Well that wasn't the intent and I hope publishers like Sony or whoever aren't looking at these type of discussions and going "welp, we tried but that's enough of that!". As a practice it's certainly more preferable vs. lootboxes.
I just kinda feel like the additional costs should scale accordingly. You're getting hours of additional story-driven content for $20 basically, but lip-sync and Dualsense haptic support (which IMO is the bigger questionable point here) are worth half of that?
But is it really worth the $10 premium? Think of all the GOTY editions for certain AAA games in the past that rolled up seasons' worth of DLC and other content in definitive releases, that were cheaper than the original launch MSRP of the vanilla version of those games! That might serve as something of a counterpoint here.
Man you really got it out for me as a MS fanboy huh? I give loving to all the consoles, no hate here
If you project any harder you'd be telekinetic!
But the original game is no longer $60; if using the original release as a base and considering the only thing the extra $10 really covers is Japanese lip-sync and Dualsense support, shouldn't the original release's likely current price value be used as the base, and the PS5 version be $60 or the PS4 version be $70 considering what the $10 more gets you versus what the $20 (for the substantive content) gets you?
Well, the reason for the two different "No" options was to give one as an absolute for people who feel it is never okay, versus those who think it would be okay if circumstances permitted and/or it was justified through the value being added. But thinking on it now maybe tying the latter to a Yes option would've been better.
FWIW I forgot about Ghosts getting a resolution/framerate perf upgrade when making the thread, that's my bad. But it makes the $10 cost on top for PS5 version look even weirder in a way when you consider, outside of the Japanese lip-sync and Dualsense support, all other content is exactly the same between PS4 and PS5 versions.
This isn't about the actual content; the new content more than justifies its cost. It's about the fact that the $10 extra for PS5 version does not cover that additional content, simply lip-sync in cutscenes for Japanese and Dualsense haptic feedback.
Thanks and I appreciate the understanding; this is definitely not for console war shenanigans and I messed up with the title because I legit forgot about the performance upgrade Sucker Punch did a few months back, which was for free.
TBH it's not even that Sony are particularly egregious with this type of stuff; platform holder-wise I think Nintendo is the worst of the three in terms of what they charge for certain things vs. what you're actually getting, and it's not like Microsoft is spotless either considering it wasn't that long ago you still had to pay for MP for FTP games on Xbox.
At this point I'm just wondering if it would be better for Sony to standardize the $70 for PS5 and PS4 SKUs (or in this DLC's case, $30 on both platforms) of their games so at least that way we don't have to ask what the extra $10 is for on one platform. If their business model calls for a $10 price increase for first-party releases then fine, but at least make it appear justified in some way that is substantive, especially considering how things may be on other platforms (outside of third-party games), at least for now.
IMO there's no way to really spin lip-sync for cutscenes and haptic feedback support as worth a $10 premium, so why not just set that new price across all your platforms and roll in those additions with the new content, because at that point people will see the PS5 version as even better value. Which, they already seem to be doing considering cross-platform 1P games are selling much more on PS5 vs. PS4. I'm just thinking about the optics here is all.
But objectively speaking, how much extra work was it to do the Japanese lip-sync for cutscenes or add Dualsense and 3D audio support (the latter two especially, since I'd like to think that's just a bit of new code calling APIs to tap features already built into the hardware) compared to an entire MP mode, or the resolution & framerate increases? You can't really say the scale and complexity of those things are the same.
It'd be like a fighting game coming out for $60 on PS4 but $70 on PS5 and stating the reason why is because they wanted to add support for fight sticks. Like, that's not a good reasoning at all, considering fighting games had no issue in the past keeping similar pricing across devices with fight stick support assumed to naturally be there by fans.
Maybe "anti-consumer" was a bad choice of words for this case; there have definitely been way worst practices from other companies like EA and Activision that are truly anti-consumer. But, I am still asking, why does lip-sync animations in cutscenes and Dualsense/3D audio support warrant a $10 premium?
Actually let's skip over the lip-sync because that could at least be justified in some manner. The Dualsense support and 3D audio, why does that warrant a $10 premium? Do people want to know what this would've looked like with previous console generations? It'd be like Nintendo charging $10 extra for 1P N64 games over 1P SNES games just for analog feature support. It'd be like SEGA charging $10 extra for Dreamcast versions of cross-gen games for using the built-in modem (on top of the Dreamcast's regular cost). Or like Sony making PS3 owners pay an extra $10 to play PS2 games with smoother rendering, on top of the PS3's MSRP.
Like, yeah, they can do it as a pricing strategy, but it doesn't really justify its reason for being practiced if you think it out to a logical conclusion.