The Gamer Geek Blog – Downloadable Content & Season Passes

GamerGeekHey Geeksters!

Other than Sega saying they are going to release they their 3D Classics, for the 3DS in April not a whole lot has happened, so this gives me a free week to talk about something that’s been bothering me for a little while.

Downloadable Content (DLC) and season passes, why are these things so instrumental to the gaming industry?

When I look at games like Splatoon and Mario Kart I can go ok, Nintendo kind of has an idea of what they want to do in certain cases. But then I look at Smash Bros and go oh wait, they still do but don’t know how to do things. Before Smash’s first DLC dropped, the creator of the game said there wouldn’t be DLC at all, then quickly changed his mind. Which was weird but seeing what he wanted in the game and what we got this was a change for the bette -, having Ryu from Street Fighter and Cloud from Final Fantasy 7 is amazing.

Looking at Mario Kart 8 I can see what kind of ideas Nintendo has planned for the future if more games have DLC  (outside of Fire Emblem Fates). Mario Kart had some paid and some free DLC, the free was the 200cc and the real cars as karts, the paid was adding 16 tracks, 8 colors for Yoshi and Shy guy, 4 characters and some karts…so about a fourth of what was in the game got added as DLC…for $12 total. This is also amazing – in a time of microtransactions where extra colors and do overs are a dollar each this is how DLC should be done.

And lastly Splatoon. I don’t think there has ever been a case as unique as Splatoon, in which a company resealed an unfinished game, said yes we know its unfinished, then slowly rolled out what they wanted to release in the first place for free. Everything about how they did the DLC, to me, was correct- they released the maps one at a time and gear in bundles. The only paid DLC that they did release was the amiibos that gave gear and a weapon.

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