Poor Pricing on Downloadable Content: A Black Friday Rant
Friday, November 28th 2008 · Television · Rant
Two nights ago, just before watching 24: Redemption, I was surfing the PSN store. I noticed that the very show I was about to watch was for sale on the Playstation store for $19.99. Twenty bucks??? That's effing ridiculous. It's a television show! I've seen most TV show episodes for sale on places like iTunes and Amazon unbox for about two bucks!
I understand that movies sell for twenty bucks or more, and this is in fact a two-hour television show, but it's not a movie, no matter how much the network may try to bill it as such. It's a TV show that I could have seen for free if I'd been watching the night it was on. As I understand it, the reason that movies are priced just over $20 is firstly because they're not ad-supported like TV is, and secondly because of the much higher production costs. Why on earth should I pay movie prices for a TV show? When I actually purchase a movie on DVD, it's because I plan on watching it more than once. With a TV show, I won't be doing that.
I think that purveyors of DLC need to get their heads out of their asses.
I still think your argument is valid. Unless people think that the extra 17 minutes is valuable, they're not going to fork over the money. I suspect they'll figure out some way to watch the extra 17 minutes.
