What’s the deal with downloadable content?
Every new gaming console on the market is 100% internet capable, and houses its own on-board disk space. With this being established, downloadable content has become commonplace in the gaming industry. When a new game is announced and detailed by it’s developers, the downloadable content will usually be mentioned in that same press release. Such content has included everything from fixes to bothersome glitches, to new levels with which to get more time out of your new game. Finally, most of this content (save for the bug fixes) is not free. You will most definitely be paying for that new multiplayer map in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, or that new car in Forza Motorsport 3. This isn’t to say that downloadable content is useless and wasteful; there have been some great successes in the downloadable content arena. The new songs available for Rock Band every week, the sizable updates that are available for Fallout 3, the added segments and weapons for Fable 2, and the two new episodes that are available for Grand Theft Auto 4 are just some examples of great downloadable content. Every developer should use these as an idea of what to do when planning the future of their game.
However, does this mean that a few more hours of gameplay to your game should be worth at least $10? Some feel that once you buy a game, a developer should give you any and all updates they want to make for free. In the PC gaming market (which is now extremely similar to the console gaming market), new content is offered much more frequently and is usually free. New maps are given out regularly, new weapons, cars, playable characters, etc… all for free. What makes console gaming different?
DLC is great but often overpriced.
I’m waiting for the day when all Content is downloadable, then you’ll see prices drop imo.
However, when all else fails, there’s always a torrent!
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Dan Reply:
November 18th, 2009 at 2:59 pm
haha, well, let’s pretend that we can’t ever get content via that means! You think full digital catalogues will be the end of overpriced content?
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I personally think its a rip off. I remember the downloadable content for Gears 1 and over time it became available for free…obviously long after everyone stopped playing it. I think that prices for games are ridiculous, they recoup their expenses with the price alone. This idea of having to pay extra for a game that you’ve already paid a lot for is a bit greedy in my opinion. Long live the illegal download!
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They do add a sizable amount of hours to a game you own, without the wait of a full release.
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I feel like if you’re paying $50 plus for a video game they should give you the extras for free. But I can see why they charge for it because it is extra money to be made for them. They know people are going to pay for it.
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They already raised the prices from $50 to $60 this generation. DLC just gives them another excuse to leave things out of the final version of the game to be added later at an extra cost.
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Hey lets look and the mmo community too a community that makes it’s money on monthly fees after the $40 or $50 dollars you shell out for a game initially. I like the idea of console dlc but i agree with the fact that it can be a tad on the expensive side. like i know for a fact harmonix has me for over $200 in dlc tracks alone.
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Some people say that certain things should be included in the game instead of being sold as DLC. When I’m thinking about that I usually just ask myself whether or not I would consider the game complete without the downloadable content.
Lets take Megaman 9 for example. It has everything you would expect from a classic Megaman game. It even has a shop. So I would definitely consider that a complete finished game. As far as the price goes, I’d say it’s more than worth the $10 asking price. So after that it’s just a question of whether or not the downloadable content on its own is worth it.
Two sections you can download for MM9 are difficulties. Asking price is $1 each. For that they rearrange, add and remove the enemies in every section of the game. This is more than enough reason to play the game over at least once. So for me it adds length to the game as well as making it more fun due to the harder challenge. On top of that someone put a good amount of work into rearranging everything skillfully. So I would say it’s easily worth the $1 asking price.
Now if something was pathetically easily to implement then it wouldn’t be right to charge for it. For instance if hard mode consisted of enemies doing twice normal damage. They could do that with such ease that charging for it would be ridiculous. Similarly even if something is very difficult to do, if it adds nothing to the game at all and has no or few positives charging for it would be ridiculous.
Little Big Planet’s costumes come to mind in that case. I’m sure there is a lot of work done to make the extra costumes, including sometimes licensing. Having said that they add very very little to the game. You already have a wide variety of costume choices to start, they don’t affect the gameplay or length. Given that I think they charge too much. Not to say they are greedy, I couldn’t know that. It could be that they need to charge those prices to justify making it. Still I think it’s too expensive for the content you’re getting.
Of course this is all just opinion because to some harder might not be more fun and a cute costume might make the twice as fun. Still I think in any case you have to consider what they’re doing (or paying) to make it, what you’re getting out of it and how much they want you to spend whenever you consider downloadable content. I don’t think it’s fair to say something like “Difficulty modes are common in games so it should be included” or “A different game does ____ so this game should do ____.”
In other words I’d judge it on a case by case basis. Not as PC games do this and FPSs have that.
This comment definitely went on too long…..
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