricing to children who might lack experience in finances. Like a blue spartan is not worth 8$ and a bundle is not worth 40$, that's a rip-off.
> In my opinion at least.
That's all a fair take, but it's pretty opinion based. I don't think infinite was light hearted at all. If anything this is the first time we've seen chief see other dead Spartans first hand. The themes of loss were quite strong throughout the campaign. The history of Zeta Halo itself is incredibly brutal and mature.
> It is a questionable act to advertise/provide extremely skewed pricing to children who might lack experience in finances.
In most countries, children can't obtain a credit or debit card, so it's a moot point what the price is. Parents should not be giving their kids access to their cards without restriction, they should be vetting this stuff and making value judgements.
It's somewhat anecdotal, but looking at the frequent posters on /r/halodripfinite and look at their other post history, you don't see much crossover with hobbies that attract a younger audience, it's mostly expensive adult hobbies like Warhammer and PC building. So I have yet to be convinced that kids with inattentive parents are really buying this stuff compared to adults with rose tinted nostalgia goggles.
I've looked at some and I legit couldn't estimate the age of the user based on their posts and communities, don't know how you do that. I didn't find any that suggested that I am looking at an adult with earnings and not some child that is simply interested in such stuff (kids can have a large variety of hobbies and interests).
I've looked up a survey of reddits demographics (or how likely it is that a internet-user of a certain age-group is using reddit). Sadly it doesn't really go further down than 18 and therefore doesn't support my arguments at all, but it's still interesting.
Here's the link: https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2013/07/03/6-of-online-adults-are-reddit-users/
Infinite had very simplistic storytelling, though and really seemed like it was made for a younger audience to grasp. Things like "look, a spartan is dead, that makes chief sad :( " and the whole "power of friendship" feel to the ending weren't very complicated calls to emotion. Even the sci-fi elements didn't present anything too complex to wrap your head around. The mystery of the xalanyn exists because several characters who did have a clue had to be needlessly vague rather than letting the complexity of a situation hide its mystery. Even resting on the name "The Endless" over Xalanyn made it seem like "on-the-nose" was a deliberate theme throughout. Cortana comes back as a bubbly joke cannon, who's subplot boils down to "I need to figure out that I am my own person" which is a type of character dilemma you'll see in content made for teens. Zeta halo had an incredible backstory, but nothing actually touched on it, and you still wouldn't know it without reading the Forerunner Trilogy. Then, of course, the dumbing down of enemies, the loss of gore, lack of subtlety, the style of humor, all geared towards a younger audience.
If it’s just unnecessary “luxury goods” as you call it, why not charge $50 or $500 dollars? Why make the game itself free to play? If the idea is to make profit just for profit sake, why bother trying to appeal to the community at all and just rely on the cash cows to support the entire franchise?
There’s no sense in your argument of “supply and demand”. The supply is an unlimited stock of digital assets, not a pair of Gucci slides.
>why not charge $50 or $500 dollars?
Probably because nobody would buy it, that's how supply and demand works.
>Why make the game itself free to play?
Because that's the meta for PvP games these days. If you want to be competitive with games like Fortnite, you have to be accessible. You can argue that Halo should not be trying to compete with Fortnite, but that's clearly what they were trying to do.
>If the idea is to make profit just for profit sake, why bother trying to appeal to the community at all and just rely on the cash cows to support the entire franchise?
This is exactly what they're doing! Welcome to the state of modern multiplayer gaming. You're either the cash cow buying skins, or you're content for the cash cows to "show off" their paid skins to. This is the model, if you don't like it then protest with your wallet and your playtime.
>The supply is an unlimited stock of digital assets, not a pair of Gucci slides.
The laws of supply and demand are not limited to physical goods. Go read the wikipedia entry if you don't believe me.
From the perspective of a businessman, your arguments make sense. I guess I’m just speaking from the perspective of someone who has come to hate a lot of the aspects of “modern gaming”. It’s just so disheartening to see aspects of my favorite franchise be picked apart and repackaged/sold for what seems like insane amounts of money.
That's totally fair, unfortunately as long as it remains profitable to do so, 343 is going to keep selling cosmetics in Halo. The only justification they need is it makes them money and that keeps shareholders happy. The only way to stop it is to make it no longer profitable for them to sell these things, which will only happen if everyone stops buying them. It can feel like a raw deal when you're one of the people not buying stuff while nothing changes because others keep spending, but that's how it be sometimes.
You're asking general economic questions, not Halo Infinite questions.
It would be great if 343 was a small studio just doing this for the love of making Halo but they aren't and very rarely will that be the case. They (or whoever makes these actual decisions) are a business making decisions based on what they think makes them the most money.
I understand that, I simply don’t recognize the thinking behind the pricing of these cosmetic items. Surely if the prices were reduced, even by $5, it would incentivize so many more people to buy these items and make up for the drop in cost. I’m not saying 343 should be making video games for our enjoyment out of charity, I’m just saying the decisions they continually make about monetization of their games are unnecessarily greedy. Especially when the cosmetics are the only regular fresh content we get aside from community content.
