[PATV] CheckPoint Season 1, Ep. 43 - Is It Worth It?

Kathleen_LRR

http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/is-it-worth-it

Is Square allowed to charge $18 for an iOS game? Well, technically yes, but should they? Your mileage may vary.

Balthy13

Graham is getting his comedic timing down flawlessly. That is awesome.

ultraexactzz

Great episode.

ronzo

I'm okay with square charging that much for games, but not making it a universal app is just awful

Actually, unless the ipad version of an app is really, really different than the iphone version, I think companies should be forced to release the app as a universal app.

Good Looking Fat Guy

Since you generally pay 20 dollars for thirdrate software, it's indeed a bargain to get such a marquee title at this price.

As Paul Saunders mentioned in the episode, this one-time purchase is preferable to undetermined amounts of microtransactions of dubious usefulness or quality.

kazriko

What I find amusing about this is that the PSP version of this game is currently $10 on PSN, and if you buy it for PSP, you can also play it on Vita.

Ivar

Had to look this up, I've never owned an iAnything.

So "universal" means "buy the application and run it on whatever you want" as opposed to "buy the application once for every device you want to run it on"?

Ashoka

Super nifty hair Kathleen.

InXplotch

@ Ivar: Universal pretty much means it works on both iPads and iPhones, as opposed to only one of the platforms.

I do find it pretty cool to see old games rereleased on iOS (I recently got Ghost trick from capcom and it was fantastic), but it seems like Squenix has always had the habit of marking up their prices a little higher than you'd expect (and seriously, they're charging 5 bucks or so for what surmounts to some high res art). I feel that for ports of games 10-15 dollars is the best (and it sort of keeps it in line with console store pricing).

I also wonder how successful these iOS ports are? I sort of hope that develops don't start skipping out on dedicated consoles and go straight to the app store in the future.

Nergy

I've always had this fear that people who buy these $1-$5 for iOS get outraged when an actual, fully-fledged game has the audacity to price itself like an actual, fully fledged game. Then i saw that these people exist. Horrifying.

I've played these $1-$5 iOS games and they basically amount to your upper end flash game on Newgrounds. I'd rather pay for a nice $30 three course meal than 30 bags of $1 chips.

ronzo

The problem is that it ignores how they price the same game on other platforms. Like someone said up thread, FFT is cheaper on the PSP and doesn't require you to buy a new version to play on the newer, higher-resolution device. Also, there were (are?) a number of game breaking bug that weren't (haven't?) been address for months if i recall correctly

And as for universal apps, they are apps that have two distinct version, a iphone/ipod version and an HD ipad version, but you only pay for one app. Most of the time devs release apps like this because the HD app isn't radically different from the normal version, so it comes off a greedy to charge twice for what is pretty much the same thing. Though there are apps where the HD version is different enough that it can warrant being split from the regular version, I don't really think FFT fits the bill.

I would be totally cool with paying $12 for something that was universal that has icloud saves. Being able to seamlessly move from one to the other at anytime would be sweet.

Instead we got two apps that are practically the same that don't take advantage of the iOS environment, and one costs nearly double the psp price.

Falx

Slash/Slash Slashfiction... my secret weakness.

tobiwan

Bassist? Is Kathleen trolling?

ArcSyn

Wait, welcome to the jungle isn't the theme song from San Andreas?

:P

Yeah, I think the problem isn't that they're charging more, but that it's the little things like universal apps, cloud saves, and higher prices than the same game on the PSN that should be the complaints. Who cares if a great, large game is priced more than $1, it'll be worth it most likely. Sure there are huge, awesome games for free/$1/$5, but if it doesn't sell they can always drop the price.

In other news, WP7 just got Splinter Cell, and the game looks amazing, has great voice/sound, but the controls are TERRIBLE. They want $7 for it and I'm glad they had a demo so I could see how terrible I am at playing the game due to the controls before I dropped the money on it. I think they did a great job with the graphics and sound and content, so it's worth the money, but I just can't do the touch-stick to move and touch-drag aim controls while tapping the fire button. It just doesn't work well for me.

achilleas.k

tobiwan wrote: »

Bassist? Is Kathleen trolling?

Watching the episode now, 2 weeks later, I had to come here and check if someone mentioned this.

GrahamS

achilleas.k wrote: »

tobiwan wrote: »

Bassist? Is Kathleen trolling?

Watching the episode now, 2 weeks later, I had to come here and check if someone mentioned this.

Oh! Right. We forgot to address it in an episode.

Weeee... totally just fucked that up. Kathleen is super annoyed with herself that she didn't catch it, but ultimately I wrote that story so it's 100% my bad.
Sorry everyone, I feel dumb.

ArcSyn

GrahamS wrote: »

achilleas.k wrote: »

tobiwan wrote: »

Bassist? Is Kathleen trolling?

Watching the episode now, 2 weeks later, I had to come here and check if someone mentioned this.

Oh! Right. We forgot to address it in an episode.

Weeee... totally just fucked that up. Kathleen is super annoyed with herself that she didn't catch it, but ultimately I wrote that story so it's 100% my bad.
Sorry everyone, I feel dumb.

I think it just makes it funnier.