Aww boo hoo, a developer wants to get paid for their game and people will buy it in mass for $60.

In about a year, you will be hard pressed to find a $50 PC game. Trust me. Development costs are soaring. You need to make your money back somehow.

It's mentalities like yours that the PC gamer is somehow entitled to so much more for less is what is leading so many developers away from the PC.

Wasdie

Then why aren't console games going up in price ? There is a clear reason why PC games are $10 cheaper than the console version and that is the console royalty fee. PC gamers pay the same amount to developers as console users do per copy of the game, the extra that console gamers pay goes straight into MS or Sony's pocket. There is no license or royalty fee on the PC therefore there is no excuse for PC games to be $60. Now if console games start costing $70 and PC games start costing $60 then that is acceptable, but last time I checked console games are still $60.

Meh I stopped at COD 4 and don't particularly feel an urge to revisit the franchise to be honest.

I think in this day and age most publishers have accepted the fact that their DRM will be broken (ok most publishers except Ubisoft). The key goal for the protection these days is to prevent "before release" piracy. That is stopping pirates from cracking the game before people can actually purchase the game. Now as far as I am aware steam is actually pretty good at that kind of thing. I certainly haven't seen a game recently that had steamworks and was pirated before the game was actually released.

The other thing about steamworks is that it is "popular" which is why publishers are moving towards it and away from GFWL. In a publishers eyes steamworks provides as much protection as they are possibly going to get and the service is popular with customers so in their books it seems to be a win win situation for now.

I dont want to be a jerk or smth but if I would have to pay for DOWNLOADING a game... why bother paying?? I mean its good yes but not worth paying for, you should get a key when buying the game from a shop that you can later download the game from a server if needed.PlatoonSgtElias

That is exactly what a game that supports steamworks allows you to do. I am purchasing Mafia 2 from a company called game (boxed retail) it is £5 cheaper than steam. All I will need to do when I have recieved my copy of the game is link it with steam and then I will be able to redownload it whenever I like from steam and play without the CD in the drive.

It's not the fact about the content of the stuff, it's the fact that 9 times out of 10 PC players get screwed when it comes to special editions like this. It's the thought that is agrviating. You may not see something you like now in any special editions, but I wouldn't be surprised if sometime down the road you see one that might make you think otherwise.

Morphic

You are seeing why in this thread, there hasn't been a single person go "yah super collector editions woo hoo". You will find that collector editions do not sell on the PC. It isn't PC gamers getting screwed it is the market reacting to what PC gamers want or do not want. We stopped buying retail discs and the market responded going digital and the same is happening with collectors editions. There just isn't the demand for them in the PC market place so most publishers don't bother.

I have to confess I wasn't aware of the actual contents of the Black Op's edition. My curiosity was sparked and I had a look ......... well I just shook my head in utter dismay. The Prestige Edition costs $150 and for that you get the crappiest looking RC car I have ever seen which has a mini camera on board that is of such low resolution as to be next to useless.

Now having seen this new information I would like to change my initial assessment of why the PC version is not getting collector editions. I like to believe in the case of Call of Duty : Black Ops the reason why there is no Prestige edition is down to the fact they realised no one on the PC is moronic enough to pay $150 for the game with a crappy RC car :P

Some companies do get the collectors edition just right, I know the Starcraft 2 collectors edition tempted me. I thought it was a fantastic idea to include a unique USB memory stick that had the original Starcraft and Brood wars pre-installed. Even though I was tempted the price of £70 killed that interest.

I think it is just developers/publishers taking into account the way the PC market is moving away from "trinklets" to digital downloads. As far as I know recent data suggests that in the US over 50% of PC games are sold digitally and the rest of the world it is as high as 80%. There just isn't enough demand on the PC for "boxed" collector editions. I know I have never bothered with them myself even when I was buying boxed games.

I am afraid to say if you are in this business for the "collecting" of collector editions then you bought the wrong platform.

Well the game itself is somewhat medicoreventnor

^ This. What a lot of people don't realise is that RUSE is the DRM, the game is so mediocre that no one will even bother to nick it never mind buy it:P

Mafia 2 is not a GTA!Op

Yeah we kinda know it isn't, the clue is in the fact we are getting a simultaneous release with the consoles, unlike GTA that gets released nearly a year later after the consoles :P

I think comparisons between the two are fair, both are free roaming games. The only difference is Mafia 2 concentrates more on the story line and GTA concentrates more on improving Rockstars bank balance ;)

Just a quick reminder, if you are unsure about Mass Effect 2 with regards to whether you will like it or not then there is now a fairly comprehensive demo available from the mass effect site :-

http://masseffect.bioware.com/

The demo is a 2gb download and comes with two "quests", you get the introductory quest aboard the Normandy and you also get one of your team mate (Jack) Loyalty quests which is set aboard a prison ship. I would give the demo ago and see if Mass Effect 2 is for you.