By Adam Smith on January 31st, 2012 at 5:06 pm.
I’ve just learned something new. Games decay. Did you know that? While they’re sitting there, waiting for you to buy them, content rots away from them, flaking away like a sort of scabby flesh-rust. At least, that’s the terrifying explanation I’m assuming is behind the fact that Prototype 2 will contain 55 ‘items’ that unlock in the weeks following its launch that will only be available to those who buy the game early. They are the “biggest” and “best” fans, you see, so they get more of a game. It’s not decaying at all, is it? It’s some form of retail-driven dissection dickery. Doesn’t matter to us though because they’ve also delayed the PC release to July 24. Here’s a video about the content that you can’t play.
I’m not feeling particularly incentivised by this RADNET stuff. It’s probably safe to assume that most of the 55 items are crap anyway and will probably be available to everyone at some point. If the DVD era has taught me anything, it’s that when there’s talent behind the construction of a thing, its deleted scenes were deleted for a damn good reason.
We await information on the reason for the delay.
31/01/2012 at 17:13 Spider Jerusalem says:
i, for one, am shocked.
31/01/2012 at 17:15 Lewie Procter says:
What a horrible idea.
31/01/2012 at 17:16 iARDAs says:
I believe this game will either be good or bad, perhaps average.
I played the first game on PS3 and the controls were awful. I hope this one is an improvement.
This will be a 10 dollar steam sale purchase for me.
31/01/2012 at 17:17 TotalBiscuit says:
The controls were awful? Played it on PC with a 360 pad, no issues what-so-ever.
31/01/2012 at 17:42 iARDAs says:
Maybe it was an issue with PS3. I dont know. But the controls were really awful. I played Infamous as well, nearly the same game and infamous had much better controls.
31/01/2012 at 18:06 hardboiledgregg says:
Good or bad or perhaps average? Really narrowed it down there.
31/01/2012 at 21:41 archimandrite says:
I don’t remember the controls for the first game(I too played it on the PS3), but I thought the city was boring and the main character blandly amoral. I wish they brought Infamous 1/2 to the PC instead.
31/01/2012 at 17:17 ZIGS says:
We await information on the reason for the delay.
“PIRACY!! GOTTA LET THE CONSOLE VERSIONS SELL BEFORE OR ELSE EVERYBODY IS JUST GONNA PIRATE IT!”
31/01/2012 at 21:37 archimandrite says:
You do realize that there are other, more legitimate reasons for delays on PC versions? The PC is a much more complicated machine to build for, given that it is something like an Infinity of Machines.
(That being said, you’re probably right in this case.)
01/02/2012 at 07:17 Frosty840 says:
I often wonder if the problem isn’t mostly that the developers have to do so much working down to the machine code level for the consoles that they essentially have to redevelop their graphics engines for the PC .
We see an awful lot of fine-looking indie games these days which have perfectly adequate performance and graphics via standard game-centric libraries (XNA and the like) which apparently don’t have the same development issues as console ports.
You have to wonder if these so-called development issues with the PC wouldn’t just disappear if the consoles had enough power that the devs could keep the bulk of their work within more standard libraries…
Any indie devs around this long after the story has broken want to comment on that?
01/02/2012 at 12:05 MellowKrogoth says:
XNA is a frigging, memory and cpu-eating abomination. It’s the reason a sprite-based rpg like Cthulu Saves the World can’t run on a 1Ghz, 1Gig RAM netbook that can *emulate* effortlessly snes games with similar graphics.
31/01/2012 at 17:17 TotalBiscuit says:
Then I won’t be paying full price for it. After all, you’d have to be a big silly to pay full price for a game that’s not actually brand new.
31/01/2012 at 20:06 mr.ioes says:
Well, rarely do you see a game reduced in price after 3 months, flatout 3 being one exception for obvious reasons. If it does well on consoles, which might be the case, there’s no need to start at low price.
