It is becoming a trend now. We are paying more for less.
We pay $60 now for unfinished games such as SFxT and Marvel vs Capcom 3. Some games even go as far as charging you just to see the ending scene of a game. Its ridiculous that the gaming industry is headed down such a dark road.
Im afraid the future doesn't seem as bright as people make it out to be.
It's this kind of hyperbole that makes discussing the subject difficult.
"We are paying more for less".
Compared to what?
Compared to ten years ago, when a fighting game cost $50 - $60, usually had less characters than a current game, and aside from SFA3 - the one game constantly brought up to remind us "how we used to get so much more" virtually no games had any content besides an arcade mode, an offline versus mode, and maybe a training mode.
The
perception that "we are paying more for less" and "incomplete" games comes from the fact that modern games sometimes have extra content to be sold after the game ships, regardless of where that content is located at. So we say "but, but, I bought an unfinished game because now there's MORE STUFF that I say should have been in it!"
Bringing one Prince of Persia 2008 is a straw man because that's like what... one game, in which such a DLC epilogue was attempted. One game of note at least. It wasn't well received and it's all but forgotten now. It didn't cause every other AAA game in the subsequent 4 years to suddenly have $10 DLC epilogues.
Did anyone stop to consider that the reason why the "dark times" of every game having a DLC ending is because people did vote with their wallets, and POP's DLC failed? (IIRC, it never seemed very popular.)
I just don't think there are any general trends of doom on the scale many folks try to make out. In the same time frame as a game like MVC3 going off the rails, we've seen multiple other releases in the genre that people weren't up in arms about, even though those games had DLC: Mortal Kombat, King of Fighters XIII, BlazeBlue CS Extend. Even SCV, which a lot of people rag on for not having arcade character endings, actually has a decent amount of content and we know there's a real reason for anything it lacks: it was rushed as hell, out of the control of the development team.
If SFXT didn't have any DLC on the disc, would people still be claiming it's "an incomplete game"? Given how many default characters it has? Suddenly there DLC on the disc is found and it magically becomes something else?
Not even arguing over whether the DLC strategy is the right one. Just pointing out how much of this is actually highly relative and based on perception. And how much of the controversy is really a narrative constructed out of subjective factors.
"start to abuse"?
They've been abusing it this entire generation, and we have a full thread showcasing "battered wife syndrome". It's sad how complacent gamers are these days.
I do realize this is now officially a DLC bitch thread, so we're suppose to have everyone who feels angry, betrayed, or sanctimonious about DLC airing their grief. But setting up shit like, anyone who thinks the entire industry isn't 100% ruined and doesn't feel entirely betrayed is a battered wife, is ridiculous.