Now, before I start this, let me make this clear; I love the Meteos franchise. I think it's one of the most clever puzzle games ever released, and it holds up well, even to today's standards (though that doesn't mean it has no flaws). If a great Meteos game was released, then I probably would die of overexcitement.
Recently, though, I'm starting to be happy that no new ones are on the horizon.
A couple of months ago, Mobcast - who now has the creator of Meteos, Tetsuya Mizuguchi, under their belt - released a sort of remake of Lumines, dubbed Lumines Puzzle And Music. I think this iOS title was one of the things I was most hyped up for this summer, though I never got around to buying it.
Fast forward to today, though and something has happened to that title.
Recently, Lumines Puzzle And Music had two new "albums" released, alogside the paltry two existing ones (I think they totaled up to around ten skins), and dropped the price down from 2.99 USD to 0.99.
"Woohoo, price drop, now I'll finally be able to enjoy the game!"
...right?
Well, as it turns out, the initial plan was to release new albums every so often for free. That play, however, changed, and now new albums must be bought. This is somewhat understandable, though; one album is made by an outside company (specifically, the band Sekai No Owari) and the other is lifted from one of Tetsuya's prevous titles, Rez. And it would be fine; the game appears to be of high quality, and the music used in the most recent preview video appears to be lifted from the "DragonNight in English" skin is incredibly catchy.
Too bad the new albums are five times the cost of the base game, each.
Seriously?
If bait-and-switch tactics like this are what Mobcast is going to use, then I dread the day they release a new Meteos game on iOS, and that's assuming they do. Can you imagine having to drop five bucks just to use Hevendor or Thirnova?
This whole thing just gets to me. Why would they do something like this?
EDIT; And now the price has been bumped back up to $2.99 USD. Really?