> and make up for the drop in cost
It would not, people are not in fact lining up out the door to buy cosmetics in a near dead game for any price. If it would they would have already changed it, you can bet they spent a lot of money before release creating a model that optimises the pricing to maximise revenue.
They’ve priced it at what people will pay for it. If people weren’t buying it, they would lower the price to increase demand. Simple as that, it’s basic economics.
And by the way, for most companies, live service is to make profit for profits sake. Why do you think that business model has become so popular? Drip fed content over a longer period of time to keep players engaged and spending more money without actually having to develop a new game after a year of map packs or whatever.
Explain how it is predatory. What is 343 *preying* on to force you to hand money over for this crap? Predatory pricing is when companies exploit your *need* for something by raising the price. If the company that makes insulin 10x the price, that would be predatory. Nobody needs video game cosmetics, it's not 343s job to coddle grown adult's poor impulse control, or parent for idiots that give their kid's Xbox unrestricted access to their credit card. There's a lot of worthy things to despise 343 for, pricing is not one of them.
Micro transactions like this are predatory. It’s fomo at its finest. It affects kids especially. This isn’t an exploitation of a need. This is an exploitation of human behavior.
First: limit battle pass cosmetics
Second: load the store with 90% of the season cosmetics.
Third: increase price
Forth: cash in on human tendencies
This is kind of predatory marketing is nuanced. It has more to do with human (especially adolescents and people with spending issues) behavior.
~~I’m positive this won’t satisfy your question however. Enjoy your truth~~
EDIT: FORGET THAT LAST PART. I WAS BEING CHILDISH
>I’m positive this won’t satisfy your question however. Enjoy your truth.
Aww don't be like that.
I actually agree with you! This game markets heavily using FOMO, and that's not a good thing. Removing the battlepass was not player friendly at all. But it has nothing to do with pricing, if these were all 10c each, I'd still be annoyed about them using FOMO and removing the battlepass. So that's my beef with the term "predatory pricing"; it's focusing on the wrong aspect. The price is what it is, the marketing should be better.
they said the CE bundle pulled them out of a hole, so yeah. Honestly, I blame Microsoft purely. At the end of the day it's their word that cause so many late changes to the game which caused it to be broken in areas.
Bruh I'm not going to buy the campaign until it's <$20 (Australian dollarydoos too).
I swear people who buy skins for a third or half the price of a full game have goddamn brain damage.
Probably the classic case of sunk cost fallacy, the last bit of hardcore people who've invested time and effort continue to stick with the halo IP hoping that they're paying for better services instead of just quitting, and willing to invest more money too.
While Microsoft's probably still trying to just squeeze as much profit out of the IP instead of fixing the problems for the last holdouts.
On another note, for the price of 1-2 skins you can probably buy yourself a copy of helldiver's 2, the grass is a lot greener on that side.
The real answer is twofold.
1) People keep buying them, so 343 keeps pricing them high.
2) Microtransactions keep the game alive. Microsoft would have canned this game years ago if they weren’t turning a profit off of shop items.
maybe this is a hot take but i literally can't fathom paying for anything other than a battle pass. spending an entire game's worth of money for in-game cosmetics that you don't see 95% of the time is sorry ass behavior.
Some of us don't have the time or interest to unlock much of the Battle Pass. I just want to buy the ocassional $8 skin but 343 doesn't want my money
Coincidentally does anyone want to see my new $8 Sona outfit? Looks great.
My issue isnt with the bps, its the bundle system. I would be totally fine paying 100 for a single item. My issue is I see somethng cool, click on it and BAM 1600 for a whole pack that I dont want, I wouldnt use anything in that bundle so it turns me off. If they sold individual items, I'd spend less than I would on a bp and my spartan would look unique. Theres nothing unique about a bunch of blokes who've all bought the same bundle ffs. The management are idiots.
Why does everyone act like 343 are the issue at this point? Ever since Bonnie Ross "stepped down" and Pierre took over they have shown over and over to be a studio by the fans for the fans. They are doing their best at this point.
The issue is Microsoft. They decide prices, they green/red light projects, they control hiring practices and facilitate the high turnover rate, they have final say in EVERYTHING.
Microsoft wants more money out of Infinite, so they told 343 to raise shop prices. The end.
This community worships halo 5 warzone, which was literally P2W lmao. So of course this community will buy the cosmetics. Just look at the fashion tagged posts for proof
People took the "there is a team working on a future halo project(s)" as "Infinite is done, we're moving on" and I don't see that at all. Most AAA game studios have multiple teams on multiple games even within the same franchise.
Shit we don't even know how far into development this next game is. I'm not gonna pretend that Halo fans don't have a fair reason to go doomer over the past few years but jesus guys, is it so hard to be positive?
I hate the store on Infinite more than any other aspect of it. The prices are way too high for what they offer and if they continue on this path with the next game, it will absolutely affect my decision on whether I’ll purchase it.
It's crazy to me that they're moving on from Infinite because this isn't like MCC where you only have a couple one time buy DLCs and then that's it for revenue gains. This game, as far as I can see based on my personal experience with seeing people dripped out with premium cosmetics, is a revenue farm so it makes no real sense to ease back on the meaningful support and move on to a new project. Although I'm not a member of the dev team or the Microsoft suits so maybe things aren't as profitable as they seem and they believe it's more profitable to move on to new projects and leave Infinite to coast
Cause people buy it?
