WWE ’12 Avatar Items – Pricey or Purchased?

Christmas is not far around the corner and with that comes the video game release rush – all the big names staking their claim for the biggest success over the holiday period. Whilst Electronic Arts have their yearly sports releases, THQ have their own baby – the WWE franchise. Indeed, since securing the rights to WWE in 2000, there has been at least one WWE video game released every year. The next upcoming release, WWE ’12, shows even further signs of improvement on last year’s Smackdown vs. Raw 2011, which was a lot of fun.

Since Rare developed the Avatar system for Microsoft, giving any user the ability to change their avatar’s appearance, clothes, even expressions, it has branched out even further with the creation of the Avatar Marketplace. I personally feel that the items available for purchase, whether it be designer clothes from Adidas, or a WWE Title belt accessory (guilty as charged), are excellent additions to an already very user-friendly Xbox dashboard. The items available on the marketplace appeal to all; sports fans, COD fans, even John Cena fans (sigh).

The latest round of WWE avatar items are welcome additions to the catalogue, which began with SVR 2011 and WWE All Stars. We’ve had the WWE Title belt, now the Stone Cold Steve Austin Smoking Skull belt is available for those nostalgic fans out there. There is the choice of single official t-shirts, another variation of Rey Mysterio’s mask, and even Jerry ‘The King’ Lawler’s crown. For fans, this is a very strong collection of accessories.

However, as with many of the avatar items, I feel strongly about the prices. Some of these items are particularly high; a CM Punk t-shirt is 240 points, which is £2, roughly. Most t-shirt items are 80 points, so this feels like a significant slap in the face, even though they will be very popular items. Indeed, it’s only 80 more points to purchase one of the full outfits available, so makes little sense to me. Surely if all the items were half the price they currently are at, they would sell more quantities? I personally would consider purchasing more.

What are your views? Do you purchase avatar items? Are you, like me, a Ghostbuster with a WWE Title belt? A John Marston with a Portal gun? Isaac Clarke with a collection of Chaos Emeralds? Anyone?