Horse mod rip-off
The first Oblivion mod is now available, you can now download a horse armour pack, which will cost you 200 Microsoft points on the Xbox 360.
So let's get this right, we pay £49.99, or there abouts, for undoubtebly a high-quality game, and then Microsoft charge us for a useless add-on. For one, you don't even need to use the horse very often as you can fast travel across the map, it doesn't need armour. You are purely 'pimping' your horse. The download is so insignificant it doesn't warrant the 200 points fee.
Microsoft are providing an excellent service via the marketplace, so that we can download quality content at a price. Horse armour is not quality content, but they know there will be thousand of gamers who will download it.
Major Nelson's blog has been inundated with unhappy gamers, one guy, going by the name of WhetOne said, "I thought these were supposed to be MICRO-transactions. I’m all about buying stuff on Marketplace, and I’m all about supporting MS for the awesome 360, but I don’t want to be wallet-raped for simple skins. I could see 20-40 points ($.25 - $.50 USD) but much more than that, I’m not interested."
Another unhappy game commented, "This is so petty, I’m almost embarrassed for Microsoft and the developer. Charging so much, for something so small and pointless, it really does make the 360 look bad.
The really sad thing is Microsoft is wasting the potential of the marketplace by being greedy. They really could use it to their advantage, but nope, it’s all about the $.
For example they could of made the horse amour free as a way of thanking their fans for spending $60 on their game. This would also make the average gamer think, “wow if I buy oblivion, I’ll get cool stuff like this free!!” – thus leading to more sales. By all means charge us for content that has value - don’t take the p**s with 200 point horse amour.
Paying 200 Microsoft points will hardly break the bank but, last year, we were downloading Halo 2 maps for only £4.99, and shortly afterwards they were available for free! The Xbox live marketplace will rapidly go down hill if we continue to be charged for every small, insignificant download. What next? Wing mirror-add ons for our cars on PGR3?
I say vote with your wallets, keep them in your pockets. If you buy this, they'll bring out even more add-ons at inflated prices.
Head over to Major Nelson's blog and tell him what you think here
Edit: We've aimed the outrage of this news piece at Microsoft, which is slightly unfair. We would also like to winge at Bethseda, we understand Microsoft have a cut of the profits, but Bethseda would gain the most out of mod.
