Why Fire Emblem Fates is an example of bad gaming business

Person of Interest: like consider pokemon x and y
Person of Interest: there's not really much of a difference in terms of story, gameplay, etc
Person of Interest: just different mascots and some different pokemon to catch
Person of Interest: overall the advantages one version may have over another are rather...miniscule if you play the game casually.
Person of Interest: like if you're just playing through the game, are you really going to give a fuck whether you get xerneas or yveltal
Person of Interest: so pretty much the ones who'd be interested in getting multiple versions are players who at least have a semblance of hardcore tendencies, even if it's not realized at the time
Person of Interest: or...you could just trade and get the advantages that way
Person of Interest: i mean i sort of wish the game had only one version at a time, but it's not consumer-unfriendly in the extreme
Person of Interest: i cannot say the same about fates
Thror: fates is... the new game of that tactical rpg thing?
Person of Interest: fire emblem yes
Person of Interest: and honestly after thinking about fire emblem more and more i do kinda have to say
Person of Interest: there's some very questionable game design aspects to it lol
Thror: yeah. I saw a lot of talk about it on the cooptional podcast.
Person of Interest: in what way?
Thror: well they did find it dumb that they are selling it like three full releases. TB said that for him, unless there are really big differences in the gameplay, it's terrible. Jesse didn§t care much because he bought the collectors edition which comes with all 3.
Person of Interest: haha....
Person of Interest: collector's edition
Person of Interest: that's 80 bucks btw
Person of Interest: and it's a glorified way of saying "you get some dlc and all three versions at a discount"
Person of Interest: if i recall correctly, anyways
Thror: still way cheaper and probably has six times more fun potential than star wars battlefront doe
Person of Interest: eh but that's an unfair comparison
Thror: yeah
Thror: star wars battlefront is retarded.
Person of Interest: you could compare a 20 dollar pile of shit to battlefront and the pile of shit would win barely
Person of Interest: blah blah blah EA
Person of Interest: *froth at mouth*
Person of Interest: etc
Person of Interest:  https://steamcommunity-a.akamaihd.net/economy/emoticon/steamsalty
Person of Interest: but circlejerking aside
Thror: oh my god there is a salt emote
Person of Interest: honestly from what i can tell
Person of Interest: the differences aren't amazingly significant
Thror:  https://steamcommunity-a.akamaihd.net/economy/emoticon/steamsalty
Person of Interest: but the story is
Thror: AND I HAVE IT
Person of Interest: like you know how in visual novels there's paths right
Person of Interest: well imagine each fire emblem fates game as a path in a visual novel
Thror: ...sometimes there are paths
Person of Interest: and you'll see why this business model is cheesing people off
Thror: sometimes you just turn on autorun and unzip
Person of Interest: lol funny
Person of Interest: i'm tempted to pirate fates honestly
Person of Interest: just to say fuck IS
Thror: can you pirate a 3ds game
Person of Interest: you can
Person of Interest: it's annoying as hell though
Person of Interest: but that's neither here nor there
Person of Interest: the point is the game looks decent
Person of Interest: but seriously, holy fuck
Person of Interest: the way they made this game and tried to sell it
Person of Interest: is disgusting
Person of Interest: yes, i get they made like 3 sets of 20+ chapter campaigns
Person of Interest: but i would not be surprised if there was blatant asset reusage
Person of Interest: and even then, by that point you're just making more levels in the level editor
Person of Interest: you know how in game design there's a diminishing return for work put in?
Person of Interest: like for example, you spend an assload of time working on the game engine and create a functioning editor for another team
Person of Interest: spend a lot of time creating assets
Person of Interest: you essentially front-load a lot of time to get over the initial hump of development hell
Person of Interest: that is to say, getting everything working by constructing the game's vital systems
Person of Interest: and then from there everything is relatively gravy
Person of Interest: like there's some nuances of developmental difficulty like with level design and writing out events, etc
Person of Interest: but the more you do it, the more value you get out of that front-loading
Person of Interest: well...at least when it comes to developing content for the game
Person of Interest: sec
Person of Interest: anyways
Person of Interest: there's also the other side of the coin: expenses and other financial stuff
Person of Interest: eventually the game has to be sold. can't just keep pumping content in forever.
Person of Interest: and ultimately through this system a game is released with a supposedly fair price based on the effort put into the product...yaknow, much like anything in the market
Person of Interest: this is where fates fails miserably
Person of Interest: i mean people will probably buy into it anyways, unfortunately, since fates is riding on the success of awakening
Person of Interest: and if there's one thing that's been shown to be true time and time again, it's that consumers can be...idiotic
Person of Interest: that people can be financially irresponsible as hell
Person of Interest: credit cards say hi
Person of Interest: ignoring that though, fates actually fails on two counts
Person of Interest: the first is the aforementioned issue of it being overpriced for its efforts since it tries to sell three games at roughly the price of 2, even though frankly the effort overall is about equal to 1.5
Person of Interest: and furthermore, to dodge the costs of say, giving a cut to gamestop, the extra versions are either digitally downloaded or on the cart
Person of Interest: that in itself is understandable. digital distribution is nice to have









Edit: I forgot to make on point in this discussion and that is that writing a story also requires a good bit of work, as does recording sound bites and so on (like with Awakening). Both of these were reused to a great degree in fates and the level of innovation required for each given version is far lower than the level of innovation required between something like Awakening and Fates.