Sunday, October 2, 2011

Gaming: Scary DLC Trend.

DLC (Download Content) is a real turn off for me. It's not because of the DLC itself. It's the time that takes to download the DLC that is a real turn off.
Allot of people including me don't have super fast internet, and allot of the latest DLC are topping 1-2GB large, and some games release multiple DLC that large with in a year.
Call Of Duty: Black Ops has a bunch of DLC 1-2GB large, and I find my self just downloading the DLC then playing it. Not to mention that each DLC for Black Ops cost $15 each.

Each new games theses days cost $59.99, and when I get the game I feel some what satisfied when playing the game, but as the DLC rolls out that satisfaction goes away like it was never there because I feel like the game developers lure me into paying $60 then later release DLC that adds more to the game, and now to get full advantage I would have to spend and additional $10-30 for the extra DLC content.
Consoles are famous for the paid DLC, but PC on the other hand gets away with it by releasing DLC for free.
For example; Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead 2 both got DLC, but Microsoft required that Valve charge for each DLC over Xbox Live. On the other hand, both Left 4 Dead games on Steam on the PC is free to all users.
It comes to a point where there are so much DLC that is released for the main game that all the DLC all together cost equal or more then the $60 main game. Call of Duty Black Ops is an example. Not only is the game running at full $60 retail price there are 4 DLC for the game that cost $15 each which added together cost an additional $60 for them all! Also when the main game does finally gets reduced in price the DLC will be much more and that is kind of unfair.

Sony is famous for intrusive mandatory downloads for their games. Heavy Rain and MAG 2.0 updates requires you to download around 1.3 GB download each to even play over the PSN network, and you can not run a background download for them.
I don't know about you, but the time spent downloading DLC is a frustrating waste of time that could be playing the game in the first place.
Gran Turismo 5 was a real shock when I got the game! The first time I put in the game, I expected to maybe download a small patch and get right into racing in GT 5, but no! The first thing I get is message saying I need to download a 608MB patch in order to play over PSN. So... I had to wait 2 hours to even play Gran Turismo 5 for the first time.

I am not blaming anyone here. One way to get around this is to get faster broad band internet, but it is not cheap these days and with the economy the way it is. The prices for fast internet connection is going up.
The game developers knows about this too, but they can't help but release large DLC to add the content they intend.
So it's pretty much 'a rock and a hard place' for the player when it comes to DLC.
Wait hours to play new content, or just miss out completely because you don't have the time to download the DLC. It's also comes to a point where I don't want to even spend the price for a brand new game just to buy extra DLC.

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