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The "DLC is one big experiment this generation" Thread: Spotlight on Namco

A

a Master Ninja

Member
Let's talk about DLC. To get the conversation started, I've decided to shine a light on the "experiments" Namco has done this generation with DLC. It seems like Namco’s exclusivity deal with Microsoft must have involved them being given have free reign to go hog-wild on the Marketplace. With Idolm@ster in particular, it’s paying off for Namco big time. Take a look at the list I’ve compiled below on what Namco has made available. I’ve omitted things like themes and gamerpics, which are fundamentally dumb, but if you check yourself you’ll notice Namco has way more themes and pics available to buy than just about anyone else.

Ridge Racer 6
$41.00 worth of additional songs (41 songs, $1 each)

Ridge Racer 7
$14.99 for all 20 additional songs, or you can buy them a la carte for $1 each

Ace Combat 6
$21.88 worth of new missions and multiplayer modes
$83.75 worth of plane DLC (almost entirely new paint jobs, $3-$5 each, not new planes by the way)
Whenever Namco adds plane DLC to the game, they make one item free and charge for the rest. The reason for this is the free download actually has all the new content, but you need to pay to access the rest by separate transactions. This is done so everybody who plays online has all the content on their system already.

Idolm@ster
I can’t read Japanese, but there appears to be a whopping 43,250 Microsoft points of dress-ups available, which would equal over $540 US. Even if I am somehow misinterptreting how the content is bundled, that mere fact that it's possible to spend hundreds of space bucks on dress-ups for your loli-dolly is mind boggling. HOLY SHIT

Beautiful Katamari
$17.50 for all 7 of the levels locked away on the disc, which can only be accessed by buying them for 200pts each.
Rather than spending $60 for the entire game, Namco decide to sell the game at $40 with a good chunk of the content locked away.
$23.13 total to unlock all the accessories and characters in the game, but you could also do this by just playing the game rather than paying for "cheat codes"

Soul Calibur IV
(WARNING: Contains speculation on my part)
It was just confirmed that people who buy the $80 collectors edition of the game will get access to “exclusive customization content”. I’m fairly confident that to ensure that people who bought the CE can play online with people that didn’t, those with the CE will get an unlock code that let’s them access the accessories which are locked away on the disc. Virtua Fighter 5 does the same thing with its item packs. I would also imagine if Vader and Yoda were to ever appear on the 360 and PS3 respectively, Namco would just have them locked away on the discs from the start. I fully expect Namco to sell other customization parts that are already on the disc to us.

Since online play is appearing in just about every game these days, the issue of making sure everybody who is playing together has access to the same content arises. I’m aware of three possible solutions to this, and Namco has been known to use the latter two.
(a.) force the opponent who doesn’t have the content to temporarily download whatever new content the other guy has so they can play together [like UNO]
(b.) force everyone to download the DLC packs, but the people that pay can access all the content, maybe make some of the DLC pack misinterpretingavailable to all for free [Crackdown and AC6 do this]
(c.) have all DLC ready when the game launches and locked away on the disc [like Beautiful Katamari and VF5]

So what are your general thoughts on DLC's role in video games? Which are your opinions on the various “experiments in DLC” you've seen this gen? What DLC practices needs to stop? What DLC will you support and why?
 
U

Ubersnug

Member
a Master Ninja said:
(c.) have all DLC ready when the game launches and locked away on the disc [like Beautiful Katamari and VF5]
Click to expand...

I hope this is never made the standard for DLC. Making people pay for content on a medium which you already paid for is a con in my book!
 
DCharlie

DCharlie

Banned
Idolm@ster
I can’t read Japanese, but there appears to be a whopping 43,250 Microsoft points of dress-ups available, which would equal $54,062.50 US. Even if I am somehow misinterptreting how the content is bundled, that mere fact that it's possible to spend thousands of space bucks on dress-ups for your loli-dolly is mind boggling. HOLY SHIT
Click to expand...

MATHS RROD.
 
G

Grayman

Member
(c.) have all DLC ready when the game launches and locked away on the disc [like Beautiful Katamari and VF5]
Click to expand...
I don't like that companies are doing this one. Games come out at very set price points right now but with on disc DLC they are saying you paid full price but not for all the work we did.

