Holiday Addon pack announced

[Sagana]

I'm just *not* paying $60 for a game other people can buy for $40. Heck, maybe I'll start waiting 2 years to buy the games until they finish putting all the stuff in it :p by then it might work right too :p

(sorry, I'm still being annoyed by the whole concept - I shouldn't be penalized for spending my money sooner than someone else and keeping the company in business for the last however long it's been.)

[MissDoh]

Oh gee, I took the survey about that and definitely said no to such package since I feel it is a rip off.  They mention a suggested retail price of 19.95$.... they should be out every 3 months.

I would prefer they give it away on the Sims 2 site or simply include them in a new ep but no... they have to reach in our pockets again, can I scream please!!!

Nightlife should be (unless something else sounding way more interesting than business or non-stop request fo pets comes out) the last expansion pack I ever purchase.

God they drive me completely crazy and I honestly never thought they would go to that extreme to make money upon us.  Put me in a cage please and throw away the key 

And for those who might wonder, yes I am Missdoh2 on the "official" bbs.

Now look sad and say "Doh!" (quoted from Homer Simpson)

[baratron]

You know... I must be weird. Because I actually don't think that $20 US is too much to pay for a bunch of new items, special features and interactions.

I used to justify spending out on Sims 1 paysites by looking at the amount of enjoyment I got from The Sims compared to the amount of time I spent playing it. Let's forget pleasures like eating out or going to the theatre, because they are too expensive for most people to do often. Even cinema is expensive - £7 per person for a typical film in greater London (more in central London). Let's take renting a DVD as an example. Now, renting a new release for 2 nights costs about £3.50 - for 1.5-2 hours pleasure. That's £1.75 per hour.

In comparison, my Sims 2 game cost £30 for the base game, plus £20 for University. That's a total of £50. I spend 15-20 hours playing it per week. I've had it since April, easily 6 months. I can't be bothered to add up exactly how many weeks, but let's say 4 weeks per month x 6 months - that's 24 weeks. So Sims 2 has cost me £2 per week - for easily as much pleasure as I'd get from watching a DVD, if not more, because the game is interactive. Although video games are expensive to purchase initially - by the time you've played them for hours, they work out as about the cheapest form of entertainment you can get, excluding completely free things like library books, and free-to-receive television channels.

I know that within the Sims 2 community there are people from all income levels - from the professional classes right down to people on benefits (or worse, if you consider the mess that is the US "welfare" system) and that for some people, $20 US is a large amount of money. But when compared to other forms of entertainment, when you consider the number of hours of pleasure you'll get from an EP, it just doesn't seem that much. £1.75 per hour for the DVD rental up against 10p per hour for Sims 2... and many people have had their games longer than me, and play for more hours a week than me.

I do wonder how much of the complaining about the cost of EPs is due to people simply not thinking about how many hours they'll play for, and how much is a wry acknowledgement that the EP will come with 40 new objects, 5 new NPCs, 10 new interactions, and 20 new bugs . 

[Motoki]

I don't see where the interactions are anything all that special or there's that many of them. There's what, a New Years party, which is basically a house party called something else with "fireworks" (a little cinema scene I am guessing), and a visit by Santa. I didn't see anything else that would be considered a new interaction unless you count food. Maybe there's more stuff, but I doubt there's a whole lot more to it. I know they sent out that survey a while back about doing mini packs that contained mostly items based around a theme so this sounds basically like that. Considering that the full expansions are $30, yes, I do think $20 is a bit steep for a small pack of very seasonal items that generally won't be of interest for most of the year.

[KellyQ]

I don't see where the interactions are anything all that special or there's that many of them. There's what, a New Years party, which is basically a house party called something else with "fireworks" (a little cinema scene I am guessing), and a visit by Santa. I didn't see anything else that would be considered a new interaction unless you count food. Maybe there's more stuff, but I doubt there's a whole lot more to it. I know they sent out that survey a while back about doing mini packs that contained mostly items based around a theme so this sounds basically like that. Considering that the full expansions are $30, yes, I do think $20 is a bit steep for a small pack of very seasonal items that generally won't be of interest for most of the year.

What he said. 

[ZephyrZodiac]

Well, I don't mind the idea of extras which you have to pay for, but they should be extras for EVERYONE!!!!  They certainly shouldn't be included free in a revamp of the base game!  (And once you have EPs, the only time you ever use the base game again is when you have to do a total reinstall, so it's not as if getting an extra copy would ever be worth it!  Unlike an EP, which you may have running on a desktop and a laptop with all the hassle of constantly switching CDs from one to the other, and it might be worth buying a second copy!)

They did, of course, do exactly the same with Sims 1 when they brought out De Luxe!

[KatEnigma]

Apparently they decided to split the difference between (barely) reasonable and totally outrageous, and the cost will be $15.  Oh, and free standard shipping via the slow boat. 

[ZephyrZodiac]

Why couldn't it have been done as a download?  Then the buyer could just put it on a CD and store it with the original game themselves.

[Diala]

If this was a set of regular items (or items that have any use to me), I would probably be willing to blow the $15 on it. I am an item junkie, after all. However, for just holiday items? I don't even use those, or feel the need to use them. Still, I will give some consideration to it, and hopefully a list of the items and possible interactions and special features will come out on a Sims 2 website somewhere. Chances are, I won't be buying it, unless it REALLY lowers in price.

[Zyrcona]

It doesnt sound like it will be just new items, but will also have new behaviors and interactions.

So more of the stupid Fart in Someone's Face and Fling Water At stupid interactions? No thank you. And it's pretty much guaranteed that it'll be riddled with bugs. It's just the kind of gimmicky thing they'd make in a hurry, with dollar signs in their eyes, and not bother to test.