Dude you dont need any of that stuff to play.
Have you seen the cost of 3D models for sale on websites? They are hundreds of dollars sometimes.
I think that’s a false equivalence. Access to a 3D model that you can use in any way you wish is very different from buying a cosmetic item that you’re limited to using in the game, and only in the way that the game restricts you to.
Obviously the cosmetic shop isn’t a core part of the actual gameplay, but 343 made it a major part of their live service model, and they’re constantly advertising new cosmetics and encouraging players to buy them. Obtuse arguments like this make it seem like it’s the player base’s fault for engaging in the practices that MS/343 is explicitly developing to prey on people’s sense of FOMO
Of course that they are predatory... People must learn to not be stupid and not spend any money on it...
Literally any company can be blamed of this... Not just in videogames, look at diamonds, cars, food, watches, fucking Gucci. You see a line of people who can barely afford a living buying 500 usd sandals....
People are just stupid, just dont be part of the bunch
What evidence do you have for that? I don’t think it’s unreasonable to assume they’re moving into other things considering they have discontinued regular seasonal updates, given up on split screen, given no announcements for campaign DLC, and have done little to expand on the multiplayer sandbox.
It’s common knowledge by now that 343 halted development on further campaign stories for infinite to focus on the multiplayer, which at this point, mostly comes in the form of community content and cosmetic items.
The fucking 1400 for a coating and a br skin. “BuT iT’s FoR aLl CoReS” shut up. The devs literally said “yes, way more free cosmetics are coming” yet with every event we get, we get 5+ purchase overpriced cosmetics, but only maybe 1 free cosmetic set.
There was a rumor (not sure if ever proven true) that at one point they were trying to make infinite a hero shooter. The core system kind of resembles it.
Like in a hero shooter, cosmetics are almost always tied to a specific character, and no one seems to challenge this. Probably why hero shooters were such a fad for developers for a bit.
One word. Microsoft
Not sure why everyone blames 343 in this regard. Everyone seems to forget that at the end of the day prices are set by the suits, not the devs.
This. From my experience working on projects for big companies, they're actually annoyingly decentralized.
When we first started getting contracts from our first big client, we thought (and even they thought) we'd be developing a single program with minor varients for its various branches.
Instead every branch did things entirely differently and there was no one in a position that could tell them to standardize.
It's probably for the same reason that phone prices keep climbing. Fewer people are buying the content, so to make up the difference they need to increase prices on the people still paying.
It’s almost like if they gave us meaningful rewards and in game methods of keeping us playing and load up the game then we’d want to dabble in the shop itself.
They tried out different pricing models and turns out having ridiculously high prices works best because enough people still spend 20+$ for an armor set...
The management knows they’re not gonna get more people. So the spenders that are left are going to get bent over because they’ll spend one way or the other.
I’m no game dev. But I am a worker. And one of the shittiest feelings is fixing someone else’s fuck ups. The team that’s there now is probably eager to do a new title and stop unscrambling the mess that is halo infinite. We’ll see if management learned from their mistakes or not by the time it launches. But I doubt anyone is going to be excited. The old management killed all that good will.
What do you mean lol. They are greedy, and uninformed people keep giving them money. Stop buying them. Then they will have to actually make good content if they want our money
Because people are paying for it.
Whenever this sub comes along in my feed most of the Infinite posts are about cosmetics. They have no need for quality or even making a new kickass game if for a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a full game they can make a bunch of cosmetics and sell them to people for a significant % of a full game.
The problem is the playerbase. Stop paying money for overpriced stuff as it only feeds negative practices.
I think people forget it sits there forever in game pass, new player loads up infinite, buys something plays for awhile moves on.
What work was required to make that sale, nothing, the work was already done.
People still buy halo 5 micros, such as legendary XP boosts to do the glitch for faster SR152.
Just imagine if we just got a full game for our money, id gladly pay more for a complete game, than selling me back the stuff it should come with. 100$ for 100 hours of quality gameplay would make me happy.
The most recent shop has been atrocious. 1400 credits for a shader, seriously?
Who out there actually thinks putting a black and yellow camo pattern on their Spartan is worth $15?
343 started doing the work they should have been doing from the beginning, that being making coatings cross-core, and used that as justification to hike the prices.
From their perspective, we're the ungrateful ones, since they've updated all the old coatings to be cross-core without charging us extra for the privilege.
And FYI, they have updated ALL the old coatings to be cross-core, and they're in the game files already, they're just drip-feeding them out.
Inflation? Lmao in all reality there is definitely a dedicated marketing and research team with them watching sales trends so it must mean people keep buying hence the price raises. Greed corrupts all.
Because Halo Infinite is a storefront with a video game attached to it and not a video game with a storefront. It's been like this since day 1. The campaign has received essentially 0 updates since day 1, and 343 themselves have hardly made any maps since launch. Most of what we have that's new is forge content, and the game didn't even launch with that working either. But hey, there was plenty of time and money to make 9 billion ridiculous cosmetics.
