5 Ways the Current Generation has Screwed You.

With gaming getting more mainstream, more people are getting into gaming than ever before. This has encouraged developers and console makers alike to come up with devious ways to suck money out of every consumer that they can. Some of them do it right by you know, making quality products that are worth the money you spent on it, but others look for ways to overprice or even unjustly charge for your gaming pleasure.

5.Milking
Lets face it, it sucks to wait three to five years for a new video game sequel to release. Developers have started to take advantage of this by speeding up the release of video games to get them to the gamer faster. Sounds like a good idea until you realize that your rushed game has multiple bugs and a huge lack of content. Unfortunately, developers are fooling themselves when they say they can make a good video game in a year. Guitar Hero releases at least two games a year and is starting to be seen as a dying franchise that is just using the brand name to get rich. Call of Duty is heading down the same road. They found a way to defer their milking with the "Modern Warfare" strategy after a dozen WWII games but games like this will get old fast unless they are given a bit more time to iron out the bugs before release. But why would developers want to do that? Development cost money and so do quality games. If consumers by half assed products then they make money of their minimal effort and you get screwed for buying it. Enjoy.

4.Downloadable Content.
Downloadable Content (shortened as DLC from this point on for laziness.) has been a booming market for developers that want to "extend the replayability" of their games. It all started when Bethesda released a little add on for Elder Scrolls IV that enabled your horse to wear shiny armor just like your character. Sounds great until you realize this cost about three bucks to get. People went crazy and thought "No one could possibly buy this!" but sure enough, it sold pretty well.

Today DLC is pretty standard for games and why not? Its a great way for developers to release half a game and then charge you for the other half a month later. Where are the tanks and the sticky bombs in GTA IV you ask? Its in a 20$ DLC pack. Why does Modern Warfare 2 have so few maps to choose from? Oh the rest are in two map packs they will cost you 15$ each! Considering video games already cost 60$, you would think that would be enough incentive for developers to actually make a game will all the content in it. But no, they want to charge more with extra content that they could have put on the disc. Why could they possibly need all that extra money for? http://www.markhoustonrecov...
Eh who knows?

3.Overpriced Peripherals
It all started with Guitar Hero. In order to play you had to buy a plastic guitar that looked and felt like it was made by Fisher Price. These simple controllers could have been sold for 15-20$ but they were bundled with the game itself and cost 50$ more. Who would willingly pay for something like that? Well it turns out that music video games were apparently the new cocaine so no one really cared how much they cost and Guitar Hero went on to be a best seller, controller and all. Later on, Rock Band would take it to another level, creating a whole band git that would cost nearly 200$ to jam out on a plastic drum and a cheap microphone.

It doesn't stop with the music games either. Microsoft has recently jumped on the bandwagon with their newest toy. Kinect is a camera that will read your movements so your body will act as the controller. Sounds kind of familiar right? PS2 did the eye toy which was basically the same thing. The catch with Kinect is that it costs 150$ Yes, 150$ for a pimped out webcam. Sound crazy? Well so does buying a fisher price guitar but those sell pretty well. Microsoft should have no problem selling this to people in that same demographic of "Charge me more!"

2.Pay to play.
Online gaming. Its has exploded into the gaming scene ever since Broadband internet became cheap enough for everyone to afford. Gamers can now connect to the world and shoot someone (virtually of course)who lives on the other side of the world. But it has come at a price. The most popular online gaming network, Xbox Live will cost you no less than 50$ a year for the full experience.

So let me get this straight. I already pay 50 bucks a month for good internet and I played hundreds of dollars for your console but now I have to pay to use an internet service that I am already paying for? To make things worse, gaming companies with incredibly popular online games are seriously considering charging a fee to play their game when I already have to pay for internet, "Console" internet and now "Individual Game" internet. Its all getting about as complicated as taxes but surprisingly people are getting into it. Live has millions of subscribers, the newly PS Plus is gaining momentum and those 20 million Modern Warfare gamers will probably happily bend over and let Activision charge them a monthly fee for their games. It a scary thing to know that gamers are actually the ones willingly ripping themselves off.

1.Faulty Hardware.
Lets go back to Christmas 2005. Microsoft had just released their Xbox 360 So early? The other two consoles are not due out for a year. Oh well. Little Jimmy didn't care when he got his Xbox 360 under the Christmas tree. As soon as he ripped open the box, payed 50 bucks to get online and bought a 50$ Guitar Hero controller, Jimmy went on a 5 hour gaming binge and was shocked to see his screen go black and his Xbox flashing red. Jimmy's Xbox 360 was broken. But that was ok because he was under warranty so he sent his 360 in, waited about 2 weeks and got it back only to discover that they fixed it with the same faulty parts that broke the Xbox in the first place.

So what the hell happened? Did Xbox 360 suffer from a rushed launch? That seems to be the case as the problem with the 360 lied in a bad heat distributing design and giant chips that overheated the console very quickly. Microsoft wanted an install base that Sony man Nintendo would not have until the next year but it came at a steep price of a hardware failure rate of 1 out of every 3 consoles.

So what did Microsoft do about this? Admit their console was broken, discontinue the current 360 and make a better one? No that is far too noble. Instead they just deny it for a while and offer an extended warranty of 3 years to send in your broken console and have it repaired with the same parts that broke it in the first place. This may have made things worse since this put MS in a 1 billion dollar hole that no amount of sales this generation can make up for. But things have been smooth for Microsoft otherwise, with the sales and the successful online services. Regardless of the insanely high failure rates, people still bought the Xbox 360. Imagine if a car had the same failure rate as the 360. Something tells me it would not be met with the same success.

So what can we learn from all of this? Maybe that we are the ones actually screwing ourselves by being bamboozled into buying such things. Best advice I can offer gamers is to do your research before buying because that seems to be a lacking skill for us.