1. Characters are significant content for a fighting game. Major gameplay content that takes work to create, design, tweak, etc. This is not something a developer does on his/her lunch break in a day. It's significant work in both time and money.
Okay.
2. Do people really think Capcom went into this with no plan or idea of how many characters to shoot for on the roster and what their plans were for additional content outside of that core content?
I'm not sure what the point of this one is. Of course they had a plan. The plan is to hold the 12 characters back for DLC and the Vita version of the game sometime in the Fall.
3. Do you really think Capcom would have created all 50 of these characters if they weren't planning to sell some later? i.e. Would anyone really expect Capcom to have put all 50 in the $60 retail release?
Here's the one I really wanted. The way this is phrased is either terribly disingenuous or horribly uninformed. Capcom didn't just up and create 50 new characters for this game. A lot of the characters are taken from a game that already existed. I refuse to believe the same effort it takes to create a new character from scratch matches the effort it takes to port a character from one game to the next.
I think Capcom could have easily given us a game with these 50 characters for $60. The reason they don't is because they feel they can make more money by releasing them as DLC instead.
But your question wasn't could they, but would they. To that, I'd say yes, if DLC didn't exist, and they didn't have the option of making more money post $60 retail release, yes, they'd have given us a game with these 50 characters from the start. It isn't an insane idea to think that Capcom would release a fighting game with a huge roster.
Not trying to defend them, but just think realistically about those a minute.
Just something to think about for those outraged by this: Isn't it their choice how to sell their work? I know to many it feels like an injustice or corporate greed they do this or we can't have all these if the data is on the disc, but it seems to me that if this stuff wasn't planned to sell, we'd be sitting here with the same accessible content we'd have now for $60.
It's their choice, yes, but if their choice is a method that their customers don't agree with, one that makes them feel like they're being wronged, isn't it the customers' right to get upset?
Just in terms of the character DLC, I find it amusing how much hate Capcom is getting for selling major work-intensive content when Namco gets no where near this amount for its Soul Calibur V DLC. I have no idea what's "on the disc", but I'm pretty sure the extra costume parts weren't all made-post launch.
Even more jarring, last time I checked there were 26! music tracks to buy for SCV at $1 a pop. Music tracks from old SC games. Completed music tracks! Tracks that required almost no new work aside from possibility re-encoding them to another audio format or something. Maybe. $26 for simply throwing existing audio files into the game. THAT I find offensive. Where's the Namco hate thread?
Fighters catch hate for all types of DLC. Characters, costumes, colors, whatever. Someone somewhere on the internet hates it, and is vocal about it.
The main thing, however, is that how much hate other companies do or don't get doesn't excuse or justify Capcom's actions.