I'm making this thread, because I don't think you guys understand the way capcom handles DLC.

Note, this isn't the case for everyone, just capcom, and I'm not a fan of the way they handle DLC either.

Anyway, as we're all aware of.  SFxT has tons of DLC pumped in it, due to how spend-crazy people were with SSFIV

So, in order to maximize the amount of DLC sales, Capcom devised a plan to get the DLC out during the games online usage peak...  Which is, when you have the highest amount of unique users playing the game.  Which is, shortly after the game's release.  For a lot of people, when they stop playing SFxT....   They wont be back to play it again.

So, how do you get DLC sold to these people?  You sell it cheap.  How do you make it cheap?  Put it on the disc.  No one owns any of the content they buy digitally.  They own a license for use on the company's terms.  You signed those terms when you paid for the content.

And so, you have one way to keep it cheap.  Now, at Capcom, what happens is, once a game is done, members go off onto different teams to work on different games and products.  So, that means a much smaller team will be left behind to work on DLC.  However, if the DLC is made while the team is still together, you get DLC that much faster, and even cheaper.  12 character?  20 dollars?  Blazblue charged 9 bucks for one character.  Mortal Kombat charged 5 just for one.

So, obviously, this is the problem.  Now, before you go off thinking I'm defending Capcom.  I'm just telling you how and why they did what they did.

Capcom's policy doesn't fit with how DLC should be handled.  So, a company like Capcom should NOT make DLC... ever, unless it's free...  But, this is capcom we're talking about, and they'd never do that.  DLC should be left to companies that know how to release it later.  It doesn't even matter if it's developed at the same time as the actual game, because I wouldn't know if you waited anyway.  As long as what i get is worth the money.  Put it on the disc if there's space.  Less garbage clouding up my HDD.  Can't use the DLC without the disc anyway.

Thoughts?

Incase anyone's curious, the only DLC I've bought of SFxT is Juri and Asuka's alternate swap costumes.

That's actually an astute observation on the matter. Still, the DLC shouldn't be on the disc. It's just a moral imperative thing, even if it does cut costs.

I disagree on the cheap part. They charge 2bucks for a costume. A f***ing costume. Thats not cheap. Yes its 20 bucks for 12 extra people but thats not cheap either. The fact that they have THAT much people locked on disc in the first place means that they are selling an incomplete game, 12 people?? THe balance issues alone...So really you would end up paying 80 dollars for complete game, granted if you bought the game at launch, whats even more perplexing is the Vita version having all that content and more unlocked day one for that version and that retails for 40 bucks, what kind of message does that send???

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.

I have no problem with fairly priced unlockable content being sold for a complete game, but I think some companies take it too far ...

The old shareware model was a decent example of this. Games like Quake were given way on disc with all the content for the complete game on the disc and you had to buy unlock codes to play more than the introductory chapter. The game was fairly priced, the add on content was fairly priced, and I didn't have any problems with it.

Okay, so... Hold on... what exactly does "moral" mean in this sense?  How can you say to me it would be moral to make DLC MORE expensive.

You don't need the DLC on your HDD when the game disc isn't in.  If you download the entire game from a server, the entire thing will be on your HDD anyway...  Which brings me to this...

What if the entire game of SFxT was download-only.  You'd still have to have those extra DLC characters and costumes downloaded, or you wouldn't be able to play against them.

But, don't try to tell me it's moral to leave it off the disc when that's exactly what makes it more expensive.  You don't need the DLC when you're not using the game disc...  Moral?  That's all in your head.  You want an issue with DLC, and so  there shall be one.  It's what you make of the situation.

when you weigh up the costs and extra time of burning off each copy of the ps3 and xbox360 game with the extra data of 12 extra hd character models and their alternate costumes and all their speech files/ending movies and compare that to leaving those files on a HDD somewhere ready to upload them to any people who bought the game and want to shell out for those extra characters I think you'll find if anything burning content to close to a million disks that maybe 20% of those disks will ever pay to unlock them would probably cost more.

As for people having an issue with the difference between on disk dlc and day one dlc content is not just that it is being delivered to people in different ways, this content is completely different, The on disk dlc was ready to go when the game went gold, as in the game was finished, they have to start burning off the disks and preparing them for shipping worldwide, the time from when a game goes gold to when it actually arrives in your local gaming store can be upwards of months sometimes. Now what some companies do is during the wind down period while all the people who worked on the game are technically finished because they have no input in the distribution of their finished code so some companies will try and use those people to drum up some extra content, something they can offer as a day one dlc if you pre order the game or something that you get a download of for free with each new copy of the game, something to entice people to buy it, this ends up as day one dlc.

tl:dr
ondisk dlc - cutting up a finished product to try and get more money from your customers
day one dlc - Content made after a project was complete to encourage people buy the game day one and not used.

Sadly enough, this is a very common practice beyond gaming companies. Universal ios with full feature sets locked awaiting for activationg keys... IMO; DLC is ok when is meant to increase the life of a game, either new missions/campaings, sets of tracks... But costumes dlc is just a joke!

I'm sure those that hacked the game can tell you those characters weren't ready day one.  The costumes, however, was...  Blanka, and Lei both have serious glitches in the game..  Lei has a simple infinity combo, and blanka has a block-stun-chip glitch that leaves you trapped in block stun until all your life is drained.

They were partially completed, and fixed up over the next several weeks silently, through the game's future patches, so that when it came time to buy them, they only required a 100kb unlock code, still.

I'm not buying any of those characters.  I just play SFxT once in a while when visiting my friends'.  I have the game, but..  Next week, when TTT2 comes, I'm done completely. Honestly, the entire game feels rushed, and the Tekken characters feel stiff, because they don't have enough of their own tools to handle the SF characters.  I'm not saying they needed to pull over the entire move list for Tekken characters, but, they all seem like they could have used an extra 4, or 5 attacks.

I had to main Tekken characters in SFxT that I don't even use in Tekken, because my actual Tekken mains, aren't any good in SFxT.  They honestly should have used the effort into making what was already there, better.

What I do want to know is how do you figure leaving the characters on a server is less expensive?  The game cannot be any more than 8GB as it is.  The DLC content, as most, is 1.5GB, and that's bein generous.  So, how do you figure it's more expensive to burn?  Aren't bluray burners faster than that?  Might take DVD a while, but, still...  I just don't get it. 

One thing I want to know is when did we start spelling "disc" with a k?  The only "disks" I've known are the ones with a casing around them.  Hence, Hard disk drive, or, floppy disk.  Compact disc.

from wiki

A disc (International English) or disk (American English), from Latin discus which itself derives from Greek δίσκος, is a flat circular object. It may also refer to

Like saying to nintendo why the game boy color was spelled like that internationally but anyway.

1.5gb to a dvd would take about maybe 2 to 3 mins to burn to a disk, just using a standard burner, obviously capcom would have things that are a good deal faster than thaat but 2mins x 500,000 is still a lot of time and as for what hosting 1.5gb for downloading online I mean you could have hosted that on rapidshare for a tiny cost as a consumer, nevermind how little it would set back capcom to have microsoft store it on xbl or sony to hold it on psn for them.

As for your stuff about Tekken Tag 2? That has been in the pipeline for a good few years now and the director behind it has at least come out and said there will not be any paid dlc for that game, so at least that is a step in the right direction. As for you having to use different characters from tekken than you mained in their 3d actual tekken games? of course you did the characters were warped to fit into the 2d fighter genre some tekken characters even getting fireballs to sort balance out. To complain about that would be like me saying that the daytona car in fighters megamix on the saturn didn't play the same as it did in the game it came from :o