Leo Holman 
Rockstar Games is ready to wow the gaming world again. The much anticipated sequel to the critical and commercial success, Red Dead Redemption, is set to launch this year. Today the developer revealed some details about the project that will leave some with a familiar sinking feeling.
While it wasn’t prominently shown, the ugly head of exclusivity has risen again. PlayStation store listings for the game contain the line “play select content first on PlayStation 4”, but no further details in that vein have been revealed. So what is this? Many gamers recognise the phrase “timed exclusivity” and most of those that do have made their negative opinions on the matter abundantly clear. Yes Rockstar’s next magnum opus is multi-platform, but Sony has apparently paid for some of the content to be available to it’s player-base first. This sort of thing has happened in the past, with games like Call of Duty or Destiny, in which one system will get maps or weapons weeks in advance or sometimes even longer. When this game was first announced, back in October 2016, Sony said it’s players would get “first access to earn select online content”, which is just as vague- but may suggest that we should have seen today’s news coming.
The developer unveiled several pre-order editions as well today. Some people just buy the game, but those types of people aren’t wanted here, these editions come with a plethora of in game content- and inflated price tags to match.
The Special Edition clocks in at $79.99/£74.99, which is considerably more expensive than the base game but you will get some missions, some cosmetics, and some weapons. Of course it’s not specified in the release, but it also comes with “gameplay bonuses”- which could honestly mean anything. You get some in-game currency, and discounts. I want “discounts” to be a reference to stuff you could buy normally in game, but I think we all know that it’s more likely to be referring to micro-transactions of some kind.
Then we have the Ultimate Edition which pushes the price tag up to $99.99/£89.99. This comes with everything in the Special Edition AND a couple online only bonuses. The last edition is a Collectors Box, which follows the trend of having an overly expensive plastic box filled with trinkets for a game WHICH ISN’T INCLUDED. That one will set you back a cool $99.99/£89.99, but don’t forget the $59.99/£55.99 if you want to play the game it’s themed after.
This is all business as usual, but the last tidbit released by Rockstar today just screams greedy. If you pre-order the digital version(any system) you will get tons of currency for GTA online. Rockstar has made so much money off that game, and now that they are moving onto another game (finally), they can’t help but throw one last hail mary to get people to spend money in GTA online. People have been worried that Red Dead Redemption 2 will be full of microtransactions, ever since Rockstar got that taste of unlimited money from their experience with GTA online, and this doesn’t exactly put one’s mind at ease.
Source: Kotaku
