Are Game Consoles Ruining DLC?

A round-table discussion at Gametopius looks into the state of downloadable content for games as it has evolved over the past several years, going from an occasional, welcome supplement to being a common marketing strategy for most of the industry, frequently causing irritation over pricing and availability. "All of the map packs so far released for the Call of Duty games have been $10 each to download on consoles through closed networks, while PC gamers could download those same packs for free off of FileShack or somewhere else. Valve's own Team Fortress 2 has received a significant amount of DLC that's been completely free on the PC. Xbox owners of the same game, however, have only received perhaps half of that content, and they have had to pay for it in $5 packs. Why is this? The idea of this kind of content delivery was scarcely heard of on consoles, so console gamers see no reason not to pay for it. But on the PC, these amounts of content are usually just considered parts of patches. Furthermore, why pay for a few extra maps and costumes when modders are making and offering new ones for free all the time?"

Comments

Re:Different Audiences?

[hairyfeet]

What is so hard about WASD? My boys have been able to seriously kick my ass in FPS since they were 11. And before any nanny lovers have a fit, I actually taught my boys the difference between reality and fantasy. I showed them how to edit DOOM wads (remember those?) and how by using scripting you could change behavior, using an editor to write their names on the bad guys, etc. So by the time they were playing they could explain quite well exactly what was being drawn on screen and how it works. Of course when the oldest 'curses" the game it is very funny, because you here "Who wrote the levels for this thing? You can see seams everywhere! And this AI is worse than DOOM Hey you dummy DUCK ALREADY!"

It is DLC that will always keep me a PC gamer. It is pretty obvious by now that the console manufacturers are using DLC as yet another revenue stream, screwing their console buyers yet again, while we PC gamers get tons of stuff for free, year after year. Look at how many games have had their life extended thanks to DLC. I'll give some examples of my favorite games: Freelancer-I have tons of fully packed solar systems, new campaigns, ships, etc, and all for free thanks to DLC from modders. Look up "the nameless mod" for Deus Ex which was just released, that game is what...1998? And even the lame budget games can get new life. I am downloading the "Black Ops" pack for Delta Force Xtreme now. It was a budget title and just okay, but the modders have put out some excellent mod packs that make up for a lot of the game's shortcomings, all for $0.00. All it takes is a little time and 480Mb of bandwidth and I have dozens of new weapons, new campaigns, all for free. can't beat that for a title I picked up for $15 in a bargain bin!

In the end it just comes down to greed, pure and simple. And at least with PC games if the developers act like asses the community can just work around them. With consoles acting as gatekeepers they can screw their customers all they want, which I predict they will. I'm betting that more and more games will be released which are only "half games" because they have gutted it so they can sell the other half to use as DLC. And with all this crazy talk about how much "cheaper" consoles is, when I paid less than $600 for a monster dual core with 8Gb of RAM and a 1Gb 4650 GPU, it is just nuts. Hell my oldest is playing L4D on my 3.6GHz P4 hand me down. With a 7600GT I picked up years back for $100 L4D is smooth as butter. So for me and my money the PC is just a better deal, and DLC just makes it more so.