What's wrong with DLC?

by Tiberius Jonez

There's been a lot of debate during this console generation regarding downloadable content, or DLC as it's commonly known. Some people love it, others, not so much. I've always been of the opinion that DLC, like most anything, is great when done properly and useless, even insulting, when done wrong.

DLC falls into three general categories for me. First is expansion packs. To me, an expansion pack is new content that adds significant value to an existing title. New levels or missions in GTA IV or Elder Scrolls: Oblivion are good examples of expansion packs. I would even consider the map packs for Modern Warfare and Gears of War to fall into this category. These kinds of new content add potentially tens or even hundreds of hours to the original game's playtime. At $15 or less, I consider these to be decent to excellent values.

Next is original stand alone games like Shadow Complex from Xbox Live Marketplace or Pixel Junk Shooter on PSN. In fact, these are probably the two best examples I can think of of games that could easily be sold at retail, but are perfectly suited for sale as DLC. Again, at $15 or less, these games represent fantastic value for the gamer and a great source of revenue for publishers who maximize profits by eliminating packaging and all the infrastructure required to get products to brick and mortar retailers. By the way, if you haven't played either of these games, do yourself a favor and check them out - you won't be disappointed. These are two of the 20 or 30 best games to come out in the past two years in any format.

Finally, we have micro-transactions. This last category is where things get more dicey. This includes everything from new outfits for your Xbox Live/PSN avatar or Mii, to individual cars for Forza Motorsports 3 or EA's "unlocks" - such as paying $10 to unlock all the courses and equipment in Tiger Woods Golf without having to play through the game to "earn" them. Some of these, such as the EA unlocks, can represent a significant value. If I want to play Tiger Woods online competitively but don't have the time to invest 40-50 hours of offline playtime to level up my golfer, then the cash to unlock my character's levels and equipment would represent a decent value to me. However, offering me Horse Armor (pictured) for my Oblivion steed for 200 MS points is just silly. EA's offering to sell me the NFL Jersey of my favorite team for my avatar and charging $5 (400 ms points) doesn't represent a good value to me either when I can go to Walmart and buy a real Miami Dolphins shirt on sale for $7.

What actually bothers me more than the items offered as DLC is the way two of the three console makers price their offerings. Microsoft sells items on Xbox Live using "Microsoft Points", which are offered in 400 point increments. Each 400 MS points is roughly $5 real money. Microsoft recently changed the pricing structure of their DLC in response to complaints from customers. Previously, most items for sale on Xbox Live Marketplace were structured in such a way as to insure you were always short 100 points or had 100 points left over. It was basically a way for MS to force you to either forfeit that extra 100 points or buy 400 more points so that you could buy some other item. Nintendo uses their own "Wii points" price structure similar to Microsoft's points. 400 Wii points is also roughly equivalent to $5 real money. Fortunately, Nintendo does not seem to price items in the same way MS used to.

Why is it Sony is the only console maker with enough sense to simply offer their wares for actual real currency? It is simple, when I add $5 usd to my PSN wallet, I know $5 usd is coming out of my bank account and this simplicity actually seems to have the affect of encouraging me to buy more software rather than less. Plus, they price many of their micro-transactions under $1. I bought a cool hat for my PSN Avatar, and it cost me 38 cents. I thought it was a fair price and gladly paid it without hesitation.

I find the points systems used by Microsoft and Nintendo to be insulting. There's just something about the points systems that makes me feel dirty. I never feel like I know what I'm actually paying for any given item with those pesky points, and honestly, 1200 Microsoft Points just feels like more than $15 dollars to me, which may be part of the reason why I don't buy much add-on content through Xbox Live Marketplace.

As DLC becomes more prevalent, and eventually (a decade or more) all software is purchased via electronic delivery, it would be nice if all three console makers would just get into the mode of offering good values for real money. As the industry continues to expand their customer base, conventions like these "points" systems will only confuse new customers and potentially turn them off from DLC completely.

DLC can be a great tool for publishers and developers to increase revenues and extend the shelf-life of the games they create, while (hopefully) offering gamers more fun experiences at a good value. But, for DLC to reach its potential, console makers need to make the pricing of DLC simple and transparent.