Cost of Horizon vs Star Citizen Price Model

[SlickReed]

No you aren't. Sorry but I'm going to call a spade a spade here. You trying to compare two entirely different price models which neither are directly comparable.

For starters one game is RELEASED and adding content via purchasable DLC. The other is still in early stages of development and the "$900,000,000 ships" are a form of revenue to help support and develop the game. Let us not forget that ED was also a crowd funded game where, just like in SC, people can give the devs more of their hard-earned money (even in the $1,000's...again just like SC) to help support and develop the game. So many people side step this fact when trying to draw up these irrational comparisons. Please take the time and read the various kickstarter pledges https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1461411552/elite-dangerous/description
.

With SC you can buy the same package over,over,over,over again. The ED KS campaign you pledged for, why would you need to pledge twice for the same thing? I can assure you I tried to throw money at FD, I called customer service and begged for the opportunity to buy the Alpha package for ED right before the PB started, and they told me NO, that's even before they had dollars as a purchasable currency. But with SC, you can buy up as many ships as you want, over,over,over again. How can you see this as the same as selling $2500 ships for a game that doesn't even exist?

 

[CMDR Brock Samson]

I don't know.Paid expansions were always part of the deal and with no subscription fee seems natural to me to pay 40 euro(37 actually, with the loyalty discount) a year.

 

[who?]

How about PLEX ?

On topic, i have nothing against FD's business model for ED, i just refuse to buy a second copy of the original game in order to get access to Horizons.

Once Horizons is available seperately, i'll reconsider.

Comparing one criticized model against another one that's isn't very convincing btw..

I can't see how that would ever be possible. Horizons is an updated client codebase, additional data files (models, textures, sound files etc.) and presumably additional server-side code and access rights. There's no way of unhooking the original game from that.

The best they could do is offer it at a reduced price, but I doubt if even that's going to happen. As time goes on, the game will offer more and more. To my mind, that means the price is more likely to be pretty static over time instead of depreciating.

Value is very subjective though, if it's not good value to you, it's not good value. I do agree the SC comparison doesn't really change much (even if I've done the same myself), what's happening in the SC world doesn't change what's happening in the ED world.

 

[KonigWolf]

Ships for SC are PLEDGES. You don't have to buy them, in fact, you can have the entire game for $45. I have $5 invested in SC (thanks to an AMD code that have me a package I just threw $5 to upgrade my ship to an Avenger). Also, with SC... You get everything in the game. There are no paid expansions. All ships and modules/weapons will be available for in-game cash. Fact is, CIG has more money and a bigger crew than FD. So FD have to charge for expansions if they want to keep pushing forward, especially with the company working on another game.

 

[shadragon]

If FD asked money for their ships you will see people cry too, crying is a national sport in some countries.

Yes, but they didn't.

ED says little, but delivers lots.

SC says lots, but delivers little.

I hope all the SC players get the game they were promised. I truly do, but I'm not spending any amount of cash with RSI until I see a solid release product.

 

[Aewarin Jameson]

Fact is, CIG has more money and a bigger crew than FD.

.. and sadly not much to show for it.

I am rooting for SC to be released, full bells and whistles, and whilst I wait I am enjoying ED (once again )

Post release there will be 2 space games contending for my time, and if Josh gets his act together that will make 3 (Limit Theory)

 

[bigian12]

.. and sadly not much to show for it.

I am rooting for SC to be released, full bells and whistles, and whilst I wait I am enjoying ED (once again )

Post release there will be 2 space games contending for my time, and if Josh gets his act together that will make 3 (Limit Theory)

As long as it is not all a scam, as was said, a bigger team than FD yet sod all to show for it except a few sparkly ships.

 

[TheDayman]

Fact: As a gamer since the 80's I can say that I've paid way more and received way less when it comes to games, software, hardware, and women.

This is just so unfortunately true. You don't ALWAYS get what you pay for - especially with the last one

 

[Justor]

Clearly you didn't. You're still hanging around the forums. Did you get lost?

