Battlefield X360 Beta Reveals Pay-to-Play Weaponry

The worst part about this? (besides all of it) I bet if you kill a player with a sweet weapon, you can't pick it up and use it unless you pay for the privilege.

All I know is that there are allot of cheap ass mutha fuckers out there... You all want these games, you all want everything to be kickass, but you bitch and moan over $2.00 - $10.00 for XBLA games, map packes, microtransactions everything.. Do any of you realise the time, cost to build a game like this... Do any of you have millions of dollars to invest and risk on building a game?? Do you know what it costs to run dedication servers all across the world and pay IT people to manage it??? Go start your company, hire 50-100 people with some damn good salaries and then build a game with a ten million plus budget and see how quick you might be to say... Oh, lets make some microtransactions.. Until you learn what a game company has to go through today with tons of competition and whining pussies, don't bitch and moan.. Just play the game and remember, YOU DON"T HAVE TO BUYT IT!! ITS OPTIONAL!!!!!

if the game is good I will purchase all the unlockable weapons just to add my name into the success category for microtransactions

This game Console only or is it coming to the PC too?

This is the perfect opportunity to vote with your wallet.

No one is forcing you or anyone else to buy the game or buy microtransaction add-ons. If customers out there do, in fact, buy these things then you'll see it again and again in future games.

I don't blame EA or Microsoft for any of this. I blame the consumers who purchase A LOT of additional content.

next up: EA charges per club and per ball in Tiger woods 2010. Need a tee for that too...

Sniper VSS.
The coolest weapon in S.T.A.L.K.E.R. besides Gauss rifle.

If we buy it they will keep going as far as they can. Money speaks louder than any words.

Just accept it, we will see more and more micro transactions in the future, both in games and on web pages... it's not so different then any other business, pay more get better car, tv whatever

If this sticks, BF: Bad Co. just became a rental not worthy of multi-player longevity as an advantage. If CoD4 did something this, I doubt it'd be as popular.

EA HAS NOT ANNOUNCED ANYTHING, Jesus I can't believe this is front page news.

I hope no one buys this game just to prove a point. Unfortunately there will be people who don't know anything about this who end up buying it anyway. I feel sorry for the dev team who probably don't want anything to do with this "idea"

Hopefully it won't work and developers won't want to try this again. Here's to hope...

Behold! I will now predict the future! Come back and click this spoiler in a year and marvel at my prescience!

"Rent this weapon for 24 hours for only 800 Points!"

If you wanna show them just buy a PS3, their online play is free

If I was reviewing this game I would knock several points off the score (at least 3 points out of 10) simply for the fact that introducing the concept of paying more money to gain an advantage in the game destroys the spirit of an even playing field and fair competition. If they include this option, then there should at least also be an option for the host to restrict the weapons used in the the hosted game to the standard set of weapons that everyone has access to. If you want to use weapons you paid extra for, then you can always host your own game. However, give me the option to host my game free from these elitist weapons and the unskilled fools and noobs who purchase them. If that option doesn't exist (hosting games which allow only standard weapons), then I will not purchase the game.

Once computer and console games started generating huge sales it was only a matter of time before marketing hounds and big business infiltrated the industry and schemed up ways to eek every last dollar out of players' wallets.

On the PC side, first it was pay-to-test where unfinished products were released on unsuspecting consumers who fired up the product only to find they'd basically paid the developer to do what used to be something developers had to pay people to do. Namely, beta testing. These games were then finished via patches, often months after RTM.

That eventually evolved to what we saw with more recent games like Supreme Commander, where there first comes a "public beta test" at a stage that the industry would have once considered alpha material. The result of this alpha testing was a beta that was RTM'd and hit store shelves. Then customers not only got lured into paying to beta test their product (which has now in some ways become the industry norm), but the final product was not implemented via patches, no, it was subsequently released as a sequel you had to - wait for it - pay full price for again.

And marketers soon learned that was the final straw for a fair number of consumers. They could be tricked into paying the company for what the company used to have to pay people to do, but not so many could be tricked into then paying a second time to actually get the finished product.

Meanwhile pay-per-month multiplayer gaming schemes were piloted with MMOs and shown to be so successful that they became an industry unto themselves and every company had to have one, or at least 'leak' news that they're working on one or even just "considering" making one. Let's face it, if you weren't, if you didn't, you were behind the times and that's no good when you're looking for vencap to support your company's next project - er, I mean next big hit.

On the console front, pay-per-month took the form of XBox Live. That then evolved with the Marketplace on the 360, which introduced large scale pay-for-content, where you had to open up your wallet to access what used to be content either included in the original product or offered as free downloads post-release.