It's impossible that they can give this stuff away for free -- in that case it'd be classed as a virus and they'd be sued. The only things I'd pay money for as add-ons are the missing clothing, hairstyles, and object colours that were seen in the preview shots for the original game.

[Motoki]

Why couldn't it have been done as a download?  Then the buyer could just put it on a CD and store it with the original game themselves.

I agree, hell even Prima is doing direct downloads these days and passing along the savings. I'd rather download it for $10 then pay $15 and have to wait for it to be shipped. :p

[FutureCat]

I agree, hell even Prima is doing direct downloads these days and passing along the savings. I'd rather download it for $10 then pay $15 and have to wait for it to be shipped. :p

I'd much rather have it as a download.  Assuming they would even ship to New Zealand (and I notice at the moment they say they'll only ship to US and Canada), it can take up to 4 months for surface mail packages to reach here from the US.  Christmas would be well and truly over by the time any of us down here got it!

I think I'll wait and see exactly what's in it before I decide whether to waste my money, anyway.

[Trubble]

I've had some reasonably interesting (and frustrating) discussions about this on the BBS. I gave up due to sheeple stupidity. They seem pretty divided, one hand rip off, other hand over excitied and thinking more of it than there is (I think we'll have some disappointed sheeple).

Minus the 12 free items, you have 28 items - Twain said something like $0.53 per item, that's £0.29 for me and others here (the whole thing working out at about a £8 in the UK, however I'm sure they'll market it at £10 - I don't see why we wouldn't get it here).

The whole thing is a way to rerelease the base game and get some more interest (do they need it!?) however, as it's based mostly on Christmas - which a lot of the world don't celebrate - I don't know. I had a point, but I'm getting sleepy.

The price isn't that bad - if there are some extra things in there other than decorative objects. I'll probably do what they expect people to - put it on my Xmas list if it is available in the shops here. If not, well my student loan doesn't stretch to decorative objects that I can download or make myself... I think we need more information.

I would have rather had the patch, which I now is due out any moment, but still, the announcement of this was a little disheartening. When a corporation's main objective becomes souly to make money - they lose the creative spark that started it all. (I know, I know, businesses want to make money, however in a perfect world it shouldn't be their main objective and I can dream )

[Karen]

Did anybody notice the picture of the toddler climbing on Santa's lap?  Sorry, but I can't believe that's a real screenshot.  Probably more along the lines of the things we saw in the preview CD, with kids swinging from ceiling fans, sliding down bannisters, and the like.  It's too bad, because I would love for parents to be able to sit holding their babies and toddlers.

About the pack itself:  this one holds zero appeal for me.  I'm Jewish, and all I see in this "holiday" pack are a bunch of Christmas decorations, Christmas skins, Christmas objects, etc.  (Plus the token menorah which has been available for download from the official site for nearly a year.)  I'm not saying there's anything wrong with Christmas-themed objects etc., it's just that I see very little if anything in this pack that will be of interest to non-Christians.  

Karen

[ZephyrZodiac]

No doubt you're next in line for the rip-off when they do a Passover add-on!

How they can justify making the new edition cheaper than the original, and then charging us who have already got it (and after all, we're the real fans who'll go on buying new EPs long after most of the kids who get it for Christmas have lost interest) is beyond me, and they need to look long and hard at this!

[nectere]

Karen

I hope you and yours have a peaceful Yom Kippur.

[Oddysey]

I ain't buying it! All my sims will be godless communists!

Seriously. Christmas depresses me. It's all about stuff. This is basically everything I dislike about Christmas. And I'm not even Christian, I'm Unitarian Universalist, although my family celebrates Christmas as a basically secular holiday. (Which it is, at least in the modern US.)

Now, if this "mini pack" was something actually nifty, like science fiction or some such (perhaps more aliens for abductions? it's a simple code change, and there are new skins in the Holiday thing) then I might be interested. But only if it was less than $10. $20 will buy a sourcebook for Dungeons and Dragons, worth way more than some idiot faux EP.

[Jarsie]

I'll bet that the new holiday themed base game is only available on CD's and not on DVD's.

I mistakenly bought it in DVD, but I'm glad I did since I only have to put 1 disc in to reinstall rather than have to hassle with 4 discs. But that may be why it's $10 cheaper, because it only comes in CD version.

Of course I could be wrong about that, but I haven't seen anything about a new DVD version.

[ZephyrZodiac]

I've never been able to find anywhere that sells the DVD version in the UK, and I'd prefer that for my laptop!

[Trubble]

ZZ - Amazon has it.

[simposiast]

My local HMV had the DVD version of The Sims 2 last time I was in there.

[ZephyrZodiac]

Thanks, I'll get back and have a look on amazon, maybe I just looked in the wrong place.  A while back, i asked in Game about it, and they'd never even heard there was a DVD!

[Trubble]

I stopped buying in the shops a while back as preordering is cheaper, so I haven't noticed. That link should take you straight to the DVD version.

[ZephyrZodiac]

Thanks a lot, I'll get it when I have the spare cash!  (I never buy in the shops now, for the same reason.  When I got the original sims2 from Amazon, it wss miles cheaper than the shops!  and even with the free delivery (2nd class) it only took 2 days to arrive (one really, as I ordered it on a sunday and it arrived on the Tuesday!

I just wish supermarket ordering was cheaper, instead of that £5 delivery charge!  Then I might use that too!

[laeshanin]

While I could go for $10, I suspect the price will be $19.95.

Hmmm, and by the time it reaches Blighty I feel that it will have a mark up of £19.99. Not that I'm even remotely cynical about marketing, you understand.