Gamers moan at the costs of owning a games console as these days the initial set up for any of the big three can set you back hundreds, yet, most alarmingly the biggest rise in cost is the price of the games themselves. A brand new title could set you back £50 (around $65) and even up to a whopping £100 ($130) for special editions / loaded with bonus DLC (Download Content). Are games really worth a quarter of the console cost?
Digital Revolution
The gaming industry is ever changing like technology that goes with it. The way we buy games has shifted from physically going into a games store and purchasing a disc (or cartridge or even tape, depending on your age) to buying digitally – the ease of downloading a game right to your console from the comfort of your own home. This shift in buying habits means games companies have to sort their pricing to fit in with customer’s needs. Micro transactions and DLC are big ways for companies to squeeze more money out of one title, but also alienate gamers who buy physical copies of games that don’t want to pay any more than they already have.
Industry Analyst, Nicholas Lovell says “The trick for publishers is to build direct relationships with gamers that reduce the risk for development, that make it easy to grab new customers and that allow the gamers who love the game the most to spend lots of money on things they really value. It will be some combination of free-to-play, plus DLC, plus micro transactions. But physical retail is definitely on the way out.”
What Are You Paying For?
What does this mean for gamers? Season passes may seem like a good option rather than buying DLC separate, but paying roughly £80 ($104) for a full game including the bonus DLC doesn’t really seem fair, does it?
And what do you get for paying extra anyway? Let’s take for example Mortal Kombat X. Released in 2015, across multiple platforms, ranging in price of around £40 – £50 ($52 – $65) for a brand new PS4 or Xbox One copy. In this copy you’ll get 24 characters to play with – which, to be fair is a good roster of characters. But, if you want the extra 9 characters, you’re going to have to pay extra. (These range in price from just a few pounds or dollars to packs that are £7.99 (around $10)) or more.)
To top it off, Mortal Kombat X was re-released 2016 as Mortal Kombat XL including all DLC at a cheaper price (around £29.99 or $39.28) than the original version.
Do You Really Need the DLC?
Sure, you could just play the full game without buying any additional DLC, but then miss out on playing as other characters that are new to the Mortal Kombat universe such as Jason Voorhees from the Friday the 13th franchise. Does this seem fair?
In October 2015, Warner Bros. confirmed that Mortal Kombat X had sold more than 5 million copies worldwide by then. It was the fastest selling game in franchise and was the ninth best-selling retail game of 2015 in the United States. The first-month sales of the game is higher than the first-month sales of every game released in April 2016
Another example, Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us, was remastered for PS4 in 2014 that included improved graphics, higher frame rate than the original and the DLC content, Left Behind, yet only included some of the multiplayer maps – the others were of course, at an extra cost. The game would have been full price at launch (around £50 or $65) which again, doesn’t seem fair does it? Sure, the game is a “next generation” game, albeit one that is remastered and does include DLC released, just not all of it. Instead, a Game of the Year edition was released with all previously released DLC.
Show Me the Money
So what does this mean? It proves that games companies are investing lots of money into developing AAA titles and wish to earn as much as they can by offering extras, in the form of DLC to raise the price a gamer is willing to pay for one title. Or include all the content in one re-released package to entice gamers who may not have taken the plunge into DLC.
As gamers, it’s not enough we have paid a good £50 ($65) for a title; we must be milked for every penny we have to get the extra content, to see the bonus costumes or play as a different character etc. Nobody is forcing you to buy the extra content, just as nobody is forcing you to buy the game in the first place. Yet, we do. It’s our hobby. It’s just getting an expensive one at that.
Call the DLC Police?
I understand the need for DLC and obviously why games companies want to push their games to include separate DLC, but I feel prices should be more realistic.
Maybe it should be up to Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo to police pricing for DLC so gamers can get a better deal. Or how about making previously purchased DLC able to be “traded in” for a discount, the same as with pre-owned games of retail past?