Nickel and diming for games you already own:

This isn’t DLC. If it is, Dreamcast had DLC 10 years ago:

http://xboxlive.ign.com/articles/970/970396p1.html

Soul Calibur 4 did this too didn’t it?

Bioware is crowing about a year of DLC for Dragon Age. Fat good that did for Mass Effect.

So… if they’d left it off the disc, thus forcing a larger download, you’d be happy?

For most people, the answer is yes.

Most people think that if something was developed before the disc was shipped, it’s the consumer’s right to get it for ‘free’ as part of the original title purchase price.

But somehow expending the same money to develop the same stuff after the product ships (or faking it by keeping it off the disc), charging for it is just fine.

It’s a ridiculous, self-entitled, and uninformed attitude that makes people feel that way.

I’d also like to point out that 1.86MB is plenty large enough for a code-only update. That’s bigger than the .exe’s for some games in their entirety.

No, it’s called being aware of business tactics revolving around cutting up products/services into smaller packages, but with a greater overall cost associated with them if you want the “complete” package. While there’s no clear way to distinguish what was an added cost to the production that would satisfy critics or supporters of the technique, it’s still pretty clear what it is, an attempt to shift the perceptions and expectations of what we get with our 40-60 bucks. Those of us that make noise about this crap are advocating paying developers for creating complete experiences and actual content rather than subsidizing nickel and dime micro transactions.

Edit: Whether or not, this particular instance is “justified,” making noise about the trend to make bad PR cost more overall than they’d gain is a perfectly valid way to slow the trend down.

If I remember correctly, don’t the certification requirements prevent new code from being in DLC anyways, so that it would have to be in a title update (which costs them money), or prepared ahead of time?

Anyway, I can’t object to this without being somewhat hypocritical since commercial software like ours does this all the time. You don’t automatically get everything on the disc we give you, just the bits you paid to unlock. Judge whether it’s worth the cost or not on its own merits, not how it was delivered.

Beautiful Katamari might be a case where it went too far, since the base game was a fairly weak value compared to the previous ones, so having DLC for it was rather brazen to begin with, and it being already-on-disc DLC was just adding insult to injury.

just to point out, not sure how the levels are set up for versus mode, if it’s all script driven, you can create new content in the same level without a massive update. the actual script files per level for CoD4/CoD5 is smaller than 1MB because it’s all text.

Yes. The business tactic of charging someone extra for developing something extra.

Umm, you’re getting exactly what you always have in a Resident Evil game – a kick-ass single player experience.

Actually, you’re getting more. This one has co-op. And damn good co-op. The multiplayer stuff they’re charging for is new, and is outside the scope of what the franchise has delivered for peoples’ $40-$60 in the past.

Yet you sit there, feeling entitled to anything/everything they make as part of the core purchase price just because it’s what you want.

The one thing I agree with you on is that it is impossible on the outside to know exactly what was a sliced-off part of the original project scope vs what was explicitly justified and green-lit by the assumption that they would charge for it seperately. That’s why I’ve always advocated judging DLC purely on the grounds of whether or not it’s a good value from the consumer’s perspective, just like everything else we buy in the world.

I really don’t get this “it’s only 2 mb so it obviously can’t be content” argument. You can change a HELL of a lot of stuff in 2 mb, and developing that code clearly costs development resources.

Maybe if it was like 10k I would see the point, but I feel like this article was already written before they saw the download size, and then just sort of decided that 2mb was obviously too small to be important.

I was kind of wondering about that too, since all the other just-an-unlock DLC I’ve seen for the 360 has been a fairly consistent 108KB, which is probably the minimum size possible once you account for packaging overhead.

Yes, because that’s the predominant tactic that publishers are encouraging. But really, like we said, it’s “impossible” to literally tell since we don’t have the publishers investment data. That doesn’t mean it’s impossible to spot trends.

Umm, you’re getting exactly what you always have in a Resident Evil game – a kick-ass single player experience.

Actually, you’re getting more. This one has co-op. And damn good co-op. The multiplayer stuff they’re charging for is new, and is outside the scope of what the franchise has delivered for peoples’ $40-$60 in the past.

Yet you sit there, feeling entitled to anything/everything they make as part of the core purchase price just because it’s what you want.

I’m going to disregard this because my point wasn’t about this game, or this content, but rather your spurious characterizations of DLC and micro transaction critics.

Of which, expansions were and are the best value for consumers. Most DLC is a decrease in value compared to what customers got under the previous model.

In principle, I think developers should be able to charge whatever the hell they like for their games, and consumers can either buy it if they think its worth it, or not, if they don’t. If some company made a game I really wanted (Imperialism 3, please!) and then charged $200 for it, I would feel miffed. I would be torn between a strong desire for the game and the outrageous price. But at the end of the day, nobody is holding a gun to my head, and either I want it enough to make me pay or I don’t. Ditto for expansions.

