Complex? No way!
 

At the end of the day this is just a graphic upgrade with a new story. It's not worth a full retail price. Then add the fact you will have to buy the other two campaigns and you are looking at $150 for the 'full' game.

So sorry, but i'll wait for the Gold version with all three campaigns to come along for under $60, as there is no way this is worth $150 compared to the original!

By buying this you are inviting shorter and/or more expensive PC games. We already see 3 hour DLC for $10 for Dragon Age making for a 30 hour $100 game! What next? It's time gamers looked at themselves when they buy into the hype of games like this.

Re: Complex? No way!
 

Blizzard has gone downhill. They got the magic formula and suck it for alls its worth. While good for short term it does lose customers. Dragon Age is EA, who quite frankly sucks. I detest EA, though I did break my own rule and bought Dragon aGe. Good game BUT the selling bullshit just really turned me off.

Re: Complex? No way!
 

I enjoyed it immensly and will be paying full price for the next two releases.

If you believe "not" buying the game will encourage lower prices then you are an idiot.

inb4 "economics 101"

EDIT: I should add that I haven't even played an online match yet

Re: Complex? No way!
 

When it comes to the giant publishers like Blizzard, that have a biased media licking their boots I think bringing them down a peg will only be good.

And with higher sales for independent titles like Galactic Civilizations and European title like The Witcher and STALKER, I think gamers are beginning to vote with their wallet. After all, STALKER sold more than Bioshock and Fallout 3 on PC, so something is already beginning to happen.

Re: Complex? No way!
 

Do you have stats to back this up?

Reports show that by the end of 2008 Fallout had sold 4.7 million copies while stalker was still at 970,000, and the gap has only increased since then....

Games are bound to get more expensive, just like movies, development costs continue to rise in order for a game to (in most cases) rise above the copious competition.

You either have to charge more and have a bigger budget well marketed game, or come out with something new and inovative and let the public spread the word.

Regardless, prices will rise for games as they become more and more common in the average household.

Re: Complex? No way!
 

@Hivetyrant, it's very difficult to separate console sales from PC sales when it's a multiformat release. I believe the 4.7 million you mention is what Fallout 3 sold on console AND pc in the first month of it's release.

CD Red Projekt have stated that STALKER has sold 4 million copies on PC, and I am inclined to believe them more than a Bethesda.

In general, if a game gets a lot of hype in the North American gaming media, it is assumed by many, not just in North America, that that title sold very very well. But North American media is very nationalistic. Major North American publishers like Blizzard, Bethesda and Valve seldom get any review score under 9.0. Equally games from major European publishers seldom get review scores of 9.0. This North American media has no idea what unit sales games get in Western Europe, let alone Eastern Europe or the far East.

If that 4.7 million for Fallout 3 is that first month's sales figures for all formats, I believe Bethesda did state that around 1 million of those were on PC.

Generally, as a rough figure, if you know a game came out on PC, PS3 and 360 and sold 5 million copies all together, you can assume PC sales are going to account for around 20% of that. 5 years ago, at the start of the multiformat market, it was closer to 30%, but this was in the days when PC versions came out 6 months later having been rewritten for PC, rather than the simultaneous release we get now where the pc version is exactly the same.

As to stats. No. In the gaming business there is no webpage I can send you to with all the numbers. The gaming business is loathe to put any figures out and the only one's that are released is to show how well a game has sold. They want to put the best spin on that, so they seldom break the figures down into formats. So you get Bethesda crowing about 4.7 million sales on 3 formats of Fallout 3, and we have CD Red Projekt crowing about 4 million PC sales of STALKER. Even when NPD release figures, people say it's wrong because thy don't put enough emphasis on downloads and others say they don't take account of how fewer retailers carry PC titles, etc.

Whether quality, price or number of PC releases, PC gaming has been in a downward spiral for 3 years now. European and Indie publishers have somewhat filled the hole left by the big publishers that now have more interest in console. With DOSBox now having over 5 million downloads, more PC gamers are going back to their older games as well. It all shows major change in the market for PC gaming.

Re: Complex? No way!
 

