Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - General Little upset over the early access coming to Xbox.

While reading up on my daily gaming news an article caught my eye, the title reading “Divinity 2 is coming to early access on Xbox May 16”. Reading this I was ecstatic because I just finished my 2nd playthrough of the first one and in doing so made me a huge fan of the series. Upon further reading of the article, I find out it’s to be free... (this gave me pause momentarily) reading further it will let players play for 1 hour trial unless preordered then it will open up the entire 1st Act.

Now after reading this I’m a little upset, not devastated by any means but now as a huge fan of the series find myself flustered. I work earning $9.75 an hour and a $60 game takes me a day to work for (not cheap with a small family) this usually means I have to get games on sale digitally as I don’t do physical copies or pick them up in early access to get a slightly cheaper deal as well as helping the development team make a great game and name for themselves.

That all said, to me early access should be EARLY ACCESS not early DEMO. You as a companies will be able to use the early access data and feedback to fix the game but only at launch. As a huge fan now I can’t afford a full $60 game at release even though I want too. Worse yet is I look a full release price on Steam (I don’t have a computer good enough to play PC games hence why I was excited for a console port) and it’s regular price is $45. So basically your early accessing a demo I can’t afford to preorder because it doesn’t come with an early access price point and the PCs full version is already 25% off at full release.

Sorry, I don’t mean to rant as this series (hopefully franchise) will continue to grow and now as a fan you will have my money it just won’t be at launch sadly like I wish it could be so I can make more fun (or chaotic) memories in the series but as is I will be joining the adventure late sadly.

Keep doing you Larian Studios and making these awesome games and I’m sorry to rant just a little sad and upset I’ll have to wait to journey back to Divinity’s lands.

You misunderstand what early access means. It does not mean 'full release, but early'... because then what's the point? Why not just release the full game? The point of early access is to test a game during its development and get feedback from the userbase. Xbox will get an exclusive first look at Definitive Edition which is a hugely revamped version of divinity 2, which PC players who have owned the game for a year+ will not get to experience yet. Don't consider early access a release date. It's not. They could just as well not do early access at all and say 'coming august 2018'. Would you be upset then?

Untrue as here is the definition of early access for video games... NOTE the “Pre-FULL release” version of the game. I can say the demo we are getting on console shouldn’t be put on early access as it’s clearly not an early access title by definition, unless you want to really stretch the definition of early access.

To you later question about it just having a release date, I would rather see a release date with a $60 price tags then using a demo for early access holding the rest of the game hostage until release day. Its taking advantage and gaining certain benefits being listed as early access when it clearly could just have a set release date and come out at full price.


Wikipedia

Like the Enhanced Edition of D:OS, the Definitive Edition of D:OS 2 is a separate release, with various updates, changes and optimizations. It is pre-full-release.
There will be updates during the Xbox Game Preview period.
Early Access on PC was also just the first act.

There is no standard for Early Access pricing; some companies offer a discount, some have it more expensive (to match a Kickstarter price point, for example). With D:OS and D:OS 2, the price during Early Access was/is the actual release price.

Early Access is for getting feedback, balancing information, etc: Divinity: Original Sin 2 Spotlight | Meet Feedback Billy.