31/01/2012 at 17:28 Baines says:
55 pieces? I can’t see them *not* making it paid DLC after a month or two.
31/01/2012 at 21:08 Prime says:
Yeah? Tell that to the people still waiting for all the pre-order bonus characters from War for Cybertron.
31/01/2012 at 17:34 Persona Jet Rev says:
So, are you supposed to buy the game at/before launch, but not play it right away because otherwise you’ll finish it before getting all the items?
31/01/2012 at 17:56 eks says:
@Persona Jet Rev
Of course not, that would be completely ridiculous.
There will be a content management system built into the save game mechanism. Progress on the game will be regulated so that you play the game at a consistent rate over the few months following release. That way all the loyal fans get to use the extra items at the appropriate place in the story, improving the overall game experience for everyone.
This also allows players to get the most value from their purchase. Instead of buying the game and then finishing it within a couple of days without the extra content, they will now get to enjoy the product for months instead, taking advantage of the extra items delivered to them as they are released.
31/01/2012 at 17:42 MythArcana says:
More marketing from Hell. I wish these desk jockeys would go back to pitching tampons and soda and leave the game industry alone.
31/01/2012 at 17:42 Blackcompany says:
This is handy info. Always good to know I can just let a game drop from my radar without missing anything. Which is exactly what I just did with this game. Won’t support this sort of thing. Ever. It simply screams ‘how do we get people to buy this before they see the mediocre reviews?”
31/01/2012 at 17:47 Hoaxfish says:
Is it double-mega awesome to the MAAAAAAX?
31/01/2012 at 17:55 Adda says:
Weird that they seem to be incentivising late purchasing of their product. Not particularly well thought out.
I can slightly see the appeal of a advent calendar style daily unlock but I’d be more tempted to get the game late and play through that stuff at my own pace.
31/01/2012 at 17:56 brulleks says:
‘…when there’s talent behind the construction of a thing, its deleted scenes were deleted for a damn good reason.’
The exception that proves the rule being the end of ‘Man on Fire’, where one of the alternative endings on the DVD (no spoilers) was clearly better than the one chosen for cinematic release.
31/01/2012 at 19:59 Necroscope says:
Army of Darkness had a great alternate ending in the deleted scenes:
” Hhahah manufactured products…..oh god no..no no… I slept too long!!!!….RAAAAA hahaahhhhhh!”
31/01/2012 at 20:25 Chaz says:
When I went to see it, that was the ending to Army of Darkness. The supermarket ending being the alt.
01/02/2012 at 12:20 jon_hill987 says:
Same with “Stigmata”, they chickened out of the downer ending the director intended and made it ambiguous.
31/01/2012 at 18:12 DevilSShadoW says:
it’s funny because no sale.
31/01/2012 at 18:24 PitfireX says:
Eh, Whatever. The game is so boring and generic anyways.
31/01/2012 at 18:26 pakoito says:
It is not that I’m boycotting Ubi and Acti games. It is just that I’m genuinely not interested in (almost) none of them.
/care
31/01/2012 at 18:27 RobF says:
Activision there, once again proving that they’ll drive anything into the ground for the good of the profit.
Depressing stuff.
31/01/2012 at 18:33 Chris D says:
It’s probably for the best. Activision had slipped into fourth place on my “Least trusted publishers and GFWL” list. They were almost starting to look good by comparison.
31/01/2012 at 18:52 RobF says:
Heh, it’s not that far off for me but only by virtue of having no games left on their roster.
31/01/2012 at 18:40 Brun says:
No thanks. I’m smart enough to know that the shiny extra content is just a gimmick to get the uninitiated to buy your game before the likely mediocre reviews hit.
31/01/2012 at 18:42 MichaelPalin says:
Games are more and more soulless with every new release. Those challenges look like: “make some numbers go up to make other numbers go up”. That’s modern gaming in a nutshell. I started playing games for the wonder of traveling to other fictional worlds and interact with them. Apparently I was mistaken, it’s all about algebra and making your numbers be higher than other players’.