LOL Busted

 

[fademist]

How about Eve Online then. You pay a minimum of $10.95 every month whether there is an update or not.

and eve isnt even near to space sims...

 

[TheDayman]

The difference between the two games is that ED has been released whereas SC is still being developed.

When ED was being developed (ie during the KS) some people paid 300 pounds to name a star system, 1500 pounds to be able to call themselves "Jameson" and one clown paid 5000 pounds to name the Founders system

In otherwords you can't compare the two at different stages of development - when (if) SC has been released let's see what RSI ask afterwards for additions and compare then.

Granted, I'm making a huge assumption here - but when SC finally release, and I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and say Q2 2016, Elite will already have all content through 1.5, plus Planetary Landings, most likely crafting, and perhaps multicrews. SC will have to go through months still of bug squashing before it even gets additional content. In that amount of time, we'll be looking at Season 3.

 

[Space Junky]

Whats sucks is CIG keeps changing the ships and variations before the gameplay is even done so now the ships I bought in 2012-2013 have seriously depreciated in value.

https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/14972-Research-Unbound-The-MISC-Endeavor

But this has to be expected during development as it is a fluid environment. Anything can be suspect to change. I also wouldn't advise anyone to donate to a game in development and expect virtual items to hold any value, especially considering all ships can be acquired for free via play time and in-game currency (UEC). You are supposed to be giving those monies to help back the game and not to look at it like you're getting the opportunity to purchase X ship for X amount for X amount of time ahead of release. That's really your fault and not on the feet of CIG (or FDEV if the shoe was on the other foot). I think this is an issue some backers have as they don't really understand why ships are priced like they are. If your intent was to get into SC with minimal investment then you should have looked at the cheap and affordable packages, not the big boy packages. Those are for people who clearly have money spare money than they need and are willing to part ways with it without discourse.

 

[Philip Foster]

I am just curious why there are so many complainers about Horizons Season 2 cost. When Star Citizen releases 1 ship for 900$ USD that you cannot even fly yet!

This not a Elite is better than Star Citizen tread or the other way around.. I am not comparing game differences but price models.

Frontier says hey we have Season 2 where you will be able to:
· Land on planet, with all the varied game play (SRV, etc)
· Have Co-Pilots / Multi Crew ships
· Loot and crafting
· Character Creator (Which is looking sweet and a surprise)
· Ships count going to 30+ with more to come and more SRV types as well.

So many people are hey that is ......it costs too much! I will agree that is not cheap, but I think Frontier is giving us our moneys worth when all these features are implemented.

Here is Star Citizen releasing ships for 900$, I have paid 60$ USD for the game. Started on 1.1 right before wings came out. I like this game enough that I bought the Life Time Expansion pass for around 180$ USD with the exchange rate. So right around 240$ USD I have the game, and every expansion that will every come out for this game until Frontier decides they are done and the game is complete as is.

I will still need to pay Star Citizen another 660$ before I would "own" this ship, which seems crazy too me... compared to Elite, $ to value I think it wins hands down.

I wonder why Star Citizen fans will gladly pay 900$ for a ship that is a concept, Frontier says 60 for the expansion and people on Elite forums blow up and say that it is too much, when you are getting way more than just a ship, but a ton of content.

Just for the record, I hope Star Citizen is successful there are not enough good space games out there and I hope it proves to AAA publishers that there is a market for space sims and we will get more than just the next COD and BF going forward in the future.

Shout out to Frontier for making this awesome additive game!


http://www.bluesnews.com/s/165536/star-citizen_s-usd-900-ship

The Roberts Space Industries website is now selling another virtual ship for Star Citizen with an eye-popping price tag. The new ship for Cloud Imperium's upcoming space combat game is the Endeavor-class research vessel, described as "a fully modular space platform designed to be adapted for a variety of scientific and medical tasks." The outlay for this is $900.00 USD, which is 15 times the price of the typical AAA game, and more than enough to buy a gaming PC. Here's more on the Endeavor: "Initially developed as a floating laboratory, the MISC Endeavor can be outfitted for everything from spatial telescopy to use as mobile hospital."

