size=18]Microsoft Talks Lumines, Live and Microtransactions [/size]
Last week's release of the long-awaited Lumines Live! to the Xbox Live Marketplace left a bad taste in some gamers' mouths. The game was released with a different pricing structure, which allowed for a la carte style extending of one's game experiences by purchasing additional packs for the game. Here's what Microsoft's Gamerscore Blog said the Lumines Live! Base Pack contains:
Challenge Mode: Unlimited gameplay, with 12 different skins (visualization and music)
Puzzle Mode: Five different puzzles
Mission Mode: Five different missions
CPU Mode: "Trial Tournament" battle one opponent through one stage
Online Multiplayer over Xbox Live: Unlimited gameplay battling friends head-to-head
Xbox Live leaderboards
Time Attack Mode gameplay "recording," which can be viewed by other players
The way Lumines Live! was presented to users was confusing, alienating and in many cases, frustrating -- we spoke with Microsoft's Greg Canessa, Group Manager Xbox Live Arcade, to try and clear up how Xbox Live Arcade titles are priced and why Lumines Live! ushered in this new, a la carte style microtransaction.
1UP: Who sets the pricing structure for Marketplace stuff. For a game like Lumines Live, who decided to push the product this way?
Greg Canessa: That's actually done by the developer. As a platform, we provide a list of available price tiers. And we work very closely, of course, with the developer. We provide suggestions and it is a consultation between the two companies, but ultimately it is up to the developer to set the price.
1UP: Are you guys concerned about the Wild, Wild West attitude on the Marketplace right now? If something's priced in a way that people can look at it as too high, the ultimate onus of responsibility falls on you guys -- Microsoft takes the blame for it. People don't go, "Oh, well, Q Entertainment did this." They say, "It's Microsoft's fault."
GC: Well, you know, what we try to do is provide guidance as I mentioned, so Xbox Live Arcade has three available price points right now, 400, 800, and 1200 points. We provide that guidance as a platform to try to guide both the developer toward certain price points and to guide gamers' expectations in terms of what Xbox Live Arcade games should cost. And that obviously benefits everyone so that it's not this open, to your point, Wild, Wild West sort of approach where there's all sorts of available price points. There is a broader range of price points available for Xbox Live Marketplace in terms of those types of contents, although there are price tiers and pricing recommendations for certain types of content. So, for instance, gamer pics and themes are one of a couple of different available price points, whereas premium downloadable content is really that sort of add-on content for your retail games and for your arcade games; that's sort of the broadest range.
Because it really depends on sort of what the experience is, right? If it's a level, it's sort of, "OK, it's not that big; alright, we can charge maybe this for it," versus a more extensive update is worth maybe a little higher price.
To your point, it really is a partnership and this is a new business. As we've talked about before, as you guys have written about before, this is a new space. And we're still trying to feel our way through -- the development and publishing community's trying to figure out what things cost and what's a good price point for what.
It's unfortunate that some people just sort of take the approach of, "oh, blame Microsoft first for everything;" that's not really constructive. Really what we're hoping is that people will take a look at what we're trying to do and we're trying to price things -- and the developers are trying to price things for what they think is a good price point for the development investment they've put into this content. Remember, this stuff costs money to make. And we're sort of working our way through it. The gamers, as a whole, have reacted extremely well to Marketplace and, of course, Arcade. You know about Arcade, but, you know, for Marketplace, we have over 1,500 pieces of content in Marketplace; we have over 70 million downloads. Clearly, there is a lot of stuff that's resonating with gamers. I know there's some people that are frustrated from time to time about a particular piece of add-on content, but, on balance, the market has voted with their feet and they love the thing. So, you know, I'm pretty optimistic about it. And if there are kinks, we'll work out the kinks.
1UP: You said that the add-on content and the premium content costs extra money to make, but in the case of some companies, like, for instance, EA charging for cheats or for stadiums, we're seeing things that previously existed in retail shipping games and cheats that I would unlock in the PS2 version with a button combination, I now can pay money on the Marketplace for. Are you guys concerned at all with these sorts of transactions?
GC:: Well, you know, I can't comment specifically on the EA stuff because I'm not really super-familiar with what those guys are doing and I don't want to comment -- I don't want to be out of school on something that I'm not fully versed on. I can make the general comment that I think that, you know, here Microsoft is the platform providers. We're very serious about working with the developers to provide a great amount of value for the gamer for the price that they paid for the game. We're not into sort of taking a game that previously was available for a period of time and about breaking it into chunks and selling it to you in chunks to try to get more money out of you. That's not what this is about. This is about choice, and it's about creating an experience for gamers where the basic experience is a really, really compelling, fun, awesome experience and then providing choice to the customers, to say, "Hey, you know what? I'm a super-hardcore gamer. I like these things. I like these many levels, or whatever." And not have to stick it to every gamer, many of whom don't want additional content, and having to raise the price for everybody, and stick it to 'em by forcing everyone to buy all of the content. There's some experimentation being done right now, and we'll see how it goes, around, "Hey, let's create a lower-cost experience that still is a fun experience that we know everyone will want to play and then provide some specialized content that isn't relevant to everybody for a small additional fee and see if that works."
We're experimenting; the development and publishing community is experimenting with it. We've had a lot of success with it so far, despite the fact that there's been some people that have not reacted very well to the market and they've been very vocal. Again, a lot of this content has been very successful on Marketplace. And Marketplace as a whole has been very successful. And Arcade has been amazingly successful. I think, overall, it's a good thing for the industry. I don't think that what you're describing about what you're describing, the nickel-and-diming or parsing out of things that were previously part of a basic game to try to eke some additional revenue out of the title -- that's not the point. It's really not what the publishing and development community or Microsoft is in the business of doing. It's about providing that additional choice.