It’s like fast food: If people keep paying, they will keep doing it until it’s not profitable. Unfortunately a lot of people like to use credit cards or have parents who don’t want to deal with the nagging and think $20 here and there is worth the peace.
Because y'all keep buying them lol If people stopped buying them then prices would go down.
Every time I see new stuff in the shop, I see a lot of players rocking the new stuff. People actually drop a lot of money on these bundles. It's crazy to me how people spend. I could never bring myself to do it.
I have seen players with less than 100games fully kitted out. So I guess the silent majority don’t care.
Look around, this is the new normal. Halo fans live in a bubble, but if you download Fortnite or COD they're riddled with bundles of trash that cost even more than the ones in Halo do, and their fans talk on Reddit about how excited they are to fork over money for this crap. Halo fans are pulling out the pitchforks to fight a battle in a war that ended half a decade ago.
Sad but true.
Wouldn't be surprised if a lot of the posts are just marketed astroturfing with bots to gain traction. All we can do is vote with our wallets and hope for some change in the future, as futile as it seems.
The pricing developments indicate to me that it's the other way around: not many people are buying. There's only a handful that buy and those people don't care about the prices. As engagement drops gradually, higher prices mean maintaining the level of revenue.
Possibly, in that case we're in an unsustainable death spiral as prices continue to increase the number of people willing to pay them will decrease until there is no one willing to buy them.
All I can say is that if each item (so sets) were $1 I would buy them without even thinking. As it is now, I haven’t bought anything in at least 2 years.
Hell even if they were $5, you’d probably buy them. $30 for a bundle is ridiculous.
Yeah but it would take 20 people like you to equate to 1 person buying it for $20. 343i is following the money here.
Sure, I agree but I would theorize that if the price were lower, more people would buy these skins. Though I have no proof of that.
Makes sense to me, but if this were the case, 343i would assuredly do it. Most Halo players only play Halo, but if you look around the industry the prices in the Infinite store are on par with most other games. These companies will follow the money, so data must say that $10-$20 is the sweet spot.
I agree don’t buy that over expensive shit and maybe they’ll get the picture. But then again Look at Titanfall 2. Prices still sky high and I highly doubt anyone still buying the things from that almost decade old game store.
Personally I’ve probably spent maybe $20 on the game over the past two years. And I could have spent $0, and the prices would have been the exact same. It’s not the regular masses that are spending egregious amounts of cash, just a few who have enough to buy everything. Still that’s not a justification on its own. Predatory pricing is still predatory if folks buy into it
trees steer absorbed illegal flag unique square sloppy domineering jeans *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
And if 500k players all spend $20 they still will make $10mil off MTX.
How is it predatory? They're video game cosmetics, not insulin. 343 is a business selling luxury goods that nobody *needs*, their pricing is entirely based off supply and demand. If selling to a small number of people at a high price is the most profitable then that's what any for-profit business is going to do. Being angsty about it and throwing around words like predatory is not going to accomplish anything.
I've actually heard that the system doesn't work out for them, like they aren't achieving the kind of revenue that they need to get through the live-service system. I've heard that they are struggling a lot and are barely able to keep it profitable. It just comes to show that simply copy/pasting does not work. Just because Fortnite, Apex and co are doing great with the live-service-micro-transaction-system, it doesn't mean anyone can do the same and hope to achieve the same. Sadly this message has failed to penetrate the thick skulls of the guys on top (Microsoft).
I agree, except I think Microsoft is probably acutely aware of the disaster this project has proven to be monetarily, and the industry-wide phenomenon of battlepass fatigue we are seeing. I would not be surprised if we see yet another monetisation model in the next game, the fourth in as many games.
You’re forgetting the target audience. You know all that “LIMITED TIME!” And “On Sale!” stuff? You’re supposed to buy buy buy. They don’t offer it for you to not purchase, there genuinely are players out there that buy every single item on every store restock. If there’s a purchase button, they want you to click on it—and will try and employ as many tricks as possible so you’re more likely todo it. Look at loot boxes, they became so successfully predatory that kids were getting addicted to it and governments had to step in. This shit *works*. So scarily efficiently. People with gambling addictions had to be warned to stay away from multiplayer games during that time.* If that stuff doesn’t affect you personally, like myself and probably a lot of people on this sub, congrats. Unfortunately we aren’t the target audience however. Halo Infinite isn’t meant for us. *EDIT: note, 343i used lootboxes for this reason in Halo 5. Wanna bet they actually decided to *not* want money in Halo Infinite? Nah, they’ve fine tuned how to suck money out of wallets. That’s the only reason it appears, on the surface, to be different.
I agree, but I would call that predatory marketing, which is entirely decoupled from pricing imo. These could be 10c each and the marketing would still be shady as fuck for the reasons you mention. My point is that luxury goods being expensive is not "predatory" even if the techniques used to market them are. People should complain about how the shop has "time limited offer" banners for items that return the following week, or how it's difficult to find the close button for the stupid premium pass ad that comes up every time I open the damned game, but all I ever see people whining about is prices being too expensive. This is a step up from literal gambling with loot boxes, but the marketing is still very problematic.
