Principals, Expectations & Exclusives
Backlash have occurred in the reveal that Xbox one will feature exclusive physical content that ultimately lead to a response from Marcin Iwiński. I will address his response briefly further on but for now let's look on why this is such a big deal to consumers and what it means for CD RED.
Why the freak out and principals.
First and foremost, it's a misinterpretation that jealousy is the reason for people's uproar. While this could certainly be what you would expect, the problem lies deeper than that (especially since we don't know if the people who express concern have actually bought the CE or not). After all as Marcin Iwiński stated, there weren't any backlash from having exclusive pre-order deals. So why do people freak out? It's a mixture of principals with CD RED reputation (which I address later).
This isn't the standard edition but the CE one, meaning that the consumer group is much smaller and also more economy minded. If you spend around 150 € on physical content rather than just the game there have to be an incentive to do so (the medallion, the art book or what have you), and no one knew about Gwent the card game until recently. Therefore the people who pre-ordered the CE are still there. What they do feel is cheated. Cheated that now (not from the start) there's a CE that includes more content than what they'll get. This cheapens out the appeal for them to get a CE for PC or PS4, especially when all other content are the same.
In a bizarre way having otherwise almost identical CE could (potentially) be a mistake if there's a small variation in one/all of them, instead of having different CE for all three platforms that offer content that you could “argue” are equal in value. At the moment the problem is that you can objectively state which CE that have the most “bang for the buck”, if this were harder to interpret due to subjective taste of what you get it wouldn't stick out as much as an eye sore for the other consumer groups.
CD RED being the lone pillar
The real reason though why people are concerned by this is CD RED position as being one of the few “true” game developer remaining, especially when it comes to RPG. Bioware burned a lot of their bridges with Mass Effect 3 and Dragon Age 2 and Bethesda while never really produced anything that you could label as “bad” we've also haven't seen any sorts of risks from them, but rather produce more games similar to their predecessor.
Combine that will all the showelware we see from game series like Fifa & Madden (Who makes even the Call of duty and the Sims franchise look acceptable in comparison) as well as the focus on CD RED of them being open and fair to consumers and we as the consumer can't really find anyone (at least not that have grown as much as CD RED as a company) who's close to compare. We know CD RED are gamers at heart, and how the market have changed from the early 90's (and previously) this is a welcoming change... And a dangerous one, but I'll get to that in a second.
Money, money, money
While Marcin Iwiński stated it was funny that no one reacted on pre-order exclusives the answer to this is really obvious.
1. Amazon is not Microsoft. The reason Amazon can get away with this is because Amazon's focus, isn't solely on gaming and/or tech. They are a distributor which won't have any (at least not even close to Microsoft) effect on the Gaming market. The market that we care for. The market that effects us. If Amazon makes money then that's fine but if Microsoft makes money it's always bad (at least in the eye of the gamer, not a realistic one, but there it is).
2. I already stated this earlier, but the timing is just so damn off. Revealing exclusives when Square Enix have recently been under fire from the same company that CD RED have given exclusives to, just spells for disaster.
Now this is obviously the outcome of Microsoft being in a “tight spot” when it comes to Xbox one sales, so this timing (combined with the fact that they revealed the card game as well as goodies related to the card game) isn't really anything you can do about from a developer's point of view, but it is a explanation on why people care more for this than pre-order deals by Amazon.
Now you would assume that as long it doesn't effect the game everything is fine right?However here comes the problem with being the lone pillar. We know you got paid from Microsoft and while you can't really state this it rubs fans the wrong way especially because we expect you to be 100% open and fair to us. Who knows in a Universe close to our own, a developer could say that “Yes we got paid to add exclusives and we will use this money to improve our existing and forthcoming games even more” and it would be considered completely fine... Unfortunately we, the gamer aren't there yet due to all the tat that was the “Money grubbing” period.
It's a bad time to be a developer if you are a gamer at heart
Because of all the bullshit consumer have seen previously, it's extremely tricky for a developer to act more “open” and “honest”. CD RED in general does this and it have given them great PR value. Unfortunately this also means that we focus too much expecting CD RED to be perfect in every single way that we forget that they are a business company.
They (and every other developer) need to make a living in order to continue producing high quality content and some of these decisions leads to compromises. Some of them could even be rather shitty ones (Welcome to the world mate!), however what's ultimately important is that you treat consumers right when it comes to the actual game, the one thing that really matters.
Tl;dr
Having one CE that objectively provides more value than the others rubs people the wrong way... It's not which stuff do I like more in this Edition but simply this Edition have more stuff. Many people view CD RED as the only decent developer remaining which results in unrealistic expectations. People dislike Microsoft because of their role/involvement on the Gaming market, therefore Pre-orders from Amazon (or your equivalent other) are fine/better. CD RED are a company. They need to make money and in order to not jeopardize the actual game, they (like everyone else) sometimes have to do less enjoyable things.