I'm not enough of a PC gamer to intelligently comment on the alleged downward spiral of it as a whole, and I don't know enough sales stats to contest that.

But I have to disagree with SC2 being a simple graphical update with a new story.

I haven't even touched multiplayer yet, but it feels like a whole new game to me in campaign mode. New units freshen and old ones with new abilities freshen up the action, but the three utterly unique races still have a great balance between them to make for exciting and diverse matchups.

The campaign is also easily the most inspired and enjoyable I've ever played in an RTS, both in terms of unique missions and storytelling. Every single unit and every single ability of those units is put to the test as the missions unfold, with a great balance between heavy army-versus-army encounters, quick snatch-and-run escapades, and micro-heavy commando strikes. The between-mission breaks are also great; moving about the Hyperion and engaging in conversations with the crew gives Raynor and his supporting cast much more depth than SC1 or other RTS games give their characters.

I've waited years for SC2 to come out, and I'm wholly satisfied with the result even without the doubtlessly amazing multiplayer. I'd be interested to hear what exactly makes this a poor installment in your eyes?

Re: Complex? No way!
 

Firstly, what makes it poor is the fact I can compare it against the original when that original game came out, as I was around then, and the 20 years I have played computer games never having owned a console.

For there to be a 12 year gap for just this, and then to have Blizzard rip-off it PC gaming fans by releasing each race campaign as a separate full price game, and on top of that, not offering network play is overall totally disgusting. If you think getting the equivalent of the first Starcraft, that cost $50, for $150 is reasonable then more fool you!

Gamers have become their own worse enemies too. Go to Metacritic and check any PC game that is 5+ years old and look at the use reviews. Assuming it's a good game, you'll see scores between 7 and 9 with very very few 10's and hardly anything below 7. Now look at a game like SC2 on Metacritic, you have a load of people saying they like it and therefore automatically give it a 10, and a bunch of people that have complaints and feel they have to score it zero to make the average more reasonable! This shows you the 'dumbing down' and 'fanboyism' we now have in this multiformat market.

By stating what you do about SC2, you are in effecting dissing what SC1 had. because many see SC1 as so brilliant, SC2 could only ever be just a graphic upgrade and a different story, but could never be 'better'. SC1 on Metacritic has 700+ user reviews and yet has an average of 8.8. This is honest. SC2 has, on around 100 user reviews, a score of 9.8. SC2 is not worth 1.0 point more than SC1, it just that we had honest gamers all those years ago, that had a brain in their head that games forced you to use instead of today's gamers that only like games where there hand is held the whole way through!

Re: Complex? No way!
 

I can compare it to the original, too. SC1 was one of the very first video games I ever played.
The first Starcraft, with its expansion, was about $100 total. I haven't found any pricing information regarding the total cost of SC2, but I have found assurances that the Zerg and Protoss portions are considered expansion packs, leading me to believe they will cost less than Wings of Liberty. WoL provides 26 campaign missions, an intricate between-mission setup, a mini arcade game, and an extensive challenge mode compared to SC1's 30 total campaign missions with no additional bells and whistles. Seems fair to me.
Like I said, I'm not into this sort of thing. You're probably right, but this isn't so much a SC2 grievance as it is a modern gaming grievance, no?
I see SC1 as brilliant. I see SC2 as brilliant. How is that damaging to SC1's legacy? Sure, the numbers are skewed, because that kind of thing can happen. I could care less; I never heed arbitrary numerical rating systems, and instead rely on my personal instinct and the reviews of my friends that get the games before me. I didn't buy SC2 because fanboys inflated the rating, I bought it because it looked damn good and my friends told me it was damn good. I played it, and decided that it was damn good.

Re: Complex? No way!
 

Well, all i'll say is wait and see what happens with Blizzard, SC2 and PC gaming in general. All I can say is 'predictions' for first day ships were between 800,000 and 1.8 million and sales for 2010 from 4 million worldwide to 6.5 million worldwide to 5 million just in Korea!

In other words, no one has the foggiest idea! This is a major problem with gaming. No one really knows what games are popular in sales terms, so we have to rely on media review scores, etc. Not ideal at all!