I've always wondered how RDR's online monetization would work
after GTAV's Shark Cards, and after Zelnick said this below last
year. Apparently the answer is, not well. In GTAV you had an
endless variety of houses, apartments, cars, vehicles, etc. In RDR
you have... horses and cabins and...? There seems far less
opportunity for cosmetic style luxuries. Is this approach of
over-charging for weapons and customization P2W? If so, that always
gets a very negative response in the West.
Strauss at the end of May 2017:
"We are convinced that we are probably from an industry view
undermonetizing on a per-user basis. There is wood to chop because
I think we can do more, and we can do more without interfering with
our strategy of being the most creative and our ethical approach,
which is delighting consumers."
But Zelnick also acknowledged that you can go too far in
charging players for every last bit of content. "You can't give
stuff away for free in perpetuity; there's no business model in
that," Zelnick said. "But we're not trying to optimize the
monetization of everything we do to the nth degree. My concern is,
if you do that, the consumer knows. They might not even know that
they know, but they feel it."
"We're not going to grab the last nickel," he said.