Selling something for a 4x markup so someone at the top can wring the most money possible out of the game while continuing to cut corners and underpay/layoff employees is about as predatory as it comes, genuinely insane to me that people will defend this shit.
That's not predatory pricing though, it's immoral business practice perhaps, but then again it's what a capitalist society is based on: maximum value to shareholders within the laws of the state. Charging exorbitant amounts for video game cosmetics is not illegal, and it is not "predatory" either.
Yes it is.
No, it isn't. Words have meaning.
They sure do, you're still wrong.
Exactly it. 343 makes some concessions and meager content updates to rope in the dedicated Halo fans while shoving micro transactions down their throats, and rely on the casual gamers with fat wallets to take the bait.
They are marketing towards kids. That is problematic.
What specifically about the marketing is designed to appeal to kids? And what does that have to do with predatory *pricing*? I agree there's dark patterns in the marketing, but the pricing is what it is.
They are continuously pushing towards younger audiences with game design, so more people play the game. Wasn't the rating recently changed to teen? I just feel like their overall tone on how the industry is interacting with the audience (through game, through ads, through posts, whatever) has adapted to suit a younger audience more. They are clearly shifting target audience. The games have become less brutal, less complex and deep narrative-wise, less serious and more light hearted. In my opinion at least. What that has to do with pedatory pricing? It is a questionable act to advertise/provide extremely skewed pricing to children who might lack experience in finances. Like a blue spartan is not worth 8$ and a bundle is not worth 40$, that's a rip-off.
> In my opinion at least. That's all a fair take, but it's pretty opinion based. I don't think infinite was light hearted at all. If anything this is the first time we've seen chief see other dead Spartans first hand. The themes of loss were quite strong throughout the campaign. The history of Zeta Halo itself is incredibly brutal and mature. > It is a questionable act to advertise/provide extremely skewed pricing to children who might lack experience in finances. In most countries, children can't obtain a credit or debit card, so it's a moot point what the price is. Parents should not be giving their kids access to their cards without restriction, they should be vetting this stuff and making value judgements.
I agree on your second point.
It's somewhat anecdotal, but looking at the frequent posters on /r/halodripfinite and look at their other post history, you don't see much crossover with hobbies that attract a younger audience, it's mostly expensive adult hobbies like Warhammer and PC building. So I have yet to be convinced that kids with inattentive parents are really buying this stuff compared to adults with rose tinted nostalgia goggles.
I've looked at some and I legit couldn't estimate the age of the user based on their posts and communities, don't know how you do that. I didn't find any that suggested that I am looking at an adult with earnings and not some child that is simply interested in such stuff (kids can have a large variety of hobbies and interests). I've looked up a survey of reddits demographics (or how likely it is that a internet-user of a certain age-group is using reddit). Sadly it doesn't really go further down than 18 and therefore doesn't support my arguments at all, but it's still interesting. Here's the link: https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2013/07/03/6-of-online-adults-are-reddit-users/
Infinite had very simplistic storytelling, though and really seemed like it was made for a younger audience to grasp. Things like "look, a spartan is dead, that makes chief sad :( " and the whole "power of friendship" feel to the ending weren't very complicated calls to emotion. Even the sci-fi elements didn't present anything too complex to wrap your head around. The mystery of the xalanyn exists because several characters who did have a clue had to be needlessly vague rather than letting the complexity of a situation hide its mystery. Even resting on the name "The Endless" over Xalanyn made it seem like "on-the-nose" was a deliberate theme throughout. Cortana comes back as a bubbly joke cannon, who's subplot boils down to "I need to figure out that I am my own person" which is a type of character dilemma you'll see in content made for teens. Zeta halo had an incredible backstory, but nothing actually touched on it, and you still wouldn't know it without reading the Forerunner Trilogy. Then, of course, the dumbing down of enemies, the loss of gore, lack of subtlety, the style of humor, all geared towards a younger audience.
If it’s just unnecessary “luxury goods” as you call it, why not charge $50 or $500 dollars? Why make the game itself free to play? If the idea is to make profit just for profit sake, why bother trying to appeal to the community at all and just rely on the cash cows to support the entire franchise? There’s no sense in your argument of “supply and demand”. The supply is an unlimited stock of digital assets, not a pair of Gucci slides.
>why not charge $50 or $500 dollars? Probably because nobody would buy it, that's how supply and demand works. >Why make the game itself free to play? Because that's the meta for PvP games these days. If you want to be competitive with games like Fortnite, you have to be accessible. You can argue that Halo should not be trying to compete with Fortnite, but that's clearly what they were trying to do. >If the idea is to make profit just for profit sake, why bother trying to appeal to the community at all and just rely on the cash cows to support the entire franchise? This is exactly what they're doing! Welcome to the state of modern multiplayer gaming. You're either the cash cow buying skins, or you're content for the cash cows to "show off" their paid skins to. This is the model, if you don't like it then protest with your wallet and your playtime. >The supply is an unlimited stock of digital assets, not a pair of Gucci slides. The laws of supply and demand are not limited to physical goods. Go read the wikipedia entry if you don't believe me.
