I found the slightest chuckle in that title, as it’s a play of words from the song O.P.P. from Naughty By Nature, for our younger readers. At the same time, a lot of folks feel DLC (downloadable content) itself is naughty by nature. (pun intended.) Today, I want to discuss some aspects of DLC that don’t get talked about very much and what I think is a huge opportunity that’s being missed by today’s developers and publishers.
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve undoubtedly seen DLC move beyond the realm of map packs and new tracks for FPSs and racing games. We now live in the world of Guitar Hero, Rock Band, SingStar, and other DLC leveraging titles that have their business model built around DLC from inception. The publishers aren’t trying to squeeze a few extra bucks out of their title, they’ve almost flipped the traditional concept upside down.
Instead of selling you a full game and trying to make an extra $10-$15 off of you, they’ll sell you a full priced game, but design everything so that original cost on entry is the tiny part of your total purchase. Have you tallied up the total cost of ALL the DLC for Rock Band or Guitar Hero?
Personally I was very excited at the prospect of DLC for these games. I already owned GH II for the PS2 and repurchased it for the 360 when it was released. Here we are now in early 2008 and I own Guitar Hero II & III as well as Rock Band and I’ve purchased exactly zero songs for them. I couldn’t put a finger on why until just recently. I think it’s largely the same reason I’m not interested in buying a cheap HD-DVD player and all the cheap movies right now… I get the feeling there is a very real finite window of relevance for the media. I have a problem spending money on something today that I’ll likely only use for a very short time.
What I’m wanting is some platform (in this case meaning “Guitar Hero” or “Rock Band” as a platform) longevity. I want to know that if I buy $80 worth of GH III songs, I’ll be able to play them in GH IV. I don’t expect anything “extra” out of those songs in GH IV, but I don’t want to have to go back to my GH III disc to have to play them. Why can’t my library of DLC grow with the rest of my game collection? I see no reason it can’t be done, but it isn’t. I’m not even asking them to continue to release GH III songs, once GH IV is out, or Rock Band songs once Rock Band 2 is out, but if I knew right now that I was guaranteed to be able to use my media in their next (and next-next, etc.) versions of their games, I honestly feel I’d be more likely to buy them.
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see the Guitar Hero brand is going to continue… Rock Band also appears to be virtually guaranteed to have a sequel. I mentioned SingStar above (we’re still waiting for the PS3 version in the states, but it’s been out in Europe for a while now), they put out sequels like nobody’s business… claiming over 300 songs in the pipeline. That seems like an equally viable “platform” to start building.
Why aren’t developers embracing their franchises as fully blown platforms of their own? I see this happening eventually, it seems like someone at one of these companies would’ve thought of it before. I don’t even see how this would stifle the adoption of new versions of these games being sold. I’m not asking for GH III to play GH IV songs, I’m asking for the reverse. If they put out a DLC pack, or three after the release of the new version of their game(s), I don’t see how people could really complain if the new game was able to use their previous versions’ DLC.
What do you think, am I missing some obvious reason (other than time and deadlines) why this isn’t being done? Is there a benefit to the developers for not doing this? Do you buy Guitar Hero, Rock Band, or SingStar DLC? If not, would it help knowing the company will support your DLC purchases via later releases of the franchise? If you do buy DLC, would you be more likely to buy more knowing this?
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Hey Rothbart, I have some news that might cheer you up about Rock Band’s DLC. In this article [ http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/846/846387p1.html ] Paul DeGooyer, Senior Vice President of MTV Games, talks about the mass DLC Rock Band is going to have and in the second to last paragraph he kinda hints that Rock Band DLC might be able to carry over to Rock Band 2 if/when it comes out. Personally I love all of the DLC for Rock Band and I have every track for the Xbox 360, including the 3 that came out in the OXM Magazine so I am really hoping will be able to transfer over. It should not be that hard to do as long as they keep the games music coding the same, but I don’t see why they would change it anyway.
The Guitar Hero franchise isn’t going to evolve much in the future, so why not just release a continuous stream of songs via XBL and PSN? That way, I don’t have to pay full price for what is essentially a new list of songs. At least with DLC I get to choose which songs I pay for. And why not sell single songs like Rock Band. Guitar Hero did this back in December with three songs released on the PSN. I just hate having to pay six dollars for a song pack that only has one song I like.
@FaMiCuS: Yeah, I knew about that, but right now I trust that about as much as I _should_ have trusted that Guitar Hero II would’ve offered a “vast selection of songs”.
I don’t want hints. At the least I want very vocal developers repeatedly promising it’s going to happen. And then I want to SEE it happen. I’m beyond trusting rumors many, many months before release.