Namco also released a 20 dollar tekken game then charged 10 more for PRACTICE MODE and online.


Warhawk has the right idea where the game is being continually updated for everyone(much like a PC game would be) but they kept more art people on the team and are releasing new maps and vehicles for money. Warhawk has few really large maps and an iconic vehicle set so adding a map and vehicle as DLC is a substantial upgrade.

The negative of warhawk is that the paid content will split up the players. There will be four different configurations that players can have once broken mirror comes out so people will probably get booted from games during rotation. As long as they don't go like battlefield and let expansion owners use better items against people without the DLC won't be ruining the game.

I do think that they can only do maybe 1 more booster pack style map release before they need to do some serious bundling or price slashing. They have dropped the base game price which is great to let new players buy in. But if there is a pack or two after broken mirror they may have to start selling "all packs" for the price of the latest one. I just think that after Broken Mirror comes out then omega dawn isn't worth what it originally cost.

Now if someone had a smaller scale online game with quake sized levels I would want packs of 8.
 
R

Rlan

Member
There was a great discussion on a 1UP Yours or a EGM Live some weeks ago about Namco's rediculous DLC shenanigans.

One point brought up was the Katamari DLC levels, where they showed them to journalists saying "And these will be downloadable maps!" in which 1up replied "So they're done? Why not just add them to the game itself? Why split them?" In which they replied "Because we believe America loves DLC!"

So they actually have no idea how gamers want DLC to work. Frankly it makes me wonder if the same goes for the horrible Mr. Driller Online modes, like they even tested them.
 
S

Slavik81

Member
I've never quite understood the obsessions with whether or not the DLC content is on the disk or not. Does it actually make a difference to your end-user experience? No. It's actually BETTER if the DLC is already on the disk, because then it's not taking up room on your hard drive.

Any complaints about DLC should be based upon how the user-experience is affected. Whether Horse Armor is on the disk or not, it's a stupid, piece of DLC. Look at games like Oblivion where the content-patching was practically non-existent as the worst way to handle DLC.

It's nice that Namco has included small amounts of free content with their DLC, but when it gets to the point that there's a mountain of DLC (in excess of $20), there should be a mini-expansion pack that includes it all.

Grayman said:
Warhawk has the right idea where the game is being continually updated for everyone(much like a PC game would be) but they kept more art people on the team and are releasing new maps and vehicles for money. Warhawk has few really large maps and an iconic vehicle set so adding a map and vehicle as DLC is a substantial upgrade.

The negative of warhawk is that the paid content will split up the players. There will be four different configurations that players can have once broken mirror comes out so people will probably get booted from games during rotation. As long as they don't go like battlefield and let expansion owners use better items against people without the DLC won't be ruining the game.

I do think that they can only do maybe 1 more booster pack style map release before they need to do some serious bundling or price slashing. They have dropped the base game price which is great to let new players buy in. But if there is a pack or two after broken mirror they may have to start selling "all packs" for the price of the latest one. I just think that after Broken Mirror comes out then omega dawn isn't worth what it originally cost.
Click to expand...
The 'support' for WarHawk has been worse than if they had never touched the game at all. Pretty soon the sum of the DLC will cost more than the actual game. It's a shame too, because I loved the game, but their support has been atrocious.

At least one of the maps should have been free. Maybe two. There also should have just been one expansion pack in the first place. A single pack with maybe 3-4 maps and a significant number of new weapons and vehicles, for about $20-$30.
 
B

besada

Banned
I like some DLC and dislike others. The stuff I don't like, I don't buy. Never seemed that complicated to me.

Stuff I've enjoyed:
Crackdown DLC
Halo Map Packs
Oblivion (everything except the horse armor)
Rock Band (of course)
Katamari (levels but not accessories)

Stuff I didn't bother with:
Bioshock Plasmids
ME (I have to start a new game, really?)
Anything I could unlock normally by playing.
Anything that's just a skin (ie: all the Ace Combat stuff)
Anything for Pain, because they lied about what was going to be in the original package, and it was clearly thought up by a team of marketing droids who think we're stupid.
 
Z

Zoc

Member
I really hate the effect DLC is going to have on publishers' mindsets. If production is taking too long and costing too much, they're going to be tempted to just ship what they have and release the rest as DLC. It could mean an epidemic of short games.