I watched a YT video recently where the YTber complained that the Lifetime pass for ED costs as much as two years subscription to EVE................. Without a modicum of irony he declared that this was simply too much........... All I could do was quickley calculate what 10 years of subscription to EVE would cost me (£650 by his reckoning) and why did the YTber not think that EVE was not overpriced and that £130 for an ED lifetime pass was.

Shurely shome mishtake?

 

[Ian Skippy]

Granted, I'm making a huge assumption here - but when SC finally release, and I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and say Q2 2016, Elite will already have all content through 1.5, plus Planetary Landings, most likely crafting, and perhaps multicrews. SC will have to go through months still of bug squashing before it even gets additional content. In that amount of time, we'll be looking at Season 3.

Unless I missed something there is no way they'll release Q2 2016. Wiki gives 'somewhere in 2017', which seems more reasonable. Remember that the FPS module was definitely going to be released in 2014, then Q2 2015, and it still hasnt got a solid date (within some weeks they said some months ago). After that they still need to make the actual game as there is no universe yet. Considering every single step has taken way longer than anticipated, I doubt they can slap all modules together convincingly, then alpha and beta test it, in half a year.

 

[Space Junky]

With SC you can buy the same package over,over,over,over again. The ED KS campaign you pledged for, why would you need to pledge twice for the same thing? I can assure you I tried to throw money at FD, I called customer service and begged for the opportunity to buy the Alpha package for ED right before the PB started, and they told me NO, that's even before they had dollars as a purchasable currency. But with SC, you can buy up as many ships as you want, over,over,over again. How can you see this as the same as selling $2500 ships for a game that doesn't even exist?

Why would you even buy the same pledge over and over in SC? It's one thing if you want to just give them money to help with development costs but it's another in thinking you're building some sort of personal Aurora squadron hangar. Do people buy multiple ships in SC? Well of course they do but nobody, CIG included, is asking them to do it. To CIG they see it as "hey if Joe Blow wants to donate $45 each time to fulfill his dream of owning 20 Aurora starter packages then hey, be our guest Joe and thanks for helping fund the development". I see no wrong in that and nobody is twisting your arm telling you to buy 20 Auroras, so what's the fuss about? I mean, if you want to build your own empire of Auroras, 300i', whatever be my guest. That just means you've donated more than I have and it helps with development. I'm glad there are guys out there willing to spend more and it means the game can be bigger, better, etc.

Again they are not "selling ships for a game that doesn't exist". They are selling tiered DONATIONS for a game that's in DEVELOPMENT. Of course the game doesn't exist yet. You can't get to point B if you never started from point A. Someone has to fund it and since this is crowd funded, it comes from backers primarily and a handful of wealthy silent partners. However much you decide to donate is entirely up to you. For me personally, I gave them $45 for an Aurora LN starter pack. You might have given them more but it's of no business to me and that's entirely your own call to make. I'm not really sure where you're going with your post.

I really think the root of all this comes from people not looking at what ship packages really are. Some people look at it as buying a ship early before release, which is just wrong on so many levels, but that is their fault.

 

[CMDR Harada]

Granted, I'm making a huge assumption here - but when SC finally release, and I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and say Q2 2016,

UPFRONT DISCLAIMER : I am an SC backer

Thats a pretty huge assumption. I love Roberts, and all his previous games, but c'mon. I have the Colonel package, plus a t-shirt ( roughly $175 ? Been so long I forget now ). I hope the game comes out. No release date in site, but I can by more cool ships I can't fly...
.
I love ED. Great game. I've wasted more time in the ED universe than a lot of other games. $60 ( US ) is cheap. And I can play it now.
.
Pay-for-play. I hate the premise. And in SC you can make the credits in game to afford those $1800 dollar ships. I like that ED doesn't do that. Just the fact that soemone can afford an Anaconda gives them some cred. In SC... Well, you have a big ship. No idea how that will work in game, since we can't really compare them yet.
.
Comparing those two, I say ED wins. But I'll sure as heck play SC when ( if ) it's released.