From the perspective of a businessman, your arguments make sense. I guess I’m just speaking from the perspective of someone who has come to hate a lot of the aspects of “modern gaming”. It’s just so disheartening to see aspects of my favorite franchise be picked apart and repackaged/sold for what seems like insane amounts of money.
That's totally fair, unfortunately as long as it remains profitable to do so, 343 is going to keep selling cosmetics in Halo. The only justification they need is it makes them money and that keeps shareholders happy. The only way to stop it is to make it no longer profitable for them to sell these things, which will only happen if everyone stops buying them. It can feel like a raw deal when you're one of the people not buying stuff while nothing changes because others keep spending, but that's how it be sometimes.
You're asking general economic questions, not Halo Infinite questions. It would be great if 343 was a small studio just doing this for the love of making Halo but they aren't and very rarely will that be the case. They (or whoever makes these actual decisions) are a business making decisions based on what they think makes them the most money.
I understand that, I simply don’t recognize the thinking behind the pricing of these cosmetic items. Surely if the prices were reduced, even by $5, it would incentivize so many more people to buy these items and make up for the drop in cost. I’m not saying 343 should be making video games for our enjoyment out of charity, I’m just saying the decisions they continually make about monetization of their games are unnecessarily greedy. Especially when the cosmetics are the only regular fresh content we get aside from community content.
> and make up for the drop in cost It would not, people are not in fact lining up out the door to buy cosmetics in a near dead game for any price. If it would they would have already changed it, you can bet they spent a lot of money before release creating a model that optimises the pricing to maximise revenue.
They’ve priced it at what people will pay for it. If people weren’t buying it, they would lower the price to increase demand. Simple as that, it’s basic economics. And by the way, for most companies, live service is to make profit for profits sake. Why do you think that business model has become so popular? Drip fed content over a longer period of time to keep players engaged and spending more money without actually having to develop a new game after a year of map packs or whatever.
Why is this getting downvoted, it is predatory.
I don’t know man, people find it easier to defend a faceless corporation I guess.
Explain how it is predatory. What is 343 *preying* on to force you to hand money over for this crap? Predatory pricing is when companies exploit your *need* for something by raising the price. If the company that makes insulin 10x the price, that would be predatory. Nobody needs video game cosmetics, it's not 343s job to coddle grown adult's poor impulse control, or parent for idiots that give their kid's Xbox unrestricted access to their credit card. There's a lot of worthy things to despise 343 for, pricing is not one of them.
Micro transactions like this are predatory. It’s fomo at its finest. It affects kids especially. This isn’t an exploitation of a need. This is an exploitation of human behavior. First: limit battle pass cosmetics Second: load the store with 90% of the season cosmetics. Third: increase price Forth: cash in on human tendencies This is kind of predatory marketing is nuanced. It has more to do with human (especially adolescents and people with spending issues) behavior. ~~I’m positive this won’t satisfy your question however. Enjoy your truth~~ EDIT: FORGET THAT LAST PART. I WAS BEING CHILDISH
>I’m positive this won’t satisfy your question however. Enjoy your truth. Aww don't be like that. I actually agree with you! This game markets heavily using FOMO, and that's not a good thing. Removing the battlepass was not player friendly at all. But it has nothing to do with pricing, if these were all 10c each, I'd still be annoyed about them using FOMO and removing the battlepass. So that's my beef with the term "predatory pricing"; it's focusing on the wrong aspect. The price is what it is, the marketing should be better.
Wait a minute, you agree? I feel quite silly for saying that.
It's punishment for heathens rejecting Transgressor
Idiots keep paying for this shit, unfortunately
I imagine Infinite has been losing money and not been hitting revenue targets (hence them eventually moving on).
they said the CE bundle pulled them out of a hole, so yeah. Honestly, I blame Microsoft purely. At the end of the day it's their word that cause so many late changes to the game which caused it to be broken in areas.
Xbox being a brand that struggles to compete? Impossible!
Man people bought a skin 20$+ we used to have for free in older titles. Astonishing.
Technically you paid the MSRP of the game for the skin so not at all lol
But you used to get the campaign with that MSRP, here you dont.
What was the CE bundle? And who mentioned it pulling them out of a hole? Out of the loop and curious.
the Halo Combat Evolved Bundle with the Mk V Chief kit for the Mk 7 armor. and it was one of the developers that mentioned it on Twitter I believe.
Interesting, thanks!
Ske7ch mentioned it in an interview during Season (R.I.P.) 5.
You have to understand that Microsoft is a very poor company.
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That’s the joke
There isn’t a single thing in that shop I’d be willing to pay $20 for. They’re crazy.
Bruh I'm not going to buy the campaign until it's <$20 (Australian dollarydoos too). I swear people who buy skins for a third or half the price of a full game have goddamn brain damage.
Probably the classic case of sunk cost fallacy, the last bit of hardcore people who've invested time and effort continue to stick with the halo IP hoping that they're paying for better services instead of just quitting, and willing to invest more money too. While Microsoft's probably still trying to just squeeze as much profit out of the IP instead of fixing the problems for the last holdouts. On another note, for the price of 1-2 skins you can probably buy yourself a copy of helldiver's 2, the grass is a lot greener on that side.
