Yeah, I saw this thread a day ago but it had zero posts and I wanted to see how long it would go without any replies. It gave me a sick sense of joy, watching this thread die. Now that it's alive, I'll support it.
So, I've been able to fool myself with the concept of DLC. As an old school gamer, I always felt that games were shipped after the developer fit all of the content and fun into it as possible before they reached their deadline. Yeah, I was young and naive but, before the DLC era, that's how things worked. Maps, costumes, hidden characters, etc.
Towards the beginning of this era, it seemed like DLC was a gift from up above. We'd get our new content and it would expand on the games we already had. Old games would become relevant, again. Much of the time, the DLC was free. It was like the devs shipped the game but loved the game so much, they went back and added new stuff just to make that great game even better. With SF4, that didn't seem to be the case. I was okay with this because the stuff locked away were just costumes. They didn't effect anything other than the appearance of the game.
Other games like Soul Calibur 4 had DLC characters but it seemed like their heart was in the right place. They were giving PS3/360 owners the character they missed out on by not having the other version. It never felt as ugly and dirty as it did with SFxT. With this game, much of the core experience was locked away on disc. It wasn't because they didn't have time to add them. It wasn't because they went back later to improve the game by adding new ideas. It wasn't because things couldn't fit on disc. This content was held back for the specific purpose of making more money. Not at all like Tekken of the past that gave you new characters for meeting certain goals or playing a certain number of matches. It was simply holding a portion of the game hostage.
If Capcom had just said "This content is on the disc. You can unlock it by beating the game on ultra hard without losing a match, playing against a Capcom developer, or paying $10", I'd have bought the game on day one and paid the $10. I'd have been totally okay with that because I'd feel like Capcom was offering me an alternative and this content was a reward for truly elite players. If Capcom had made this an actual download, I'd have been fine with that, even if it was "day one DLC". It would give me the impression that the content had to be sacrificed but Capcom tried to give it to us anyway. $10 or more would be justified for their extra effort.
As it stands, I'm a huge fan of both Tekken and Street Fighter but I've yet to play this game. The line had to be drawn somewhere. I can understand Capcom's logic. I just can't support it.