 

[askavir]

Fact is, CIG has more money and a bigger crew than FD.

Some emphasis on "more money".

They made nearly 90 million dollars so far.

I repeat: NINETY FRAKKING MILLION DOLLARS.

Thats almost the Rockstar budget for GTA V. Yet somehow they keep asking people for tons of money... If just feels odd... I confess I already lost all my enthusiasm for SC and I'm having some serious doubts about it. Seems too much like politicians in my country, they keep promising and promising and promising even more but time goes by and I never really see anything. I hope I'm wrong and they still make it, though.

FD made due with just around 3 million before release. And they already gave me a game which is already on my "top games I loved most list" and have been throughly enjoying it for nearly a year now, with even better stuff on the horizon.

 

[TheDayman]

Unless I missed something there is no way they'll release Q2 2016. Wiki gives 'somewhere in 2017', which seems more reasonable. Remember that the FPS module was definitely going to be released in 2014, then Q2 2015, and it still hasnt got a solid date (within some weeks they said some months ago). After that they still need to make the actual game as there is no universe yet. Considering every single step has taken way longer than anticipated, I doubt they can slap all modules together convincingly, then alpha and beta test it, in half a year.

I was being very generous with that date. While it's not impossible that they meet it, it's highly unlikely. For the purposes of illustration, I figured it'd be best to be optimistic. My earnest guess is that SC will aim towards a Holiday (see what I did there?) release date of 2016.

 

[InMemoriamSirocco]

People are just getting upset that content they hoped to get by paying a single price for the base game will be behind a pay wall.

Some of them are especially upset because the pricetag resembles that of a full price game. Which, if they paused for a moment to think of the sheer scope and effort it must have taken to make the content that this expansion is going to bring, appears to be more than justified, because essentially you get a full game's content's worth of expansion. Along with a boatload of free updates for this second season that will enhance the paid for content even further.

Elite: Horizons will be the first game ever (at least that I have heard of) allowing you to explore not only a to-scale-model (even if fictional and mostly procedurally generated) of our very own galaxy, but also billions upon billions of moons and airless planets. Planet-sized planets. That you can explore in a buggy. Covering every inch of just one of those rocks in your travels would take you longer than a lifetime. And you have bazillions of them to explore.

Granted, Frontier are being rather vague as to what kind of content awaits us on the surface - and most of what they have revealed so far will most probably not apply to unexplored exoplanets outside the bubble.

The mile-wide-inch-deep-syndrome that has been plaguing this community and the game might also be a central problem on planet surfaces.

But still... the sheer amount of gameplay hours you get by simply adding those new features more than warrant the pricetag.

 

[Space Junky]

Some emphasis on "more money".

They made nearly 90 million dollars so far.

I repeat: NINETY FRAKKING MILLION DOLLARS.

Thats almost the Rockstar budget for GTA V. Yet somehow they keep asking people for tons of money... If just feels odd... I confess I already lost all my enthusiasm for SC and I'm having some serious doubts about it. Seems too much like politicians in my country, they keep promising and promising and promising even more but time goes by and I never really see anything. I hope I'm wrong and they still make it, though.

FD made due with just around 3 million before release. And they already gave me a game which is already on my "top games I loved most list" and have been throughly enjoying it for nearly a year now, with even better stuff on the horizon.

This just comes off as a hater post. Why do people care how much SC has or is raising? Serious question. Do I care that Destiny has like over $500 million invested in a multi-year development cycle with its massive marketing budget and all even though I think that game is lame? Nope. I simply don't care what they spend as it has no bearing on me nor am I an investor of Bungie.
Also show me where CIG is "asking for money". I see this posted often but I've never once seen a source to back it up. I do however see a web store with different packages explaining what each one consists of and it lets the consumer decide which they feel best spending money on. But I sure don't see any "pllleeeeease help feed the beast"....."WE NEED YOU....and your money"....or any flashing GIFs that read "Buy now! Save for the future". But hey you said they are asking people for money so please provide a source for that statement.