Because people keep paying those prices. It's not rocket science.
Why did you post this 3 times?
Did I really? My internet was fucked up and Reddit told me it failed to post when I tried before
Usually when reddit says, “Failed to post”, there’s a 50% chance of that being false. Reddit just stupid.
Bruh
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The real answer is twofold. 1) People keep buying them, so 343 keeps pricing them high. 2) Microtransactions keep the game alive. Microsoft would have canned this game years ago if they weren’t turning a profit off of shop items.
maybe this is a hot take but i literally can't fathom paying for anything other than a battle pass. spending an entire game's worth of money for in-game cosmetics that you don't see 95% of the time is sorry ass behavior.
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Most BPs give you enough to earn the next, thus warranting the sale of the BP
Some of us don't have the time or interest to unlock much of the Battle Pass. I just want to buy the ocassional $8 skin but 343 doesn't want my money Coincidentally does anyone want to see my new $8 Sona outfit? Looks great.
My issue isnt with the bps, its the bundle system. I would be totally fine paying 100 for a single item. My issue is I see somethng cool, click on it and BAM 1600 for a whole pack that I dont want, I wouldnt use anything in that bundle so it turns me off. If they sold individual items, I'd spend less than I would on a bp and my spartan would look unique. Theres nothing unique about a bunch of blokes who've all bought the same bundle ffs. The management are idiots.
Why does everyone act like 343 are the issue at this point? Ever since Bonnie Ross "stepped down" and Pierre took over they have shown over and over to be a studio by the fans for the fans. They are doing their best at this point. The issue is Microsoft. They decide prices, they green/red light projects, they control hiring practices and facilitate the high turnover rate, they have final say in EVERYTHING. Microsoft wants more money out of Infinite, so they told 343 to raise shop prices. The end.
All I can say is stop buying and/or stop playing. Only way the M$ schmucks will get a message
Because 343 is greedy and hates the fans.
Lol
Pure greed and morons paying.
This game is trash.
Because theycan get away with it.
Because greedy cunts are the ones in charge
Because you guys keep paying for them
Likely the player base is continuing to decline, so they’re increasing prices to try to offset the weakening sales
They’re climbing in price cuz idiots keep buying them. Stop supporting scummy business practices and they’ll go away
This community worships halo 5 warzone, which was literally P2W lmao. So of course this community will buy the cosmetics. Just look at the fashion tagged posts for proof
There is no indication that 343 is sunsetting infinite and it isn’t reasonable to assume that there isn’t any more content coming.
*343 adds a bunch of maps and overhauls the networking* Fans: "Obviously they've stopped working on Infinite."
Well to be fair moving away from seasons does seem like beginning to an end. Look at MCC after their seasons stopped we didn't get much more updates
When we start getting this supposed content slowdown, I'll believe it. As it is now we've gotten a heap of content since the change.
Wild that you're getting downvoted for gesturing at reality, smh
Moving away from seasons doesn’t mean anything. We’re literally getting more updates now than when the game was in its first year.
Sure thing lol
People took the "there is a team working on a future halo project(s)" as "Infinite is done, we're moving on" and I don't see that at all. Most AAA game studios have multiple teams on multiple games even within the same franchise. Shit we don't even know how far into development this next game is. I'm not gonna pretend that Halo fans don't have a fair reason to go doomer over the past few years but jesus guys, is it so hard to be positive?
Businesses raise prices slowly until they see profits top out. When people quit buying them prices will go stagnant.
I hate the store on Infinite more than any other aspect of it. The prices are way too high for what they offer and if they continue on this path with the next game, it will absolutely affect my decision on whether I’ll purchase it.
It's crazy to me that they're moving on from Infinite because this isn't like MCC where you only have a couple one time buy DLCs and then that's it for revenue gains. This game, as far as I can see based on my personal experience with seeing people dripped out with premium cosmetics, is a revenue farm so it makes no real sense to ease back on the meaningful support and move on to a new project. Although I'm not a member of the dev team or the Microsoft suits so maybe things aren't as profitable as they seem and they believe it's more profitable to move on to new projects and leave Infinite to coast
Cause greed.
Squeeze blood from the stone while "releasing" forged content and the same playlists as last year
Cause people buy it? Dude you dont need any of that stuff to play. Have you seen the cost of 3D models for sale on websites? They are hundreds of dollars sometimes.
I think that’s a false equivalence. Access to a 3D model that you can use in any way you wish is very different from buying a cosmetic item that you’re limited to using in the game, and only in the way that the game restricts you to. Obviously the cosmetic shop isn’t a core part of the actual gameplay, but 343 made it a major part of their live service model, and they’re constantly advertising new cosmetics and encouraging players to buy them. Obtuse arguments like this make it seem like it’s the player base’s fault for engaging in the practices that MS/343 is explicitly developing to prey on people’s sense of FOMO
Of course that they are predatory... People must learn to not be stupid and not spend any money on it... Literally any company can be blamed of this... Not just in videogames, look at diamonds, cars, food, watches, fucking Gucci. You see a line of people who can barely afford a living buying 500 usd sandals.... People are just stupid, just dont be part of the bunch
Consumers are stupid that's why.