The situation is not hopeless, though. There have been a few high-profile games released recently that were blasted for their shortness, and none of them that I can remember were really a success. Heavenly Sword, Ninja Gaiden DS, Stranglehold. Perhaps this means gamers will get stricter about the value proposition of the games they buy.
 
S

speedpop

Has problems recognising girls
I think DLC is a joke.

Whatever happened to the mindset of handing out small freebies to the community ala PC gaming.

Things like maps and the rest. I couldn't believe the PR garbage that came out from Infinity Ward over the new maps scheduled release for CoD4 on PC. Something akin to "when we know that we can safely charge people to pay money for these maps, then we'll release them."
 
S

Scrubking

Member
I've never quite understood the obsessions with whether or not the DLC content is on the disk or not. Does it actually make a difference to your end-user experience? No. It's actually BETTER if the DLC is already on the disk, because then it's not taking up room on your hard drive.
Click to expand...

If it's already on the disc it's not DOWNLOADABLE content is it?

Charging people to unlock stuff that's already on a game disc is a scam. I paid full price for the disk so I'm entitled to everything that's on it.

Holding back parts of a game that are already done to charge extra later is also a scam.
 
S

Steverulez

Member
Rlan said:
Frankly it makes me wonder if the same goes for the horrible Mr. Driller Online modes, like they even tested them.
Click to expand...

Is it because "America loves patches!"?

Seriously to do DLC that way for that reason is just stupid.
 
Y

Yagharek

Member
Wow at the Katamari scam. If Americans think they get it bad, the game is $109.95 in Australia (roughly $100 USD) and that's before DLC double dipping.
 
D

Durante

Member
Slavik81 said:
I've never quite understood the obsessions with whether or not the DLC content is on the disk or not. Does it actually make a difference to your end-user experience?
Click to expand...
I fully agree with this: it doesn't matter where the content is stored physically -- and just because you have to download something doesn't mean it wasn't "done" long before the game shipped.

I think the whole concept of the "value" of games will need to be rediscovered when DLC (and digital distribution) fully take hold. Currently, games that offer anything from 5 to 50 (or more) hours of gameplay (of vastly differing quality mostly unrelated to length) are sold at the same price. I don't think DLC can make the "value" of a game much harder to define than it already is. In the end it's the same as before: every gamer has to decide for himself what he wants to buy, and what he is willing to pay for it.
 
Z

zoukka

Member
I haven't and never will support DLC as in extra shit in games. I'm already nostalgic about games that were "ready" when you bought them. Call me stupid but I liked 'em finished.
 
A

Archie

Second-rate Anihawk
Rock Band is the only game so far that makes good use of DLC. There are weekly updates, ala carte system, and reasonable prices.
 
R

Ranger X

Member
I will buy every single DLC for a game i love the day the DLC will be sold at the same price the original content was.

/this ain't happening because people don't know how to fucking count.
 
P

PepsimanVsJoe

Member
To this day the only Namco DLC I ever purchased was "Daredevil" for RR6(pretty much the best song in the entire RR series so yeah).

I expect that to change when Soul Calibur IV has everything from boob sliders to ass sliders to preggo sliders to sliding sliders and next thing I know I'll be $50,000 poorer and sneaking into department stores with my 360 to get my SC4 DLC fix after the house gets repossessed.
 
K

Kandrick

GAF's Ed McMahon
And why isnt Idolm@aster not out in Europe and Usa ?

Cant be that hard to translate, and they could get free money with DLC :D
 
M

mollipen

Member
Slavik81 said:
I've never quite understood the obsessions with whether or not the DLC content is on the disk or not. Does it actually make a difference to your end-user experience? No. It's actually BETTER if the DLC is already on the disk, because then it's not taking up room on your hard drive.
Click to expand...

Because if it's done, and it's part of the physical disc I just purchased, why do I have to pay MORE money to access it?

It's the mindset. If a company makes a game, a game they consider complete, AND THEN decide to make bonus content for said game, I'm all for paying a bit of extra money for that bonus content. That isn't the case with a game like Katamari: in that case, the entire plan from the start is to not give people the complete game, and then make them pay more in order to get the complete game.

