Downloadable Contempt (Part 2)

In Part 1, I discussed the model in which game companies produce new DLC. A model that is effective, efficient, but easy to misunderstand by the consumer who is already more than wary about DLC and being exploited.

This has been a big issue for Capcom in the last two years. When Marvel VS. Capcom 3 was released, one of the first things people were clamoring for was more of their favorite characters via DLC. Capcom even went as far as to state that future characters would be available (Jill from RE5 and Shuma Gorath from Marvel being available to anyone who bought the collector's edition right off the bat) and even held a giant poll to find out who the people wanted the most.

Then... silence. Capcom went quiet for nearly half a year and no one heard much of anything in terms of future content for the game. People expected, though, that the longer they waited the closer they were getting to new characters being made available.

To everyone's surprise (and anger) Capcom would forgo downloadable content altogether for the game and produce an upgraded edition: Ultimate Marvel VS. Capcom 3.

It should be of note that this was not the first time the company had done something similar. Months before, Street Fighter IV had it's own expansion, Super Street Fighter IV. One of the reasons that most people were more accepting of this release was due to it's sizable increase in characters, re-balancing of all of the original characters, new endings animations, and the length of time between the game's release. Not that there weren't people who were still frustrated by this, but the level of vitriol was nothing compared to the volume received over UMvC3's release.

"The company promised us DLC!" "We're paying 40 bucks for the same game with only a few new characters!" These are legitimate concerns, at face value. Capcom had indeed gone back on their word to release these characters as DLC and the $40 price tag for what essentially felt like a shameless cash-in most likely hurt their sales and fan-relations in the long-run.

However, I personally believe there are some legitimate defenses to be made for their decision.

First off, let's take a look at the expanded character roster. Twelve new characters, on top of the original 36, unlocked at the very beginning. Let's look at that in terms of DLC, shall we? How much do you think each character would have been sold for? I honestly wouldn't consider anything less than $2 a piece, $4 dollars maximum. So let's go ahead and average it out at $3. 12 x 3 = 36. $36 for twelve new character. Can you imagine if it were $4 a character? Or, even worse, the original $5 a character people without the collector's edition had to pay for Shuma Gorath and Jill Valentine?

Secondly, every single character in the game was tweaked and rebalanced. Some to lesser extents, some to greater. There wasn't a single character who wasn't modified to account for the new roster or to fix some issue people had commonly complained about. These alterations would be necessary and ultimately would have also cost money to implement. Not to mention all the new modes and features that were added.

Not to mention consistency between people playing online. Let's consider that all these characters had been DLC. You bought Rocket Raccoon, Iron Fist, and Virgil, but the person you want to fight has a team made up entirely of Frank West, Phoenix Wright, and Strider Hiryu... characters you did -not- download. Or, consider that they have all their characters with the updated tweaks and adjustments and you do not. Exactly how is Capcom supposed to account for this?

That's where things start to get really messy, bringing us to today.

Capcom recently made yet another controversial move with their latest release, Street Fighter X Tekken. Not only were there several DLC characters announced before the game's release, these characters were also already on the disc, locked. They would required a downloaded code, which the customer would have to pay for, to gain access to these new characters.

Capcom said the main reason these characters would be available on the disc was for two reasons: To provide compatibility with those who had unlocked the characters and who hadn't, to cut down on hard-drive space the player, and to negate the necessity of a Super edition down the line.

This did not sit well at all.

"We paid $60 for the game! We deserve what's on the disc!" "Those characters were already completed, why aren't they part of the game!?" "This is a slippery slope! Soon, you'll pay $60 for single player, $10 for multiplayer, then $5 for extra characters!" I should note that last one there is a terrible fallacy.

With the way this model works, you are paying $60 for the complete game. The complete game being everything that is NOT DLC. The DLC content, as stated in part 1, was developed post production of the initial game, during it's testing and certification. Thus, again, the original budget and project scope did not account for them.

If the characters WERE included in the original game, the production budget would have been higher, development time longer, and we'd be looking at a 70-80 dollar game. The costs must be recouped somehow and people need to stop automatically assuming that companies are trying to swindle you out of your money.

Remember, you were ultimately going to have to pay for these characters sometime down the road if they'd just held off on them. Again, this is the EXACT SAME SITUATION, just at a different TIME. Earlier instead of later and done in a way that, ultimately, costs Capcom LESS money and you the exact same amount.


If you have a dissenting opinion, questions, comments or just want to bang your head against the keyboard and click "Post" then please! I'd love to talk about this with people!