These are solid, enjoyable entries in the series. Peaked with Underground 2 and MW 2005, but the takeover/acquisition of Criterion pumped new life into HP 2010 and MW 2012.
Exhibit B:
nfs games released after MW 2012
These are dogshit. Heavy dlc, meh progression, horrible to play on a keyboard, stupid upgrade systems (cards? cards? are you retarded, EA?), always-online, shitty online servers, horrendous physics, so arcadey that they make actual arcade racing games look desirable.
You’ll note that this game is in the second group.
I got it as a gift a couple weeks ago, they paid $10 for it, which I was holding out for >$5 to buy myself; it’s actually better than the last iteration, but not by much. That game - heat - I thrashed on at launch and 6mo later, and when the premium or whatever edition dropped to like $1.25, I finally bought it (10h demo before) and honestly, I want my $1.25 back. Here, $5 for unbound is about right, near the upper limit.
If they hadn’t killed Criterion (the reboot is in name only, the talent jumped ship with the forced merge), nfs might be awesome still. They have to do a metric fuck-load to save this series. I have almost every game, I’m a massive fan of the series… But for the past decade, it’s fucking dogshit.
I don’t know whether it’s the case here (it’s the biggest sale of the year regardless), but often game developers will have licenses for some of the content in the game (music, most often), and when those licenses are soon expiring they do a fire sale on it. The previous Forza Horizon game comes to mind.
Because they’re desperate to recoup some of their money for development and the game hasn’t sold very well. Case in point: Suicide Squad is 3.49 or 4.99 for the deluxe edition. The game sold like trash so they desperately want to make some more money and hope people will go like “well it’s only 5 bucks. I may as well.”
It’s okay, I’d highly recommend playing it on console though. No EA account required on console unless I’m mistaken. EA games on PC are notoriously ass.
I used to see them all the time on Playstation. Kingdom Come Deliverance and Prey are $3 right now, Control and Shadow of War are $6, Serious Sam 4 is $6 (I might get that one). There are others too. But not as many as there used to be though.
The “sale” price you see here is effectively the “standard” price. Publishers know that most users will just wait for a sale to make their purchase, and that those too desperate to wait will be willing to pay any inflated “full” price they set.
Because it’s not just about money, that’s why you hear about the number of copies sold more than gross revenue, it represents number of interested people that can buy another product at X dollars. Every now and then exec put up big sales, pump the numbers up before the big reports.
That’s also why Nintendo games neeever go on sale.
How is it insane? These games are made to take your money, so they quickly get cheaper until they no longer make meaningful sales. It's why you should never buy AAA games for the first 6-12 months, they will very quickly be a lot cheaper after the publishers scam from the initial hype purchases.
This is why they get away with greediness - many people don’t care or can’t restrain themselves. Every company is certainly not the same. Don’t encourage and reward bad behavior.
Instead of gradually lowering the prices, publishers tend to keep the original price and give it higher discounts as time goes on. People read it and think “wow, it’s 90% off! I can’t miss this deal!” and buy the game.
NFS Unbound wasn’t taken too well by the community. I recently replayed NFS Heat (which was the release before unbound) and it is still a great modern NFS game!
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Aktywne