1UP: With the Lumines Live purchasing system, I think the criticisms being leveled are pretty reasonable considering that there is a lot of the game that's pointing you in the direction of, "buy this later" and that has a very demo-like feel when you see that pop up. Was this something you guys foresaw? How are you guys reacting to this? Is this a misstep?
GC: I definitely wouldn't call it a misstep. Lumines is a different game in a lot of ways. Just to be honest with you, it's a different type of game for Arcade. Obviously, Arcade is a new platform and we're continuing to experiment and try new things in Arcade; Lumines is kind of in between an Arcade game and a retail game, in a way. It's definitely digitally distributed, it definitely fits within the Arcade paradigm, but in a lot of ways in terms of feature set, in terms of development cost, in terms of timeline, in terms of number of features, amount of features, amount of play modes, it in some ways is kind of more reflective of a retail experience.
So with Lumines the decision was made to really go full-out, and Mizuguchi was very emphatic about this, and very passionate about creating a premium Lumines experience that is far superior to the PSP version. We have more gameplay modes, we have exclusive gameplay modes, we've got more skins, we've got full Xbox Live multiplayer play, we've got leaderboards, achievements, gamer score, artists packs, all kinds of stuff, downloadable content capabilities, all sorts of stuff that does not exist in the PSP version. He wanted to create a true evolution of the Lumines experience. We were very supportive of that.
What we were emphatic about, frankly, was that the basic game, the Lumines basic game, the one that's available for 1,200 points, had all of the play modes in it. It was a complete game in every way. We were not a fan of, "Hey, we'll put these two modes in the basic game and we'll sell these two other modes in downloadable content." We would not allow that. We wanted the basic game and all of the play modes to be available in the basic game. And that is what we pulled off. When you go download that $15-experience, that 1,200-point experience, it is a full game. Now, if you criticize Lumines for this, you gotta criticize a whole bunch of other games that are available online where you have a certain number of levels in a play mode, and you run out of levels, and you want more levels. Now, in the case of mission mode and puzzle mode, for example, there are a certain number of levels and at a certain point there are no more levels. Now, if you want to consume more levels, because it's more of a level-based play mode, if you want to consume more levels, if you want more puzzles, you've gotta get some downloadable content for that. That's fine.
The precedent has been set for that in many, many, many other games previous to Lumines. Now, in most play modes of Lumines, if we really want to get granular about this, in challenge mode, the sort of the standard Lumines mode, in time trial is sort of a different type of mode, but, for instance, in challenge mode, you can keep playing and playing and playing and playing. No one ever stops you. No one ever halts you. No one ever says, "Game over. Sorry, you're screwed." No, you can play Lumines all you want. Now, you have a certain number of skins. Now, the skin is the background, the sound effects, and the music. Now, after a while it'll just loop the skins. Once you've eaten through all the skins, it'll just loop the skins but you can keep playing for six days if you're that good. It never halts you from playing. What we're selling through the skin pack, the advanced pack, is additional skins to be able to customize your Lumines experience in additional ways. That's completely optional; it doesn't halt you from playing the game. It's just a cooler Lumines experience if you happen to be a hardcore Lumines guy that's really into more skins. So it's all about providing that sort of choice and that option for the consumers.
1UP: Looking at the screenshot that we put up on 1UP (see image), to see a message like that in a game I just paid for is frustrating. For a consumer who didn't know that the Base Pack was providing a limited amount of content, that's irritating, isn't it? The language that was used on the Marketplace didn't indicate that this was a different type of experience and because it is that way, are we to treat the Lumines Live! a la carte style downloads as an anomaly or another type of Live Arcade SKU that we'll see more and more?
GC: I definitely see what you're talking about. I would classify it as something that was done that was very different from what we've done previously. Something that the developer, that Q Entertainment thought about, and decided to do. Like I said, this is a new business and there was a bit of experimentation that went on and obviously we're going to listen to customer feedback on that.
We're going to listen to customer feedback overall and we're going to look at the sales of the title. We tried some things that were a little different on that title [Lumines] and the experience, whether or not that messaging was the right messaging, I won't comment specifically on the messaging, but I will say that what we intended to communicate, what Q intended to communicate that there was additional downloadable content that would be available that further enhanced the experience. In no way was it meant to indicate that it was anything less than a full experience in the basic game. The basic game, to address Versus CPU mode specifically, there is a way to play the CPU in the versus mode where the line is shifted left and right against a CPU opponent. That mode exists in the game, you can play that mode as much as you want. Now, what Q Entertainment is going to provide through that is they are going to provide additional CPU opponents to play against. Now what it is, frankly, is not different AI, it's different skins, which is probably not optimally communicated there [on Live], it will be different skins that you can play in that mode -- the skin meaning the sound effects, plus the music, plus the background. They are going to sell skins that are for that specific mode. It's not going to change the gameplay in any significant way, it's not going to add specific functionality -- they are not selling that, they are selling skins for that mode. They are going to provide that in a loop, once you defeat a certain opponent it will loop to the other skins. That was a design decision that Q made, I cannot comment specifically on the wording of that.
A lot of these decisions were made by Q, it is their game, Microsoft's duty is that we own the overall platform, we assist, we approve the titles and help developers if they need assistance and provide the infrastructure and the back end. Much of these details are the decisions of the individual publishers and developers. This is Q Entertainment's title and some of the specifics there are what Q Entertainment decided to implement.
auch werden die unterschiede wohl auf diesem neveau bleiben, da auch die Hardwaremäßigen unterschiede wieder ähnlich sind...)
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