Content policy won't change on in-development titles, but new direction considered
Capcom has backtracked on its policy of releasing on-disc DLC after negative feedback from its customers.
In a message on the publisher’s official forum, Senior VP Christian Svensson said staff at the company had been listening to customers and would now be "re-evaluating" how such content is delivered for future games.
Svensson admitted however that many upcoming titles already in development, such as Dragon’s Dogma, would still include on-disc DLC as the decision to include it “was made at the beginning of the game’s development”.
Capcom recently came under fire from customers after it was revealed that Street Fighter X Tekken had 12 finished characters hidden on the disc, which would be made available at a later date for $20, or 1600 Microsoft points.
A spokesperson for the company then sparked further furore over the policy when they said “there is effectively no distinction" between on-Disc DLC and through download at a later date.
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"...was made at the beginning of the game’s development”.
I think it would be fair to say that might be part of the frustration. In this case the decision was made at the start of development "okay, what can we fit on the disc but hold back and then charge extra for" rather than the much more respected mantra of "okay, so here's the game and we're nearly done, how can we continue to develop on this and add extra value for the consumer with continuous paid-for future releases". I'm not saying ignore the issue of DLC, it needs to be considered during development for sure, but customers are right to take both what the content is and how it was created into consideration.