Most today are likely too young to remember the PC game developers in the '90s who released extra maps, campaigns, units, weaponry, etc, for months after the initial release of a product. Then again, back then they were in it because they loved what they were doing and they actually wanted to play the games they designed and developed. Now it's just a money-making industry that provides a paycheck. Yet interestingly enough, the ones who made great games back then had no problem making big bucks without the help of customer-unfriendly marketing schemes like pay-for-content or recurring charges. Instead it almost seems to have paralleled the music industry, where it was a flood of mediocre content that drove both the shrinking of profits and the growth of piracy. But that's a tangent for another day.

The next logical step in the drive to test just how far business can squeeze wallets before the mindless masses can put together a coherent thought to say "enough" is with pay-per-item, where you pay to buy parts of the very essence of the game itself. They'll argue that you don't have to lay out your money for the "extra" content - the upgraded or superior weaponry and equipment in this case - (and they'll always be sure to have a relatively functional product outside of all of the purchasable content so they will be semantically correct) but we all know that when everyone else is running around with the hot stuff, you're essentially forced to acquire it too if you want to have any fun, let alone be competitive. The design of such a scheme is based on leveraging mental concepts like peer pressure and keeping up with the Joneses, as well as basic gameplay realities like survival of the fittest. Marketers are keenly aware of the impact of those paradigms in multiplayer gaming and how they generate sales from people who would otherwise be reluctant to partake in such a scheme, so marketers are doing what they do best: Taking full advantage of all of the above.

gg big business, you win. You're destroying another industry by raping the consumer.

i cant wait until games start letting you buy better ping times and server priority

I dont mind this kind of thing for free games like Battlefield Heroes but if you're paying full price for a game you should not have to buy extra fucking weapons. It's just stingy.

Chromehounds did this and I don't remember it ruining anything. The weapons for sale weren't the best.

Just don't buy it.

call me an old dinosaur and swimming against the current, but fuck micro transactions and pay to play shit. that being said, i'm sure the games will be successful, as there are plenty of sheep in this world.

Wow, that is amusing. I'm not playing ball, but I'm laughing. They should start everyone out with just rocks and two-by-fours.

Microsoft needs to stop this from happening. "This" being companies releasing downloadable content for a fee almost instantanouesly with a game's release. If it becomes apparent that downloadable content is just another way for game companies to charge more for their game, then people will start to see Xbox Live less as an asset and more of a negative. If it's "extra" content (which no game can claim to when it is built right into the released game and requires you to pay to unlock it), then people will see it as a bonus.

The game also displays a model of the weapon which can be rotated and viewed at any angle, leading some to speculate that the weapons are already packed in the game data.

Is this unexpected? If the guns weren't in the game already (or part of an required download pack of some sort) how would other people see you using them? The art assets and code need to be on everyone's systems, not just the people who bought them.

I want a beta key to try it anyway ;[

ugh i was looking forward to this but this is bullshit

Whats happening is western devs are seeing the games in asia and are getting jealous. Cheap/free games with pay-for-upgrades are relatively common over there from what I hear. Its good for the customer, as they can experience the game for a low price and pay more for a better experience. It can be good for the dev as it dodges the whole resale/piracy issue.

The big question is, will western companies cut the cost of games when doing this and will western customers go for it at all.

so if you DONT buy the good gear. some noob on the server will and will be owning your ass with it. I wonder if it lets you pick up unlocks when you kill them though like BF2 does

Apparently they didn't get the memo about the horse armor.

go fuck yourselves? no, really.

I'll wait until EA responds to pass judgment. If this is true, even if it's a way casual players can get the weapons without playing for hours, EA can kiss it. More BF2 for me.

It's not cool to have to pay money to be playing on an even footing with other players. Basically, all they have to do is give you shitty weapons so you are forced to pay extra to play online if you don't want to get raped. Even if it is subtle.

I will not buy this game.

Homie don't play dat.

I'm really not a fan of the constant attempts to nickle and dime us, but the actual article mentions that the purchased weapons don't seem to have better stats than the 'stock' unlocks. I'll reserve my contempt until people get to play it.

this still severely damages my interest level in the game, though

I was just about to get my beta key off of Fileplanet to join the beta...now I don't give a goddamn hairy rats' ass about this game.

If I could offer a different perspective on the whole sitch (short (and awesome) for 'situation'), downloadable content puts more green in the blue (More money in the jeans) of devs, ultimately. Now, I have my qualms with capitalism just like everyone else, but don't we want the people who make the things we love (And invest a ton of time into) to have more money, so they can make more things that we love? I mean, if this kind of thing bothers you, just don't buy the weapons. It's not like a few extra rounds or a higher cyclic rate is really going to make THAT much of a diff. I remember the uproar against unlockable weapons because people who decided to grid had an edge. WTF do you people want?

I assume shacknews will ask this if EA replies, but the question is whether these are paid-only, or if payment is just for lazy people to unlock them.

Both are kinda silly, but obviously paid-only upgrades would be completely ridiculous and boycott-worthy.

Hahahaha. Who the hell is going to play this?