Last week EA announced a DLC coming out for Dragon Age: Inquisition called Jaws of Hakkon. This isn't really new, DLC comes out all the time, but this time this release put a focus on something that has existed for a while in the gaming industry. Until now, companies like Microsoft and Sony paying companies to release exclusive content has been less visible. JoK came out for Xbox One and PC only. Yesterday EA announced that this DLC would come out for every other console one month later.
DA:I has received a lot of game of the year awards and praise and is a much bigger game then a lot of games with staggered DLC. Destiny came out last year too, and Sony paid Bungie to make sure that a bunch of DLC only came out for the game on the PS3/4. This time it is Microsoft who is doing the paying for exclusivity, but at least the PS3/4 will be getting it eventually. Some game companies use these funds to help complete games and DLC that wouldn't normally come out otherwise due to budget restraints, so it makes sense that this kind of thing would be good for developers. That being said, as this Kotaku article says, this is essentially companies paying developers to keep some players from having this content because they picked the "wrong" console.
When I saw the announcement that DLC would be coming out I was excited. Then I saw that it would be for Xbox only (at least for a while) and all I did was get disappointed. I didn't do what I assume this type of gimmick is supposed to elicit: buy the console with the exclusive content. Increased sales is the main reason that companies like Microsoft and Sony do this, and I have to wonder if it works. Unfortunately, it probably does on some level.
I remember when I saw this kind of thing the first time. Soul Calibur II came out with console specific characters. This meant that to play as Darth Vader I would need to buy a copy for my PS2 while to play as Link or Spawn I would need to buy a copy for my Game Cube and Xbox respectively. This is ridiculous. None of the characters were game breaking or necessary so I just picked up a copy for one console and called it good. One of my cousins did what the companies wanted. He bought all three copies of the game. I remember thinking "ah, that's why they did that!".
Ever since, I have tried to not support this kind of behavior, unfortunately it makes money for the companies, so they will still do it. I won't buy an Xbox One to play this DLC. I love DA:I, its a great game, but not worth buying another console for just to get access to a little bit of content. Hopefully if enough people just don't buy into the scheme this kind of thing won't happen any more, but considering its been happening for a long time, I don't know if that hope is futile or not.
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