@RaiseHavok: Yes, they ALL need to offer single songs. I don’t mind saving $.50-$1.00 if I buy a 3-pack, but if I really absolutely HATE a song, I shouldn’t be forced to buy it along with others I want.
@Rothbart: Yeah I would definately rather have a promise than a hint any day, but so far Rock Band has been keeping good with its customers. Selling single songs, DLC released every week (except for that one in December for the PS3, that was Sony’s fault), DLC cheaper than Guitar Hero, if you go their website you can actually request songs, free repairs on broken instruments (even though it takes some time to get it back), and also trying to Guitar Hero 3 PS3 guitars to work with Rock Band (unfortunately activision only wants money and is finally showing their true colors).
@FaMiCuS: True, but they’ve also promised (and as of yet haven’t delivered upon) complete album downloads… I remember seeing reports of The Who, Grateful Dead, and others…. months ago.
As long as support for Rock Band doesn’t end, I have no issues when the upgrade to Rock Band 2. harmonix stated, from the beginning, that Rock Band is to be the platform, not the usual annual upgrades. So far, they’ve been damn good on DLC (although the full albums thing is still rather unavailable but of the announced full albums, I can’t think of one I want to buy). But I seriously doubt that DLC for Rock band will disable itself once Rock Band 2 ships. And I’d prefer a huge single game roster compared to my current issue with Beatmania of having to remember which version has which song as I switch between 7 discs…
sheppy has a point. If Rock Band can carry over the songs, the interface also has to be perfect. If it results in flipping throught selections of songs, then that’s a problem. Seemlessly integrating songs from the last iteration into the next one’s library could cause some trouble, and what of the people who haven’t played Rock Band, but get Rock Band 2? Will they be isolated because they didn’t have the right of way to get the game when it first came out. I know I started Guitar Hero at Guitar Hero 2 and went down.
Also, would it be possible to download tracks from the previous game’s roster? Or would entirely new tracks surface and overshadow the old? These are the kinds of things the developers have to think about, and what you’re asking for isn’t easy to do. Would you rather have a long wait for the next in the series or a completely new experience with new songs? I know nobody cared when Guitar Hero 2 songs didn’t carry over to Guitar Hero 3. Why the sudden fickleness?
@ummm, Yeah…
“I know nobody cared when Guitar Hero 2 songs didn’t carry over to Guitar Hero 3. Why the sudden fickleness?”
Because Guitar Hero 2 DLC was mainly songs from Guitar Hero 1 and no one wanted those songs again, also they didn’t have 60+ songs worth of DLC like Rock Band (60 songs at $2 each is $120, thats a lot of money spent on one game that would just get updated every year like Guitar Hero does). The only song that I wanted to be carried over was “Ex’s and Oh’s by Atreyu.
@FaMiCuS: Sure people cared. I felt screwed over the deal. When I was promised “new songs”, I didn’t know it meant “new to the Xbox 360″. I already owned GH I/II on PS2 and bought the 360 version for the promise of DLC and online leaderboards (they’d forsaken online play just to get the game out). I felt GH II on the 360 was a quick and dirty effort, I was willing to cut them a break _once_ and wait until they had time to develop a full version on the platform.
The fickleness isn’t new. I’ve not bought ANY DLC for ANY of the music games and I _love_ playing them. Honestly, I played about an hour of Gears/Halo 3 co-op with my son last night but my 360 has pretty much been a GH III/Rock Band player for weeks and weeks now in my house.
I certainly realize I’m not the average 360 gamer, but I’m asking people if they’d likely buy any/more DLC for these games if they knew they could always use that DLC in later versions of the franchise.
@Sheppy: I never said Rock Band’s DLC would stop working, I assume it to ALWAYS work with the original title I bought it for. The day they start “renting” DLC is the day I quit buying from whoever does it.
@Rothbart: I also felt screwed over when Activision basically said “Here is some old songs from the first game, oh yah and we are going to overcharge for those songs too.” They were charging $6.25 for a three pack of songs so if you applied that $ per song ratio to download all the songs from the previous game would cost $97.92. WTF, that more then full price of the previous game that came with a guitar and that $97.92 is just for the songs alone, seriously WTF. I’m surprised you didn’t add that part into your rant.
Honestly Rothbart, DLC just ain’t my thing. I don’t want to pay a penny more for something that MUST either be included in the game or should be released for free post-release! But that’s mainly cause I don’t have a credit card (underaged person speaking out) and my father doesn’t think I should spend anymore money on a game once I’ve bought it. And boy do I agree with him.