About the first part, I was just messing with you.
But in all seriousness, I'm not going to argue with you about whether it's honest or not. At the end of the day, I believe if Sony realized how much money they could make by selling these cars for $1.99 a piece, they would be all over it.
Companies have been doing consumers wrong for years, and unless what they try to do affects all their customers (Netflix, who is paying for it now) or has a lot or media attention garnered from it (recently, Verizon), they will continue to do so. Making the exclusive cars DLC would do neither, as I'm sure that there are way more people with the regular game than the Collector's/ Signature Edition, and quite a few of them would love to give Sony their money for these cars. If 1 person was to say "I'm not getting the GT6 Collector's Edition because they sold the DLC cars later" there will be 5 more that will buy it.
To these companies, the bottom line is the bottom line, and honesty is further down the list of priorities.
PS: I own the Collector's Edition
And there it is. All that needs to be said.
Offering certain, flimsy, intangible "unlockable"
in-game content based on how much someone is willing to pay is
exclusionary (i.e. "exclusive") and is totally unfair in the first place. Pre-order bonuses are one thing, as long as they're available afterwards, it's fine. But content that can only be obtained in advance and never again is despicable, deliberate marketing bull:censored: that needs to eject itself from the industry immediately.
Whilst it might be possible to argue that the people wanting the opportunity to
buy the Stealth / etc. cars are just whining "gimme gimme" (which is a ridiculous claim in the first place), I would argue that those people that want to exclude everyone else not like them are being exactly elitist, selfish and equally "gimme gimme" (after the effect).
Greed is universal; who are one group to deny it another when they partake themselves? Double standards are another hallmark of elitism: "I'm allowed to do it, because I'm better than you" translated from, "I can hold onto the privileges all for myself, because I paid more than you did". It comes down to the idea that one group of people are more deserving than another; which when it just involves a game and
money, is frankly absurd (but that just describes general human society, which is elitist by its very nature; why else would class structures be so universal?)
Of course, Sony are to blame for convincing people that this sort of behaviour is acceptable and for (psychologically) "rewarding" it. After all, as quoted above, Sony will happily about-face on that "exclusivity" if it suits them - more the fool those who thought they were getting a good deal from "the devil", so to speak.
EDIT: I might seem damning of greed and of elitism, but I recognise them as ordinary traits in human-kind, and I'm not entirely devoid of self-awareness to think I'm above it (indeed, that would be elitist of me); it's just that believing you're entitled to something just because Sony said you are is a little short-sighted and frankly petty.
EDIT: I coincidentally just happened upon
this article by Eurogamer, which quite nicely outlines the industry approach to exclusive (pre-order) content. "Incentivisation" is probably a key word.
EDIT: (I
know...)
here's a really good write-up about the psychological mathematics behind "casual games" (by someone who worked on this exact thing), how publishers see players and the way they play at incentivisation of games, that has wide-reaching consequences regarding gaming in general. It's titled: "who killed videogames? (a ghost story)"
