In early February, Criterion released a special edition of Burnout Paradise titled The Ultimate Box. Gracing PC, 360 and PS3, the Box included Burnout Paradise in its entirety; all previous patches, motorbikes, custom soundtracks, and the Party Pack pay-for downloadable content. And EA was fine with that. They didn’t mind giving away one piece of DLC they could’ve been earning money from.
They seem to mind giving away the rest of it though, as the next ‘edition’ of Burnout Paradise has been canned. Read all about it over the jump.
“We had big plans,” wrote Alex Dukov, producer at Criterion, on the CriterionGames.com blog, “for Burnout Paradise: The Ultimate Final Box Game of the Year Critic’s Choice Edition.” However, the game has since been officially cancelled: “EA isn’t happy with us preparing to give away every last piece of pay for DLC, they’re greedy bastards for sure.”
The blog post was quickly pulled and EA were quick to deny any attempts at milking unlucky Burnout fans. “There’s no way, no how, that we’d even consider sucking every last penny out of the collective wallet of the Burnout fanbase,” explained a flustered EA spokesman. “It’s just that we don’t advocate generosity, and can’t have Criterion being nice to everyone anymore.”
Burnout Paradise: TUFBGOTYCCE was planned for release in August 2009, and would include Burnout Paradise, the Party Pack, the Legendary Cars, the Toy Cars, the Boost Specials, Big Surf Island, and the new Cops and Robbers mode, all for £29.99/$39.99. The money a gamer would save in buying this edition of the game – and the money EA would lose – is made clear in this leaked table of figures from EA’s DLC price plan…
That’s EA for you. Throw in the optional ‘unlock all the cars’ cheat DLC (paying for a cheat code, really?) and that’s even more money EA could be earning from the hapless, innocent gamer.
It’s truly a shame to see Criterion denied the opportunity to give some of their hard-earned work away. Common sense would dictate that gamers love bargains and so would buy Burnout Paradise: The Ultimate Final Box Game of the Year Critic’s Choice Edition at £29.99 with all the DLC, and would not opt to buy every single piece of over-priced DLC that EA are demanding an arm and a leg for.
But that’s EA for you. Oh well.
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It’s great what Criterion has done, giving all of the DLC so far away for free, and it’s a great way of enticing customers to buy the game, so it sucks that the big people at EA have to only think about the money and start charging for things which they should really give away for free, again.
It’s not that they shouldn’t charge; it’s that they should charge a lot less.
“It’s not that they shouldn’t charge; it’s that they should charge a lot less”
According to the legendary Gabe Newell, that is precisely correct, and he said so just recently.
I guess EA have clicked onto this and are testing the idea, it (EA) should start learning from the Steam engine, and get their a-holes into gear. Or better they should just USE STEAM.
Love the name: The Ultimate Final Box Game of the Year Critic’s Choice Edition.
Very funny. Did you think of it yourself?
xx
i dunno about this
Hopefully the lame fanboys will see what EA true intentions are..Them and Criterion are a slick bunch.. They came out with the game no fully done (about 75% done), charged all the hardcore suckers (like myself) $60 for the game for the 1st 2 or 3 months.. Then miraculously the game dropped to $40 and then to $30 (now the game is $20) and to distract everyone from that fact.. Cause lets be real people this is EA, like how is that even possible. So they come up with that wonderful smoke and mirrors campaign of their so call year of free DLC???
Which was what???? 2 cars that you could only use online, 3 bikes and some scenery changes (oh day/night) :/ No new map, no new cars that you can use offline, nothing like that..
Now the true colors come out.. Your getting charged $10 to pass the controller around (Party pack), $5 to tell them that your lazy (time saver pack) and from the looks of this chart, their going to charge you $15-20 for big surf Island.. Which is practically the price of the full game now but its only 25% of the game that was left out.. That shit better be a REAL BIG surf Island..
Jezer, the first PDLC came out febuary 5th 2009, 1 year and 14 days after the game released. By this time the monitary value of the game had deteriorated as all games do by this time. Sit down and let the true hardcore Burners clear things up.
Two online-only cars, 3 online game modes, 70 timed multi-part challenges, another 101% to earn with bikes, 70 bike challenges, day/night, and a treasure trove of trophies all came free. Substaintial to say the exaggerated least. A party mode, a cheat code, 16 new vehicles, 35 new liveries, a new game mode, and an island of epic proportions will require payment: such is no different for any other thriving game out there.
EA does not impede on Criterion too often, if this report is true, its the first time I’ve heard of EA pulling an executive order on Criterion. The bottom line is that Criterion pulls in money, why would EA mess with a good thing? Sorry class, answering with “because its EA” will earn you nothing but the dunce hat and a referal to a fundamental economics class.
If this report is true, Criterion wanting to put this out in August symbolizes their anticipation that the prime selling period for the island will be cooling down by August.
Alex Dukov…does he have his own road in Paradise City? No he doesn’t, but Jeremy Chubb does, because Chubb’s title is producer. But no matter who would be producer at Criterion, I highly doubt they’d publish the line “…they’re greedy bastards for sure.”