As far as Namco DLC goes, I purchase some songs for Ridge Racer 6 (mostly R4 songs), and now (a) feel foolish as I now won't touch RR6 due to having RR7, and (b) kind of thing those songs should work just as well in RR7, because for f**k's sake, they're just musical tracks.
 
T

Tain

Member
I don't think DLC can make the "value" of a game much harder to define than it already is.
Click to expand...

This is the only thing that really makes sense, I think.

shidoshi said:
It's the mindset. If a company makes a game, a game they consider complete, AND THEN decide to make bonus content for said game, I'm all for paying a bit of extra money for that bonus content. That isn't the case with a game like Katamari: in that case, the entire plan from the start is to not give people the complete game, and then make them pay more in order to get the complete game.
Click to expand...

Out of curiousity, how do you know that they didn't consider Katamari complete without the extra stages? I mean, wouldn't it make sense for the designers to have the final say as to what is the actual game and what isn't?
 
B

Beer Monkey

Member
I didn't buy Katamari 360 because I felt the base game was a bad value. If the 'DLC' were actual downloads instead of on the disc, it wouldn't have increased the value of the base game at all.

Buy games where the base game is a good value. Buy additional content if you feel it is a good value.

Ignore the rest of this stuff, and relax.
 
C

Chris Remo

Member
This isn't Namco-specific, but I wrote this piece based on an MI6 presentation; it includes a bunch of DLC statistics.

http://gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=18183

One thing that's sort of funny is that if your Idolmaster estimate is correct, that game has almost the same value of total DLC as the entire PlayStation Store (not including standalone games).

According to EEDAR, all DLC on Xbox 360 weighs in at 308GB with a total value of $6139; total PS3 content totals 64GB and $627; and Wii DLC totals .0086GB and $0 (figures exclude full downloadable games).
Click to expand...

There's also this super-exciting proposal:
Despite these considerable libraries of content, there is little consistency in the amount of DLC from game to game, and EEDAR believes developers could be creating better strategies. "A $60 one-time sale can become a $100 ongoing sale," pointed out Short, noting that Microsoft and Bungie could see $25 million more in revenue for Halo 3 by including one additional piece of $5 DLC that achieves a 10% attach rate.
Click to expand...
 
Ephemeris

Ephemeris

Member
Damn. I knew they were being ridiculous with the Ace Combat DLC, but I had no idea about the other stuff... FFS Namco!
 
C

Cynar

Member
Ubersnug said:
I hope this is never made the standard for DLC. Making people pay for content on a medium which you already paid for is a con in my book!
Click to expand...

Exactly! Such a scam and I can't believe people are gullible enough to pay into that shit.
 
M

MisterSINISTER

Member
DLC is a double edged sword. it works perfectly for games like Rockband and Guitar hero where you dont have to buy another game, you can pick the songs you want after the initial purchase. when it comes to other game content, however, im deeply opposed to it. like extra levels and weapons...core gameplay elements that seem like they were stripped from the original game so that the devs could make a few extra bucks.
 
R

radjago

Member
Chris Remo said:
This isn't Namco-specific, but I wrote this piece based on an MI6 presentation; it includes a bunch of DLC statistics.

http://gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=18183

One thing that's sort of funny is that if your Idolmaster estimate is correct, that game has almost the same value of total DLC as the entire PlayStation Store (not including standalone games).



There's also this super-exciting proposal:
Click to expand...
Chris Remo is still alive?

On topic, at least Namco is putting single player DLC out there, which can't be said for a lot of publishers.
 
K

kiryogi

Banned
J. M. Romeo said:
That IDOLM@STER thing can't possibly be real. There must be an error of sorts, or so I hope.
Click to expand...

Oh it's true

<-- has probably nearly paid a 1000 to Namco with game and DLC purchases.
 
M

mollipen

Member
Tain said:
Out of curiousity, how do you know that they didn't consider Katamari complete without the extra stages? I mean, wouldn't it make sense for the designers to have the final say as to what is the actual game and what isn't?
Click to expand...

A lot of it is mindset. If the stages are on the disc when I buy it, that to me means that before the game was even finished, it was decided that more stages should be made. At that point, they should have been in the full retail game, period.

Now, you could argue that a game like Halo 3 is the exact same as Katamari. With Halo 3, they knew they'd be making more stages after the retail release, and I knew they'd be doing that. But at that point, I'm paying money for something. Something new is on my hard drive after I've spent that money. With Katamari, I'm paying for content I already physically own.