01/02/2012 at 10:14 Toberoth says:
Often not even about making them higher than other players, just high enough to get some meaningless achievement and another unlock which then lets you grind for another meaningless achievement, ad nauseum.
31/01/2012 at 18:45 Persus-9 says:
Having watched the video I think the items sound crap but knowing me I could probably get quite into doing little achievement mini-games like that. I’m not above achievement hunting if I like the base game enough and find it atmospherically suitable. However, there is no way I’m pre-ordering the game based on promises of content like this. If some time in the future they want to include it in a GOTY edition then I’ll consider it a small point in the games favour, I might even consider buying such a thing as DLC if it was for a game I loved and the price was right but I sure as hell would never pre-order a AAA based on it. Screw that!
31/01/2012 at 18:48 My2CENTS says:
July 24? Who would play a third-person shooter in the middle of the summer? Do this guys want to fail before they even release the game?
31/01/2012 at 19:08 Blackcompany says:
So…releasing it while on everyone is on vacation, doing outdoor stuff, visiting the beaches and swimming.
…
And oh, yeah…right after everyone’s gone broke from the Steam Summer Camp sales. Who handles their marketing, again?
31/01/2012 at 21:06 Aatch says:
July 24th? Thats the middle of winter good sir! I daresay that any fool on the beach must be an awful transient or one of those mad treasure-hunters with their ferrous material locators. July is the time to stay inside and stay warm, lest the cold take you.
Sorry, just pointing out that it isn’t summer everywhere, though i understand that the most of the market for this isn’t in the south pacific. I’m in NZ (though not a kiwi, born and raised in the westcountry [not sure if that's something I want to publicize]) so right now it rather warm, even if it is raining.
31/01/2012 at 19:16 Drinking with Skeletons says:
Weird, weird, weird idea. Does it unlock from the time of purchase or from the time of release? It makes more sense to unlock from time of purchase, so that late buyers will feel bad when they see all the cool stuff that their friends have…but didn’t get to use anyway because they beat the game 50 days earlier…hmmm.
Maybe it’s aimed at people who play very little a day/week? But if they’re that busy, are they the type of person who’d buy the game at full price? If not, then why target them with a promotional gimmick?
Doesn’t really matter. The first game was good and had some cool ideas, but upon trying to replay it I was forced to reckon with the brutal, gore-encrusted, merciless, constant genocide that it encourages you to participate in, and I was kind of repulsed. It’s not a title that brings out the best in me, and I think I’ll pass on the follow up.
31/01/2012 at 20:46 Andrigaar says:
So you’re demanding I pay full retail to unlock all of the game?
Hahaha, Activision, you’re terrible at this. This doesn’t make me want to give you horrible people any money at all. Even when the game is dropped to a reasonable price (bonuses unlocked or not for all) I’ll remember this and quite possibly just refuse to give you any money since you’re attempting to penalize me for being an intelligent consumer.
EDIT: Though, I haven’t even picked up the first one yet since it’s still too expensive for what I’ve heard about the game, so clearly I’m not the target audience as it is.
31/01/2012 at 21:53 Beelzebud says:
Game publishers seem to be coming up with lots of ways to make people NOT want to buy their games lately. Maybe at some point a sort of ‘critical mass’ will happen, and they’ll start trying to appeal to their customers.
31/01/2012 at 22:09 G_Man_007 says:
“Our biggest fans, our best fans, deserve more”. Such bullshit. Say it like it is “we want your money now for the full product, those tossers who buy it in the sale can have the bones”. Pretentious tosspot.
DLC is one thing, but to have a situation where game content is not available to all eventually, is unforgiveable. If it’s not all there, it’s not a complete game. It’s a broken ungame. I liked Prototype, it was a refreshing thing after the dragging of Assassins Creed 2. I’m looking forward to Prototype 2, but this is just not encouraging. Bring on the sales.
