Full-Price DLC and its Future

Full-Price DLC and its Future

DLC has been a central aspect of the industry for quite a while now. The earliest I can remember is Halo 2‘s extra map packs; not the first, but certainly an early one on the console section of gaming. Nonetheless, we’ve all noticed a heavier presence of DLC in more recent times and now it seems it’s all getting a bit pricey. Bungie has recently revealed ‘The Taken King’, apparently a game-changing DLC for the full retail price of the base game… Ouch! Don’t know about you, but I think that’s a bit expensive. And even the first two DLCs for Destiny together cost £40. In a different area of the gaming-verse, Elite: Dangerous has plopped upon us all that it will soon also be releasing a string of DLCs – Horizons – which is available to players in the form of a season pass at the price of £40. Gaming is expensive today, huh.

This all begs the question: will the industry keep pedalling incredibly expensive DLCs alongside base games, and indeed will it survive employing this trend?

The argument in favour of it, well one of them, anyway, is that these DLCs drastically change or improve the game you buy it for to the point where it’s a new game entirely. My first experience of this is the Brave New World expansion for Sid Meier’s Civilization V, which does add a whole load of stuff, including some new units and civilizations and the world congress in which players and AI will put forward an agenda and the world will be able to vote on it, which is cool, but I don’t see that worthy of £19.99. Actually, at the time of writing the Gods of Steam have bestowed upon us a -75% discount on Brave New World, but that’s beside the point. I don’t think it’s still on sale. Sorry to get your hopes up.

On the console marketplace, the higher-ups are rarely so generous. I don’t think I’ve seen an expensive DLC on a decent discount in my life. Ever. So if you’re bored of Destiny and you want to freshen it up a little, prepare to empty your purse.

Now, I’ve been playing a lot of Elite: Dangerous recently, and this new season of DLC does look enticing to be perfectly honest. It’s a line of additions to the game, such as planetary landing and CQC. The point is that it certainly is a lot of money just for a few added features. Only a very small bunch of users are going to be satisfied after spending that much money on so little; I’d feel a little ripped off after that transaction, but then again I am speculating on what the season pass will grant you. It could well be the best damn thing ever made.

So, are the developers going to be losing money if they don’t charge this much?

Let’s look at Destiny‘s sales figures compared to how much it cost to produce. According to The Daily Mail, Destiny cost Activision $500 million to produce, and the game made all that back in day one sales and has been selling ever since. With this in mind, can a £40 DLC be justified?

Over at Frontier, Elite: Dangerous‘ sales were announced to “exceed 500,000.” This gives Frontier a revenue of at least £20 million from Elite: Dangerous, not including any sales of ship re-skins or anything like that. Quite a mound of cash. Does this mean that another £40 for a season pass is just? This ignores the possibility of the prices of the DLCs included in the season pass being higher in total than £40 as the season pass might be a discount. That’s a REAL lot of cash.

EDH

And then there’s Grand Theft Auto V. Rockstar made an incredible wad of cash from sales of Grand Theft Auto, approximately $800 million from day one sales alone, IGN reports. The game cost $270 million to produce, so Rockstar made $530 million by the end of the first day of sales. Frontier really doesn’t compare all too well with its £20 million (roughly $31.4 million) and Destiny only really made its money back on day one, but it certainly has sold a lot since then, reporting 16 million registered users as of February 2015. Quite an old figure now, but hear me out. That’s $640 million worth of users, thereabouts. Take the cost of the game off and that gives you $140 million. These figures could all be bollocks, but in my mind this makes sense. If all of these users were to purchase all the DLCs available for the game, this kicks the figure up to $1.42 billion (16,000,000 users times by $120 for all DLC and base game prices, then subtracting the production cost of the game). This isn’t really a figure that states how much money the game has certainly made or how much Activision really has raked in, I suppose it’s just an idea as to the figures we’re dealing with here; how much money Activision could be facing.

Sorry, I got a little carried away with basic maths.

Anyway. $140 million of basic, un-DLC’d profit by February 2015. Does this figure really need increasing all that much? I don’t believe for a second that Activision needs that extra moolah.

I would say that at least Grand Theft Auto gives its DLC away for free, but it has made vastly more money than Destiny has in one release. And let’s not forget that the game has been released three times.

And of course, the king of DLCs, The Sims franchise, making EA too much bloody money to count. From the Steam store I have pilfered some precise figures regarding price. To purchase The Sims 3 and all the content alongside it, you will need to say bye-bye to £354.79 ($556.83). This answers the question: ‘Is this model of production and selling sustainable?’ Yes. It is. Unfortunately. It looks like this increase in super expensive DLC is here to stay.

This brings us to that other argument that’s thrown around the community of gamers oh so often; if you don’t want the DLC, don’t buy it.

That’s all fine and whatever, but with time you’ll have a sizeable group of people playing a lesser version of a game because they didn’t want to throw double the amount of money at it, and you’ll also have a pool of gamers playing a more advanced version of the same game. This will most likely drive a wide division between the two groups, leaving one less fortunate group in the dark. I think that sucks, especially as everyone has already paid full price for the game, and only the latter pool are getting the fullest experience. I don’t know yet if I want to spend all that money on The Taken King, and I’m not sure if planetary landings are worth £40 to me. That said, some of my friends might partake in the transaction and leave me behind. Then when I want to play with my friends, I’ll have to spend £40 just to play with my friends without holding their experience back.

The debates around the necessity and price of DLC all, I suppose, revolve around whether or not a game is full enough without the DLC in the first place. If a game has very little to do in it and the developers offer a pricey expansion pack to fatten it up a bit, will the players jump at the opportunity, hand over their money grudgingly, or give the game up entirely? We are all divided on how much we love individual games. So long as a developer or publisher identifies a fan base of strong enough love for their game, there will be DLC.

Great.

 

Sources:

http://www.londonstockexchange.com/exchange/news/market-news/market-news-detail/12324822.html

https://www.elitedangerous.com/en/horizons?gclid=CP_Am8yRrscCFcTItAodaEMELA&gclsrc=aw.ds

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=146402

http://deadline.com/2014/09/activision-destiny-broke-first-day-sales-record-500-million-832369/

http://uk.ign.com/articles/2013/09/18/gta-5-makes-800-million-in-one-day

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/09/09/gta-5-budget-most-expensive_n_3892602.html

http://www.gamespot.com/articles/destiny-reaches-16-million-registered-users-call-o/1100-6425136/

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2009/06/10/ea-the-sims-3-the-most-successful-pc-launch/

http://store.steampowered.com/app/47890/

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