In an interview with Windows Central, Microsoft’s Joseph Staten revealed that Crackdown 3 will not feature any microtransactions or loot boxes. Now while there will be things to unlock, Microsoft appears to be moving away from these controversial ways via how you can earn new in-game stuff… at least for now.
As Joseph Staten said when asked about Crackdown 3’s future, post-launch content.
“We’re not committing to anything right now, we’re still experimenting with what’s best to do. We’re looking at what people find fun, tweaking the balance and so on. We also look at the long-term hooks. We know that we didn’t want to go with microtransactions. We’re not going with the concept of loot crates. There will be things you can unlock, increasingly cool things. Whether they’re rank based, or based on the number of matches, we’re honestly still playing with it. We’ve made hundreds of things to unlock. We can take that to many places.”
This sounds extremely good, at least for those that are interested in this title. It’s also important to note that Joseph claimed that the dev team is currently not committing to anything. Obviously this was regarding the post-launch content but it wouldn’t surprise us to see Microsoft making a 180 degree turn on microtransactions. So for now, Microsoft does not want to implement either microtransactions or loot boxes.
Crackdown 3 is currently planned for a February 15th release and contrary to its single-player mode, its multiplayer mode will rely heavily on destructible environments!
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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Good. Baby steps.
Baby steps? They’re going down a progressively worst hole (remember when season pass was the cancer?).
They have teams who’s only purpose is to figure out how to squeeze all they can from you. If it’s up to them it will not get better for the gamer.
They go back and forth. For MS, consumers are the cattle, not the customers. Their real customers are the shareholders. The only reason this particular game isn’t including them is because they need it to have great PR from now on to build hype (and to lean on and point at) as they push their “see? we are rebranding ourselves” campaign.
My gut tells me they are going to pull exactly what Activision did with BO4 and inject them later once the sales numbers are there – especially if the sales numbers are high. They only need the platform ready to inject the marketplace to be in front of people’s faces then their shareholders start salivating for more and more and more.
Predatory monetization is in their nature of how they do normal, everyday business. It’s always win-lose with MS, never win-win. Remember MS was the first company to start monetizing PC features on consoles so they could charge for what they could not on PC – or they violate anti-trust laws (the real reason for Xbox’s existence). First started with paying for online play, Xbox Live, and was assisted by AAA partners in removing private server capability on games. This provided an image that PAYING for Xbox Live gave value and was needed for a reason even though PC connected to games through private servers just fine without any outside help.
MS also “pioneered” anti-consumer DLC purchase crap on consoles starting with price gouged Horse Armor to make people think consoles were just as capable as PC – but for an extra fee. This was a joint effort between Bethesda and then Xbox Lead Peter Moore. Yes that Peter Moore, former EA CEO who went on to popularize loot gambling from mobile then big AAA titles and who also perpetrated the whole “games cost too much” lie before the new guy bared the torch.
MS doesn’t sell games anymore, they sell digital business model platforms (advertising, marketplaces, etc), while the games are simply a particular vehicle to deliver those platforms to a certain audience.
I would be shocked if they continued not injecting MTXs, let alone in this game once it gains popularity like Activision did with BO4.
There are many valuable information in your post. True MS isn’t gamer friendly. But if they do not include MTXs etc that’s a start but we’ll see what happens in the future.
Not having Microtrans / Loot boxes is now a feature in games 😀
Kinda takes you back to the mid 80’s / early 90’s when games were sold as is.
Thank god
How embarrassing that this even has to be said, as though it’s just assumed that it would have of course.
“Micro-transactions and loot boxes is not the way we’re trying to abuse the people who are stupid enough to like our franchise!” – What I read.
Microsoft: “We’re looking at what people find fun”
Steam? PlayStation? Switch? iOS/Android?
Basically anything other than UWP, Xbox and Windows Phone. ?
imo MS wouldn’t have survived as a company until today but they embedded themselves so deeply in the business world that nothing could stop them. Back in 1998 the US Attorney General dragged Bill Gates before a Senate Sub-committee accusing MS of running a monopoly. Several well respected people in the field testified that to break MS up would be devastating to the business world. At the end of the day they could do nothing.
I blame Clippy. ?
Funny stuff there. Here’s how I see Ballmer…
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/1f601d0566a1bae7a2ee7bcea86fbf9c4e87744bf1348b1d777290d39ced23e1.jpg
The joker is worth about 41 billion dollars today thanks to MS stock options and he didn’t do hardly anything for it other than ride the MS money train for 14 years. It’s a crazy f*cking world we are living in my friend.
Viewing that pic must be akin to foreplay for Sp4ctr0 Spencer!
I haven’t seen Sp4cTr0 around in a while. I think you might have really hurt the feeble minded dimwit’s feelings this time or maybe the men with the butterfly net finally caught up with him and hauled him away to the asylum….
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/44fd10c3f22fa132384689f8ee21ffa89f5d4dbdfdd3b64b59a058329767b434.jpg
It probably won’t be long before he comes back here to open up another can of stupid and pour it out all over the comments section though.
Wow golly gee, thanks MS. Advertising that you’re not going to be greedy with that stealth, price gouged horsesh*t model – just so kind of you.
Yeah. Like in COD
no microtransactions at lunch but they will ad it after day 1
They did slip that one in on the CoD crowd didn’t they. I hear that they are angry about it even though it’s only for cosmetics because in the past they could unlock those cosmetics for free by just playing the game.
But it will feature UWP, therefor it’s a Hard Pass.
It’s good thier cracking down on the no DRM, but it’s a window store game……pass……..