Fortnite has grown immensely over the past few months, and it’s effectively become a platform in its own right. But with the addition of all-new experiences like the Rock Band-inspired Fortnite Festival and arcade racer Rocket Racing, some fans have been furrowing their brows over the price of the latest microtransactions. And LEGO Fortnite is next.
While developer Epic Games has been incredibly generous, offering free LEGO alternatives for thousands of the title’s existing skins, it’s now introducing kits that can be used to spice up your block villages. These include the Beachside Boulevard Bundle for 1,900 V-Bucks and the Durr Burger Bundle for 2,000 V-Bucks.
To put that into perspective, you’re looking at roughly ~£13/$18 for each bundle, with some V-Bucks leftover. In each case, you get a couple of buildings and some other bits of decorative paraphernalia, all with a LEGO makeover, so there’s quite a bit here, but the pricing seems absurd when the entire Battle Pass can be bought for half the cost of one of these bundles.
Obviously, the investment that’s going into Fortnite right now is absurd, and Epic Games is clearly looking beyond simple skins to fund it all. But it feels like it’s really pushing the pricing limits lately, and while it did make some adjustments to the cost of Rocket Racing’s cosmetics, it’s clear that this is becoming an incredibly expensive pastime now. The only real saving grace is that practically all of the microtransactions are optional.
Comments 14
400 V-BUCKS OFF.
Well that's profanity waiting to happen if ever I've seen it...
I'll always remember one of the lead devs at E3 (I think) when Fortnite was new talking about how gamers would want the latest skins to keep up with the other kids on the playground.
Promoting peer pressure essentially.
...buck off.
...zero bucks given.
etc etc
My wallet is sure glad my kids are over their Fortnite phase.
They cost around the same in real life tho.
It's just business. They using literally block chain technology to surpass bitcoin.
Whenever I need to remind myself how out of touch I am with people younger than me, I just read an article like this and then return to playing Stardew Valley pretending I understood what I just read.
This is a great investment opportunity
If enough people were upset they wouldn't be charging these prices. I'm staggered so many people don't think twice about how much these cost
People do it to themselves. $20 Call of Duty gun skins and other ~$20 "micro" transactions exist because clowns waste their money on them.
@Bamila yeah but buying legos in real life means you have a physical thing you can keep or sell, not a digital object that may disappear one day.
Honestly thought we already covered this last week? Maybe it was on NL or Twitter?🤷🏻♂️
These prices do seem extremely expensive for what you get, so I recommend not getting them.
I started playing Fortnite about 3 years ago, paid $8 for enough V-bux for the season pass, and have purchased every season pass since then w/ the V-bux I unlocked in the season pass, currently have about 3,500 V-bux after buying the TMNT pass last season and the pass last week. And I can honestly say I have way more skins, bling, etc than I am ever going to need. $18 for 1 house is insane.
What does 1 house cost in Minecraft? I haven’t played in at least 5 years but back then a set of skins and music and a few animals was like $5, maybe $12. If it’s $18 for a house now, well that’s why Fortnite is what it is. Lego Fortnite is so Minecraft they may as well have called it Fortcraft.
Fortnite will always have a large audience and generate a decent turnover - but this is a sure sign that it has peaked and is dropping off.
I'm sure Fortnite doesn't have a ton of issues pushing product, but I will anecdotally note that the Fortnite section of toys in my local Target and Walmart have grown much smaller than they were a year or two back. And given that, I always thought it'd be a better, more cohesive idea if Epic packaged a code for the in-game content in with every purchase of a Fortnite toy or playset.
Buy a Nerf gun with a cool skin? Here's the code for the skin in-game. Buy a cool action figure? Here's the code for the character in-game.
Forcing people to double dip on the content they love may be better economics short term, but the long term lack of goodwill will NEVER work in a company's favor. Ever.
It would cost them pennies, if anything, to give away those codes. But the excitement, joy, and positive word of mouth amongst fans would return multiple thousands upon that small investment.
If you charge me $15-20 for a cool skin in-game, and then I see that character sitting on a toy shelf, I MAY say to myself, "Ah, yeah. That's cool. I'll spend ANOTHER $15-20 on that." (I've done this with ONE Fortnite character/toy when it was on clearance). However, if I saw a cool character/toy and realized I could then put that character IN THE GAME?! That seems like magic! It'd get people to buy way more merchandise. And then you've got a free advertiser walking around telling their friends, the kids on the schoolyard, etc. all about the awesome deal you got on a toy AND a skin. (PLUS, it would have played well into their emerging metaverse push.)
The key is to always make the customer feel like they're getting a deal or pulling a fast one on the company selling them things. Customers want to feel like they got away with something they shouldn't have.
Epic could have done that a long time ago and they just... didn't.
And thet will still buy it. 😅
@Shepherd_Tallon well, I’m not sure if my kids experiences will be similar to others because they have access to all consoles and I encourage them to play a wide variety of games.
My son had the most obsession with Fortnite. I played it with him as did my daughter, but while he’d max out the Battle Pass every season we’d barely get halfway through it. And we only played with each other whereas my son would play solo or with us (but preferred with us). He got a little obsessed with it. Then gradually just moved away from it as his friends went to other games.
Nowadays the Fortnite style game is taken over by Roblox and to a lesser degree Minecraft. They have lasted a longer than Fortnite. Roblox especially is my son’s favourite game.
Despite them having access to everything we do have limits and rules. Roblox is only allowed two days a week. Mobile games only for travelling/long journeys (but they usually just use their Switches during that). No playing games while watching TV, etc. As I like them to focus on one thing at a time.
They have enjoy RPGs and action adventure games a lot. Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom are favourites, as are platformers like the 3D Mario’s (Galaxy/Odyssey etc) and Hat in Time. We all play Splatoon 3 together (we each have a Switch and a copy of the game so that’s our new Fortnite - but we mainly play the Splatfests so it’s no actually that common now).
Because I mainly play PS5 games they watch me play various RPGs, mainly the Final Fantasy games, and currently Helldivers 2. It meant my son wanted to now try some Final Fantasy games also. They usually stick to Switch and Xbox and Game Pass gives them access to a lot of games. They play a lot of indies on that rather than the mainstream titles.
So yeah, I’m not sure my kids are the average gamers. A lot of their friends still stick to the trinity of Roblox, Fortnite and Minecraft with little deviation. My kids like the variety and there are dozens of games I haven’t mentioned that they have played and enjoyed.
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