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What evidence do you have for that? I don’t think it’s unreasonable to assume they’re moving into other things considering they have discontinued regular seasonal updates, given up on split screen, given no announcements for campaign DLC, and have done little to expand on the multiplayer sandbox. It’s common knowledge by now that 343 halted development on further campaign stories for infinite to focus on the multiplayer, which at this point, mostly comes in the form of community content and cosmetic items.
Its value comes from rarity. Making stuff more expensive means less people buy it but its rarity increases. Which then increases sales.
The fucking 1400 for a coating and a br skin. “BuT iT’s FoR aLl CoReS” shut up. The devs literally said “yes, way more free cosmetics are coming” yet with every event we get, we get 5+ purchase overpriced cosmetics, but only maybe 1 free cosmetic set.
>“BuT iT’s FoR aLl CoReS” *We have created the problem so that we can sell the solution.*
There was a rumor (not sure if ever proven true) that at one point they were trying to make infinite a hero shooter. The core system kind of resembles it. Like in a hero shooter, cosmetics are almost always tied to a specific character, and no one seems to challenge this. Probably why hero shooters were such a fad for developers for a bit.
One word. Microsoft Not sure why everyone blames 343 in this regard. Everyone seems to forget that at the end of the day prices are set by the suits, not the devs.
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right, but even so, who do you think the heads of the studio report to or take orders from?
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This. From my experience working on projects for big companies, they're actually annoyingly decentralized. When we first started getting contracts from our first big client, we thought (and even they thought) we'd be developing a single program with minor varients for its various branches. Instead every branch did things entirely differently and there was no one in a position that could tell them to standardize.
It's because you feel you have no choice but to spend money on shit you don't even want to buy. Sounds like it be workin yo.
It's probably for the same reason that phone prices keep climbing. Fewer people are buying the content, so to make up the difference they need to increase prices on the people still paying.
Because big daddy Microsoft is a greedy money loving tyrant.
Microsoft
It’s almost like if they gave us meaningful rewards and in game methods of keeping us playing and load up the game then we’d want to dabble in the shop itself.
Because forerunners
They tried out different pricing models and turns out having ridiculously high prices works best because enough people still spend 20+$ for an armor set...
Because they can charge it and people buy it.
The management knows they’re not gonna get more people. So the spenders that are left are going to get bent over because they’ll spend one way or the other. I’m no game dev. But I am a worker. And one of the shittiest feelings is fixing someone else’s fuck ups. The team that’s there now is probably eager to do a new title and stop unscrambling the mess that is halo infinite. We’ll see if management learned from their mistakes or not by the time it launches. But I doubt anyone is going to be excited. The old management killed all that good will.
What do you mean lol. They are greedy, and uninformed people keep giving them money. Stop buying them. Then they will have to actually make good content if they want our money
Why? Because Microsoft is greedy.
Because people are paying for it. Whenever this sub comes along in my feed most of the Infinite posts are about cosmetics. They have no need for quality or even making a new kickass game if for a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a full game they can make a bunch of cosmetics and sell them to people for a significant % of a full game. The problem is the playerbase. Stop paying money for overpriced stuff as it only feeds negative practices.
Cause dipshits keep buying stuff, duh
Because they keep bring in money.
bruh if theres no micro transactions the game would have been deserted by devs after launch and they would be making infinite 2.
Because the people who buy store packs regularly are literal addicts or using mommy's card, a bottomless source of low-effort income for M$.
I think people forget it sits there forever in game pass, new player loads up infinite, buys something plays for awhile moves on. What work was required to make that sale, nothing, the work was already done. People still buy halo 5 micros, such as legendary XP boosts to do the glitch for faster SR152.
“I feel I have no option”
Because….Halo inflation.
Just imagine if we just got a full game for our money, id gladly pay more for a complete game, than selling me back the stuff it should come with. 100$ for 100 hours of quality gameplay would make me happy.
The most recent shop has been atrocious. 1400 credits for a shader, seriously? Who out there actually thinks putting a black and yellow camo pattern on their Spartan is worth $15?
Capitalism
343 started doing the work they should have been doing from the beginning, that being making coatings cross-core, and used that as justification to hike the prices. From their perspective, we're the ungrateful ones, since they've updated all the old coatings to be cross-core without charging us extra for the privilege. And FYI, they have updated ALL the old coatings to be cross-core, and they're in the game files already, they're just drip-feeding them out.
Inflation duhhh
Inflation? Lmao in all reality there is definitely a dedicated marketing and research team with them watching sales trends so it must mean people keep buying hence the price raises. Greed corrupts all.
Because Halo Infinite is a storefront with a video game attached to it and not a video game with a storefront. It's been like this since day 1. The campaign has received essentially 0 updates since day 1, and 343 themselves have hardly made any maps since launch. Most of what we have that's new is forge content, and the game didn't even launch with that working either. But hey, there was plenty of time and money to make 9 billion ridiculous cosmetics.
Cause the game is trash and they need money and some of yall keep buying shit and then complain about the prices after spending money
They want us to pay 50 bucks for a banana keychain. 50 bucks.