First of all, that's a personal attack. I see you as one who made one of those.
I also see you have not read any SH5 posts I have made regarding the DRM, which I provisionally endorsed, probably the only one who has gone that far in accepting that means of protecting Ubi's interests. But don't confuse the issue with the facts when there is a good attack to be made there. It is very entertaining.
My point is that what you are willing to pay for, you will receive more of. If you are willing to put out your cash for a bad game (fill in the blank here, I think we've all been burned at one time, not only by Ubi), the game company who made that game will adjust its marketing plan to substitute publicity and puffery for game quality. If the biggest proportion of buyers are those who pre-order, there is no incentive at all for a game company to produce a great game--their money is already made. To them only, the game is a raging success and their next game will be a repeat of the same customer ripoff. And why shouldn't they? We paid them to do it!
Two inviolable rules of economics, exemplified by Apple and Sony: what you pay for you will get more of, and people tend to do exactly what they are paid to do. In both companies' cases, people have been willing to pay exhorbitant prices for increasingly restrictive and intrusive DRM schemes. Now if you buy an Apple iPad (I'm holding out for the MaxiPad) you can't even choose what browser to run on the machine. Imagine paying a company good money to violate your rights! Imagine what future products will do when you do!
Economic actions have consequences. Ininformed, knee-jerk economic actions, like pre-ordering SH5 when it is flying danger flags all over, has unintended consequences that would lead Ubi to believe that they are moving in the right direction and putting even more resources toward a course that would give us more and more inferior products.
The argument that "this is the best we are likely to get" recalls the American automobile manufacturers of the 1970's, producing junk cars that rusted out in three years, had lousy styling, terrible drivability, abysmal fuel economy and no reliability. Yup, as long as we were willing to pay for it, they created more lousy cars. Didn't the Japanese and Europeans jump into the market and clean their clocks? Another law of economics is that producers love to exploit a vacuum. Any vacuum will be filled quickly by a better producer able to meet the needs of the consumer.
I say economic responsibility demands that we evaluate the product before we lay out the money. But I guess that's all crap. I'm just daft. Fire away.
02-18-10, 10:31 AM
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