Backlash have occurred in the reveal that Xbox one will feature exclusive physical content that ultimately lead to a response from Marcin Iwiński. I will address his response briefly further on but for now let's look on why this is such a big deal to consumers and what it means for CD RED.
Why the freak out and principals.
First and foremost, it's a misinterpretation that jealousy is the reason for people's uproar. While this could certainly be what you would expect, the problem lies deeper than that (especially since we don't know if the people who express concern have actually bought the CE or not). After all as Marcin Iwiński stated, there weren't any backlash from having exclusive pre-order deals. So why do people freak out? It's a mixture of principals with CD RED reputation (which I address later).
This isn't the standard edition but the CE one, meaning that the consumer group is much smaller and also more economy minded. If you spend around 150 € on physical content rather than just the game there have to be an incentive to do so (the medallion, the art book or what have you), and no one knew about Gwent the card game until recently. Therefore the people who pre-ordered the CE are still there. What they do feel is cheated. Cheated that now (not from the start) there's a CE that includes more content than what they'll get. This cheapens out the appeal for them to get a CE for PC or PS4, especially when all other content are the same.
In a bizarre way having otherwise almost identical CE could (potentially) be a mistake if there's a small variation in one/all of them, instead of having different CE for all three platforms that offer content that you could “argue” are equal in value. At the moment the problem is that you can objectively state which CE that have the most “bang for the buck”, if this were harder to interpret due to subjective taste of what you get it wouldn't stick out as much as an eye sore for the other consumer groups.
CD RED being the lone pillar
The real reason though why people are concerned by this is CD RED position as being one of the few “true” game developer remaining, especially when it comes to RPG. Bioware burned a lot of their bridges with Mass Effect 3 and Dragon Age 2 and Bethesda while never really produced anything that you could label as “bad” we've also haven't seen any sorts of risks from them, but rather produce more games similar to their predecessor.
Combine that will all the showelware we see from game series like Fifa & Madden (Who makes even the Call of duty and the Sims franchise look acceptable in comparison) as well as the focus on CD RED of them being open and fair to consumers and we as the consumer can't really find anyone (at least not that have grown as much as CD RED as a company) who's close to compare. We know CD RED are gamers at heart, and how the market have changed from the early 90's (and previously) this is a welcoming change... And a dangerous one, but I'll get to that in a second.
Money, money, money
While Marcin Iwiński stated it was funny that no one reacted on pre-order exclusives the answer to this is really obvious.
1. Amazon is not Microsoft. The reason Amazon can get away with this is because Amazon's focus, isn't solely on gaming and/or tech. They are a distributor which won't have any (at least not even close to Microsoft) effect on the Gaming market. The market that we care for. The market that effects us. If Amazon makes money then that's fine but if Microsoft makes money it's always bad (at least in the eye of the gamer, not a realistic one, but there it is).
2. I already stated this earlier, but the timing is just so damn off. Revealing exclusives when Square Enix have recently been under fire from the same company that CD RED have given exclusives to, just spells for disaster.
Now this is obviously the outcome of Microsoft being in a “tight spot” when it comes to Xbox one sales, so this timing (combined with the fact that they revealed the card game as well as goodies related to the card game) isn't really anything you can do about from a developer's point of view, but it is a explanation on why people care more for this than pre-order deals by Amazon.
Now you would assume that as long it doesn't effect the game everything is fine right?However here comes the problem with being the lone pillar. We know you got paid from Microsoft and while you can't really state this it rubs fans the wrong way especially because we expect you to be 100% open and fair to us. Who knows in a Universe close to our own, a developer could say that “Yes we got paid to add exclusives and we will use this money to improve our existing and forthcoming games even more” and it would be considered completely fine... Unfortunately we, the gamer aren't there yet due to all the tat that was the “Money grubbing” period.
It's a bad time to be a developer if you are a gamer at heart
Because of all the bullshit consumer have seen previously, it's extremely tricky for a developer to act more “open” and “honest”. CD RED in general does this and it have given them great PR value. Unfortunately this also means that we focus too much expecting CD RED to be perfect in every single way that we forget that they are a business company.
They (and every other developer) need to make a living in order to continue producing high quality content and some of these decisions leads to compromises. Some of them could even be rather shitty ones (Welcome to the world mate!), however what's ultimately important is that you treat consumers right when it comes to the actual game, the one thing that really matters.
Tl;dr
Having one CE that objectively provides more value than the others rubs people the wrong way... It's not which stuff do I like more in this Edition but simply this Edition have more stuff. Many people view CD RED as the only decent developer remaining which results in unrealistic expectations. People dislike Microsoft because of their role/involvement on the Gaming market, therefore Pre-orders from Amazon (or your equivalent other) are fine/better. CD RED are a company. They need to make money and in order to not jeopardize the actual game, they (like everyone else) sometimes have to do less enjoyable things.
