So you think that ~$10 per DLC is “obnoxiously expensive”?
How many updates they release the same content in doesnt matter. If you arent buying the “dlcs” individually, you cant claim they are 10$ each. Also im pretty sure the fact that they are splitting the expansion into a bunch of slipshod patches is a negative, not a positive. All this before selling yet another “group of updates” for the same price as soon as they run out of funds.
Im pretty sure if they tried to advertise the updates as 10$ each when theyre only available as a package theyd be breaking some advertising regulation/consumer protection laws. Critic, be glad you arent being paid to advertise for them because your marketing attempts would be literally illegal as anti consumer.
BINGO!
It sounds like Frontier is trying a new annual subscription model 
$45/year for their “seasons”. I think it could work, but me personally I’d be buying them 1 year late after they are fully implemented and I knew what I was getting.
@mattk50, Sorry but you’re being a bit ridiculous. That’s not breaking any laws at all.
@cybercritic
The issue is that what will be included in the Horizons season has not been clearly defined - understandable as they have not built it yet, but nevertheless people should rightly be cautious about dropping money for unknown returns.
Looking at this chart, Horizons costs £30 / $45 - Your assertion that each ‘DLC’ will be ~$10 indicates you believe there will be ~4.5 DLCs in the Horizons season. Where have you got that from?
Even if that split was confirmed, the content of those are still only know as vague plans.
The reason for bundling stuff up and having people pre-pay is clear - they’d rather get consumers to pay their salaries and running costs upfront than borrow that money from a bank or investor. - This is the Kickstarter model. However, with Kickstarter there is always a risk and that is made clear. With Horizons the risk is not made clear (buyer beware, but some are naive) and the ‘project’ deliverables are even less clear than an average Kickstarter project.
That was a quote from cybercritc, his assertion was that the updates are being released in whatever number of patches over a long period of time, which matches what i’ve heard about their plans.
Advertising is regulated, you arent allowed to sell something exclusively in a bundle then market individual sale price. It would be like labelling a carton of crackers as “10 cents per crisp”. Commodities and items sold by weight are excluded from those regulations, a game expansion isn’t. But thats besides the point, nobody is doing anything illegal here, it was just an illustration of how anti-consumer the entire idea is.
The consumer would have more protection with a pre-order as it should come under consumer protection laws. In the UK (where Frontier are based) these laws are quite strict. The product must be as described and fit for purpose. If you choose to pre-order based upon the fairly vague description that Frontier have provided so far then so long as the expansion meets that vague description you won’t have a valid complaint.
Kickstarter on the other hand is not a pre-ordering service. With Kickstarter you are making a donation with the hope that the person or company running the Kickstarter project will provide you with the reward as promised. You have a lot less protection as a consumer, but it also gives the creator a lot more freedom. There are a number of examples where Kickstarter projects have failed to supply the rewards promised and the backer has little recourse as they do not have the protection given by consumer law.
It was before.
Which it will easily because of the vagueness of the description. - It’s the vague description that’s the issue IMO.
Maybe that is the right way to go for Frontier if these laws could come back and bite them. Normally, developers can never deliver on what they promise, so maybe the vagueness will help them avoid “angry gamer refund hell”.
Which is exactly what happened with Egosoft and the X:Rebirth debacle. Those forums were on 
.
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But then Frontier are a publicly traded company and their primary focus is on making money and staying profitable for their shareholders. People making angry posts on their forum doesn’t generally hurt their bottom line, especially if those people have already spent their money and are not legally entitled to a refund. In some cases controversy about a game can increase its publicity and even be a good thing.
So long as Frontier cover themselves legally then they should be okay and the livelihoods of the hundreds of people that they employ will be secure for another year.
True, but the point isn’t necessarily about year one profitability IMO.
If Horizons is… lackluster, which is what a lot of people say about powerplay etc, pretty much from the get-go, people are going to complain about paying 60 bucks for a dlc that promised ‘great gameplay’, ‘loads of new content’, or whatever, and failing at that. Next year’s profitability will most likely depend on the success - not financially - of Horizons. And from speculation across the board, from what I was able to ascertain was that future DLCs would basically be extensions of Horizons. Frontier has to realize that the players come first, not the stockholders. I mean, if the players hate the game, they won’t buy, bad time for players, bad time for company, bad time for stockholders. That means making Horizons an amazing gameplay experience. The few details they’ve released hasn’t exactly instilled me with confidence.
Horizons had better blow people’s socks off, or I don’t see how they would be able to do anything more than ‘stay afloat’.
I don’t know. I was burned a couple times with pre-orders and promises. Maybe it’ll turn out to be awesome. But based off the previous major updates, I don’t see that happening. To me, it seems like they are putting an enormous amount of effort into something, and that something doesn’t end up being all that good.
And $60 dollars less secure from this consumer, at least presently. I genuinely hope this debecale is resolved through better communication or a change in pricing / policy, but for the time being they have driven away a customer. And, unfortunately, I am likely not alone in feeling this way.
It’s too early to say whether Horizons will be worth the $60 and too early to get upset because all we’ve had so far is an announcement and a vague trailer. Only a real Elite fanboy would pre-order at this stage based on the information we’ve been given.
It’s quite possible that the Horizons expansion will be worth the money, we just don’t know yet.
The main point of contention I see is that the “upgrade cost” is so high, you’re almost paying for the game again to get Horizons. This only applies to people that already have ED as my understanding is that after December if you buy Horizons you also get Elite Dangerous thrown in. Even this high upgrade cost is not unprecedented though and is quite common in a lot of commercial software.
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That’s why we’ve now started to promise the new Battlescape, as a sandbox universe in which you pilot a cube through widely spaced series of orbiting spheres… Keep them expectations manageable 
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Too specific. ‘A cube’ is a cube. ‘A ship’ could be a cube but most people will assume awesomely designed spaceship. - That’s how you get the preorders.
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LMAO, thanks for that Hutchings. 
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Some concept art just released in the latest Newsletter:
EDIT: Actually looks like a paintover on top of some (low res) in-game footage. Something FD have done quite often before as part of their design process.
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Too bad it isn’t showing much in the screenshot… reminds me of some of our earlier shots.
I will be sharing a “similar” set of images tomorrow actually… well… “similar” in that it’s a desolate planet, but, well… you’ll see…
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