p2pnet - rss feed: New Sony revenue ploy
2pnet.net News:- First, check out this comic strip.
OK? Good. Now you’re back, in a nutshell, the makers of Gran Turismo HD have stumbled on a new way to violate consumers both in their pocketbooks in other, more sensitive places. They plan to charge you for things that normally come for free with games.
You know, useless things like cars and tracks.
The makers of Gran Turismo have stumbled upon a stunning source of income originally devised by the creators of Oblivion 360 when they started to charge for extra bits in the game, namely armor for one’s horse.
Now Sony has decided to take the idea and, coupled with its vast experience in completely screwing consumers, improve on it.
The plan?
Now you’ll have to pay for everything.
The company says it’s making available some 750 cars and 50 tracks, with the cars ranging from $0.50 to $1.00 and the tracks going for up to $4.50, and the ‘game’ will ship in two different versions: Classic and Premium.
The Premium version comes with two courses and thirty cars. Classic has no content, just an empty jar of vasoline, sandpaper and illustrated instructions on what to do with the latter two items (and you could probably tell them 
Gaming site 1up has determined it can cost anywhere from $426.50 and $975 for a full version of the game, depending on which version you purchase initially. They used math and shit, so I didn’t verify this.
But of course, since it’s to be released for the PS3, people purchasing this new and innovative version of the game will already be used to getting reamed by Sony.
I don’t mind the growing trend of episodic gaming. In fact, I love the idea of seeing new content more often, even if it is shorter levels etc, than having to wait years between releases. A perfect example: Half Life 2 and the latest Episode 1 release. I am an HL2 fanatic. That game just rocks, so I’m more than happy to pay $20 for a new episode now rather than wait another five years for HL3. It pleases me.
But this is NEW content for an already existing game.
People who purchase Gran Turismo HD Classic woin’t end up with a full game. INstead, they’ll have an disc with some fancy menus and game engine, but no amount of button mashing will allow them to play anything until they buy some cars and tracks.
For all the fuss Sony is making about how their PS3 has a Blue-Ray player that’ll allow for better games because of the huge capacity of the medium, they certainly aren’t going out of their way to demonstrate it.
As 1up said, welcome to Next-Gen.
Joe McGuire - Tinfoil Music, Canada
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September 28th, 2006 at 7:11 pm
but this is friggen horrible!
not that I am a GT fan but wtf!!
hey if this keep up the game industry can really crash and bust like it did in the early 80s….
man o man…
I might go back to playing mame… =/
September 28th, 2006 at 11:17 pm
All the parents and grandparents that will buy the “classic” version for their kids/grandkids will be pissed when they realized the $39.99 (or whatever they charge for it) they spent was for nothing since all the kid can do is navigate a menu system and ask for a credit card. What about those who don’t have their PS3s hooked up to a home network, or *gasp* those who don’t have high speed internet? They’re screwed
September 28th, 2006 at 11:37 pm
How well this game does might be an indicator of how tolerant consumers are of the industry-beloved “licensing” business model versus the classic model of purchase, first sale doctrine and all.
My prediction: Consumers will buy the game, then pirate the downloadz, firmly telling Sony where they can shove this business model.
September 29th, 2006 at 3:25 am
This is just an example of one of bigbiz’s major mental malfunctions.
They honestly believe that there are infinite consumers with infinite money to spend out there, and all they have to do is persuade them to part with it.
I’m serious. They really believe it. I mean can you think of any other reason why they’d price this game higher than the console it’s meant to run on or any other console it could run on or a low end pc?
Heck factor in the cost of the console and the HDtv to look at it on as well and you could probly get a mid range to high end pc for the same amount.
Or a crapload of games that actually come with content in the box!