RED DEAD REDEMPTION 2 Will Have Microtransactions, And It Isn't Hard To See Why
Red Dead Redemption 2 will have microtransactions, and while some gamers may be currently cursing Rockstar to the high heavens for making it so, it isn't hard to see why. The news was confirmed in a recent investor call following the announcement that microtransactions had accounted for 42% of Take Two's net bookings in the last financial quarter.
That's right, just a little under half of what Take-Two made last quarter came from gamers reaching into their wallet to pay for incremental upgrades to their in-game experience. Given that knowledge, one can imagine the immense pressure brought on by executives and developers, in general, to want to continue that trend at Take-Two going forward, and possibly forever according to this quote:
“We aim to have recurrent consumer spending opportunities for every title that we put out at this company. It may not always be an online model, it probably won’t always be a virtual currency model, but there will be some ability to engage in an ongoing basis with our titles after release across the board.”
Now, it goes without saying microtransactions will be making their way into RDR2's multiplayer realm, but hopefully, this doesn't mean we're going to find stuff popping up in single-player! I'd like to say the gaming community wouldn't stand for it, but c'mon, 42% of their earnings came from players continuing to buy things in GTAV...you can't stop a trend if consumers are still buying.
I guess we just wait and hope the developers show mercy and keep the campaign free of bad experiences. What other option is there?