31/01/2012 at 22:41 Toberoth says:
This kind of shit annoys me more than is sensible.
I was indifferent to the game before. Now I despise it. Good marketing.
31/01/2012 at 23:10 Rakishan says:
So, let me get this straight. If someone buys the game six weeks after release, (once all of the “limited Radnet” versions are gone) they don’t get any of the special content. Wow, way to reward customers who buy your game. However, if someone pirates the game, they will likely get all of that content…
Way to encourage piracy! >_<
01/02/2012 at 00:10 Andrigaar says:
A buddy of mine read the article and focused on the part where the author points out that all 55 unlocks are probably going to be worthless anyway.
31/01/2012 at 23:25 Rattlepiece says:
Remember when Activision used to publish good games? Good times, good times..
01/02/2012 at 00:06 DickSocrates says:
The second he said races were fun I stopped caring even more than the infitesimal amount I cared beforehand. I have never knowingly done a race side quest/filler in any game. That means in GTA:IV TLaD I ‘missed’ about 50% of the content. The lame, teeth grinidng antithesis of fun content.
Good luck RadNet and your collection of ‘fun’. And wtf is it with the trailers for this game featuring people interviewed in dimly lit broomcupboard? Prototype 1 was the least moody game I played in a long time. The only vibe I got from the first game and everything I’ve seen of 2 is a low budget direct to vide sci-fi movie from about 1998.
01/02/2012 at 00:33 Rawrian says:
Demo looks like a bad console port, and now this?
01/02/2012 at 00:55 sneetch says:
It’d be nice to think that they were delaying it so that it doesn’t look like a bad console port when it is released… it’s very doubtful, but it would be nice!
01/02/2012 at 10:13 Arithon says:
The real reason for any multi-platform version delay is to prevent PC gamers with consoles buying the game at a lower price. Since developing for the consoles is much more expensive with high licensing costs for SDK’s they want to get the full-price sales of the console versions maximised.
Development for the PC is easier and less expensive, since the SDK’s are infinitely cheaper and the platform is the one being used to develop on. It’s only more difficult when doing multi-platform because of the severe limitations of the consoles restrain what can be done with any game and putting larger maps and textures on the PC version, so it doesn’t look circa 1993 will cause any cross-platform engine to groan if has been lobotomised to fit the console.
So why develop for consoles if it is more difficult and a lot more expensive? Because if you make a title that sells, you stand to make a lot more money as the profit margins are higher. There are lot of console gamers and they all have very short attention spans. Games get played for a few hours then taken back to the shop and exchanged for the next title.
How does that work? Well, console gamers played BF: Bad Company for a few months and then it was dead. PC gamers are still playing BattleField 2. So the console market has a much higher turnover. It isn’t a case of “who is best” and it has zero to do with piracy, but simple maths. Large and frequent sales make more money and while expensive to develop, will return a good profit.
So is PC gaming dead? Not a chance. Developers are just looking at ways to increase the longevity of PC games to make them stay around long enough to make DLC a profitable option. Develop a game, hold some assets back and drip-feed them over time to keep the money coming. Others are using “off the shelf” engines to make development faster (Unreal, ID Tech). The alternative is MMO’s, which have a chequered history of success, but if you crack the winning formula, it’s a lottery ticket! World of Warcraft earns more EVERY year than any “record breaking” console release ever did.
Prototype 1 was a fairly fun FPS on the PC, but it had almost no replay value. Had the game been PC only, and the developer provided mod tools, we’d all be talking about how X game matches up the the awesomeness of Prototype. Sadly a quick profit mentality has seen the end of the mod-tool. Even those developers (Valve) who started out as modders (Half-Life was a Quake 1 mod) have lost sight of this and as a result, there are less indie developers, fewer new IP’s and almost no original games.
Soon, all games will be multi-platform and you’ll have a choice of SIMS X, COD X, Battlefield X, Sonic X, Mario X, Pokemon X or FIFA X. There won’t BE any other games!