It's like buying a house that has four bedrooms, but I can only get into three, and if I want to use the fourth I have to buy a key to unlock the door. If I spend money to build a fourth bedroom onto my house, I understand that, because I'm receiving something I didn't have.

So, again, it's perception of what's going on that bugs me. It just seems a bit shady to decide before a game comes out that you're going to make extra content, and then just toss that content onto the disc. It's the mindset of unlocking the right to play something I already own by all rights, versus paying to then own something I didn't previously own. To me, under that situation, I'm not getting a complete game.
 
E

ElyrionX

Member
shidoshi said:
A lot of it is mindset. If the stages are on the disc when I buy it, that to me means that before the game was even finished, it was decided that more stages should be made. At that point, they should have been in the full retail game, period.

Now, you could argue that a game like Halo 3 is the exact same as Katamari. With Halo 3, they knew they'd be making more stages after the retail release, and I knew they'd be doing that. But at that point, I'm paying money for something. Something new is on my hard drive after I've spent that money. With Katamari, I'm paying for content I already physically own.

It's like buying a house that has four bedrooms, but I can only get into three, and if I want to use the fourth I have to buy a key to unlock the door. If I spend money to build a fourth bedroom onto my house, I understand that, because I'm receiving something I didn't have.

So, again, it's perception of what's going on that bugs me. It just seems a bit shady to decide before a game comes out that you're going to make extra content, and then just toss that content onto the disc. It's the mindset of unlocking the right to play something I already own by all rights, versus paying to then own something I didn't previously own. To me, under that situation, I'm not getting a complete game.
Click to expand...

All good points. I just want to add that if the devs could find the time and resources to produce the "extra" content on the retail disc, doesn't it mean that the "extra" content was meant to be part of the retail package right from the start? If that's not the case, why wasn't the game released earlier (since it would take less time to produce a game without all that extra content) while the devs continue to work on additional content that could later be released as DLC?
 
V

Vaxadrin

Banned
I'm still pissed off about Ace Combat 6 DLC. The co-op in that game was great fun...until you realize you only have two levels and have to pay for more. Levels that use all the same assets in the game already.
 
C

Cheeto

Member
Weenerz said:
I dont buy any DLC at all, no maps for Halo or CoD, no songs for GH2/3 or Rock Band, fuck em.
Click to expand...
The only way to go.

Most DLC was free in the past, now it's the other way around...Fuck that.
 
F

fistfulofmetal

Banned
WhatRuOn said:
The only way to go.

Most DLC was free in the past, now it's the other way around...Fuck that.
Click to expand...


Getting extra game content for free is the strange notion. You were lucky it used to be mostly free.

DLC is great as long as it's not paying for tiny nothing things like new costumes or something like that. New maps, Rock Band songs, additional game modes, etc all of that is great for DLC.

I love it when a dev continues to support their game well after release.
 
D

derder

Member
Last generation only really had the Halo2 DLC maps, but those were retail releases as well. How well did they actually do? Does anyone have actual numbers? I'm really curious.

I think Microsoft is really trying their best to set the precedent. I think they found my sweetspot at $5 for classic ports, $10 for sizeable releases, $15 for Last-gen games, $10 for sizeable new content, and $30
?
for full blown expansions like Oblivion's.

Unfortunately, we've had the rape-age like the OP mentions, but I think you guys are overlooking Lumines.

Now, I understand what everyone was thinking: "OMG $22.50?!?!
Original release+"advance pack"
, THATS BULLSHI--"

And it appeared that way.

MS had released everyone other game for XBLA at a $10 max until that point. They were faced with a problem: How to release a FULL RETAIL game on XBLA with a 50mb limit.

Now, granted, they painted THEMSELVES into the corner with their price model and game size, but in the end, I really think this was the best route and best example of DLC maturation so far this gen.
 
C

Cheeto

Member
fistfulofmetal said:
Getting extra game content for free is the strange notion. You were lucky it used to be mostly free.
Click to expand...
Are you serious? Developers always used to release free maps after release.
 
K

kiryogi

Banned
Im@s DLC is pretty affordable if you've seen previous posts about it. Getting the outfits and etc in arcade required a pretty substantial amount
 
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