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Stop insulting fans by double dipping with smoke-and-mirrors marketing

After conducting an interview with 2K and Gearbox concerning Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel and having my questions about the game’s inevitable release on current-gen either ignored or brushed aside, the announcement of Borderlands: The Handsome Collection today isn’t much of a surprise.

I’m not mad, but I am disappointed. Actually, scratch that; I’m mad as hell.

Seriously, I didn’t even put the current-gen exchange in my interview with 2K’s Tony Lawrence and Gearbox’s Matt Armstrong, because it amounted to – and I’m paraphrasing here – “we’re just concerning ourselves with The Pre-Sequel on Xbox 360, PS3 and Windows PC right now.”

But if you’d prefer, let’s go to a direct quote.

“There’s over 150 million installed PlayStation 3’s and Xbox 360’s. There are currently fewer PlayStation 4 and Xbox One’s than the sold copies of Borderlands 2, and we do not expect a better than that tie-in rate,” Gearbox’s Randy Pitchford said when asked why The Pre-Sequel was only heading to last-gen back in October 2014. “So it was a really natural decision for us to prioritize the platforms that are customers are on.”

Want another? Sure.

“I guess we’re full on developing the PS3, 360 and PC game, and we believe in that too,” Lawrence said in another interview. “All the Borderlands 2 players are playing on those consoles. That’s the choice they’ve got. So we want to reward those guys. If fans say ‘hey, we’d really like this on a next-gen console’, well, we’ll think about that, but right now we’re concentrating on the consoles we know.”

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“The vast majority of our fans still have their Xbox 360 [or PS3]. The other thing is it’s the middle game in a trilogy. Moving it on to next-gen and requiring people to buy new hardware to play the middle entry in a trilogy feels a little disingenuous and we sort of want to respect that,” Armstrong added. “As we said, one day maybe, I don’t know. We’ll think about that, see how people react to the game, how much fun they have and whether or not everyone moves on to the next gen fully next year. For now we’re pretty happy with our choice and I think people are going to be to.”

Here’s Randy Pitchford speaking to Eurogamer about The Pre-Sequel in April 2014; “It’s not free to build a game for next-gen. So when we decide where to spend our resources, we want to spend all of the attention we can on the game itself. If you try to image the set of Borderlands players who have already upgraded, that’s not 100 per cent. But if you try to image the set of Xbox One or PS4 owners who do not have an Xbox 360 or a PS3, the difference there is so close to nil you can’t make a business rationalisation around that.”

Even more damning is Pitchford’s suggestion of how long it might take before we see a current-gen Borderlands, “I don’t think I would have to stretch far to suggest there’s probably a lot of demand for more Borderlands. That demand lives on the Xbox 360, PS3 and PC. We don’t know to what extent it’ll live on the next-gen. I imagine over time – maybe by the time we get to the third or fourth Christmas – there will be enough of an install base.”

Fine. Fair enough. But when gamers asked if The Pre-Sequel would be heading to current-gen, I think we deserved a truthful answer. I think we deserved the answer that we all probably came to by reading between-the-lines: that in a couple months (it’ll be five, to be exact), the last-gen game will make an appearance on current-gen consoles.

That in the span of five months, 2K and Gearbox would be asking us to lay out cash for a game on last-gen and then again on current-gen.

It’s disgusting.

Now, don’t get me wrong: 2K and Gearbox aren’t the only publishers treating us consumers like garbage. Since this new generation of consoles began, we’ve seen many games make that full-priced, last-gen-to-current-gen jump: The Last of Us, Tomb Raider, Halo, Sleeping Dogs; the list goes on. Hell, it doesn’t seem like it’s about to stop anytime soon, with titles like Dark Souls II and DmC: Devil May Cry scheduled for 2015. It’s an industry-wide problem.

The difference between the games above and Borderlands is that 2K basically lied to our face about The Pre-Sequel. 2K and Gearbox denied rumours we’d see a current-gen release. They encouraged gamers to buy the game for Xbox 360 and PS3, and they’re enticing those same people to purchase again on current-gen because of cross-save functionality and the tacked-on Borderlands 2. Or, even worse, asking people to spend $500 AUD on a limited edition of the bundle.

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And to think I thought Sony was being cheeky pushing The Last of Us out the door at what we thought would be the tail end of the PS3’s lifespan, only to bring it out on PS4 a year later. Or for that matter, Rockstar releasing Grand Theft Auto V a year apart on last- and current-gen. The Pre-Sequel and The Handsome Pack are being released five months apart, you guys. Hell, at the time of this announcement, The Pre-Sequel has been on store shelves for three months.

THREE MONTHS.

We shouldn’t take this lying down. We should be telling 2K and Gearbox, in this instance, that this type of behaviour isn’t acceptable. We should use this instance to send a message to other publishers: don’t do this.

At the very least, I hope Borderlands fans saw through this little charade and gave The Pre-Sequel a miss, forcing 2K’s hand. I doubt that’s the case; to me, this just seems like a company wanting to do a little double-dipping.

Gamers are smart, publishers. Don’t piss in our faces and tell us it’s raining.

Top image: Courtesy 2K, with speech bubble manipulation by author.


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About the author

Steve Wright

Steve's the owner of this very site and an active games journalist nearing twenty (TWENTY!?!) years. He's a Canadian-Australian gay gaming geek, ice hockey player and fan. Husband to Matt and cat dad to Wally and Quinn.