The problem with this attitude, though… is it only applies if there’s real transparency about what you’re actually getting for your money. Many games make big promises on the box (revolutionary AI, unlike anything you’ve seen before!) which turn out to be… less than entirely accurate. If you’ve overpromised with your original release, and then charge money for a patch which brings that release more in line with those promises, I think that’s dodgy. Marginally analagous to the (probably apocryphal) situation where tour guides in South America charge $10 to drive you out to see the jungle and then ask for $100 to drive you back.

You ignore that much of life and business is negotiation. Consumers have a voice with which to influence each other as well as the people they do business with and it doesn’t need to be nor should it only be with their wallets.

Well, for important matters of principle, sure, we can and should unite and take a stand against wicked practices, even if we lack the financial clout to stop them directly. I’m with you there.

On the pricing of video games, though? Is it really that important?

It should be if you want to maximize the value you get for your money. Businesses attempt to do so, so should you. Your personal budget is no different. You don’t have an infinite number of beans. Edit: Or maybe you do, but most of us don’t. =P

I think we should avoid throwing the baby out with the bathwater here. There are lots of good DLC values for most people. There are many more that are bad deals for most people while being good deals for some. And then there are the just blatently bad deals that no one wants. (Yet in reality, even a surprising number of people proactively choose to buy those. Remember that horse armor sales exceeded expectations.)

I’m just fine letting the market sort itself out. I don’t feel like I have to rage against the machine to teach The Man a lesson.

Oh, I thought this conversation was about this game and this content. And even if it’s not, I’m okay making spurious characterizations of people who make spurious characterizations about DLC.

You may feel most DLC is a “decrease in value” for you, and that’s valid in the respect that it’s your personal assessment regarding what you will and won’t buy. But the people who buy do choose to buy this stuff obviously prefer buying it at the offered price vs. not buying it at all. Which says to me it’s a good value proposition for a lot of people – they can easily, you know, not buy it. So despite whether I personally am interested in a piece of content or not, I’m glad this content is out there giving people something they want for the price they want.

The world doesn’t revolve around offering you what you want at the price you want to pay. For someone to feel they need to “make noise about this crap” when offered something that costs more than they personally want to pay seems, frankly, a bit juvenile and self-entitled to me.

I don’t go into a store and raise a ruckus when I see a tiny can of Red Bull costs $2. The nerve!

As someone who has shipped games with unlockables on the disc, it has always been because that is the best distribution method for heavy content. It ensures that everyone has the content, even if locked, so the assets are visible in multiplayer and it prevents large downloads.

A significant majority of console users won’t download new content even if it is free. They just don’t. The best way to get content into people’s hands is to ship it on the disc. When we plan to add unlockables, that means we are increasing the scope of the game.

Chopping the content up into chunks isn’t really a viable strategy If you don’t ship a game that feels like a good entertainment value for the price, all the unlockables in the world won’t make up the lost revenue.

Right, but the way I do that is by buying things I want at prices that appear reasonable to me. When things are available at prices that don’t seem reasonable to me, I just don’t buy them. Maybe I could get slightly more value for money by trying to stir up a revolution every time a price seemed “unfair” to me, but I think on the whole I would discover that this activity resulted in a loss of utility to me, since the time I invested in doing so has an opportunity cost and the likelihood of such a revolt taking place seems vanishingly small, and even if it did take place I’m not sure the $5 would justify the time and energy.

edit: This is a reply to Mordrak’s reply to me, above.

I think DLC generally adds the most value to games which traditionally didn’t get additions or those additions were wrapped in a repackaged special edition. The value of the former is better because something is better than nothing, but the latter depends on the content and how the prices shake out.

I’m just fine letting the market sort itself out. I don’t feel like I have to rage against the machine to teach The Man a lesson.

Part of the market sorting itself out is people offering their opinions on it.

Oh, I thought this conversation was about this game and this content. And even if it’s not, I’m okay making spurious characterizations of people who make spurious characterizations about DLC.

Tell that to EA or even Bethsoft or Bioware (both former users of the expansion model that will likely convert to DLC only).

You may feel most DLC is a “decrease in value” for you, and that’s valid in the respect that it’s your personal assessment regarding what you will and won’t buy. But the people who buy do choose to buy this stuff obviously prefer buying it at the offered price vs. not buying it at all. Which says to me it’s a good value proposition for a lot of people – they can easily, you know, not buy it. So despite whether I personally am interested in a piece of content or not, I’m glad this content is out there giving people something they want for the price they want.

Yeah, there’s lots of things people might consider a good value propisition if they are uninformed or misinformed.

The world doesn’t revolve around offering you what you want at the price you want to pay. For someone to feel they need to “make noise about this crap” when offered something that costs more than they personally want to pay seems, frankly, a bit juvenile and self-entitled to me.

Of course not, but that doesn’t render dissenters mute.

I don’t go into a store and raise a ruckus when I see a tiny can of Red Bull costs $2. The nerve!

Then you’ve never worked in retail when shifts in value occur.

I’m not a big fan of pay-for DLC this generation but I don’t get the RE5 hubbub. It’s $5.