Tekken 8 releases in two weeks but that hasn’t stopped Bandai Namco from announcing the first DLC for the game.
Longtime Tekken character Eddy will be the games first DLC to release in Spring 2024 and will be followed by 3 more characters during the year.
Maybe I’m just being old fashioned but if DLC is announced before a game launches isn’t that just an admission that the game isn’t finished?
I’m a firm believer that any DLC that is announced prior to launch or worse, is included on the disc but locked until you hand over more cash should be included in the full game.
Releasing something you make outside of the budget of the main project for free is something a profit-seeking company will be very unlikely to do as it needs justification for months of work.
Sure, they could do goodwill in the hopes of a return of investment in the form of increased sales from being such good guys.
We’re looking an international entertainment giant here, not a small indie. They need to meet their profit margins or it’s time to fire some of the workforce.
Just because a character needs work after the target role was date does not mean it was outside the budget. Are quality of life upgrades after release outside the budget? What about adding support for ultra wide screens after release?
No need to simp for a corporation. They are clearly releasing characters slowly for more profit compared to several past releases that had dozens of characters included.
If it has a separate price tag, it was outside of the main budget.
If nobody buys the DLC it will not make any money and time invested in it will be at a loss.
This is also perfectly fine. This is the free market. We have the right as a collective to decide the DLC’s value to us.
If nobody buys subscriptions, DLC or expansions, it will ultimately not get made. We will return to the good old days of games where patches are only made to reach new target markets (previously unsupported devices, resolutions, platforms or translations), never to serve the existing audience unless it’s a marketing gambit.
Games as live services will cease. This isn’t inherently bad either. It’s just a question of what you as a customer value.
I value game franchises that I love being treated well and developed by passionate people. You can see the love the Tekken team has put on display for the past 4-5 years in particular. While their track record remains good, I am a happy repeat customer.
There is nothing wrong with being picky with your purchases either. You don’t have to spend 20 bucks to get Eddy + the other 3 unannounced characters if you don’t assign it value. If there are more people like you out there, the devs will plan accordingly.
This is how we got only 36 characters at console/pc launch for Tekken 7, after Tekken Tag 2 despite its immense 61 character roster bombed.
People didn’t find value in Tag 2, so Bamco budgeted T7 accordingly. Luckily they made one smart choice, which was launching for PC and Xbox and got immense sales due to new untapped markets.
Admittedly T8 rolls out with less than T7 on non-arcade release, but it’s worth noting T7 had 2 years in the arcades with a starting roster of 20. However T8 skips arcades entirely and has reanimated much of the character roster, which is a rare treat considering they’ve been reusing animations made even as far back as 1995 in T7 still.
Either way, I hope you get the gist of what I’m going for here.