How long should it take for DLC to drop in price?

[Gizmo1990]

It is my Birthday today. As I actually have some money to spare for a change I throught that maybe it was time to get Mass Effect on PC. I am mostly a PC gamer these days and I don't have a working 360 at the moment so I figured why not. I checked out Amazon and I can get the trillogy for £11.

Then I looked at what it would take to get the dlc. Really wish I didn't. Bare in mind that this is only the story dlc. Also bare in mind that this does not include Leviathan or Omega. It would cost me £36 to get enough Bioware points to get the dlc. Over double the cost of all three games COMBINED!

Now personaly I think that is insane. But it did get me thinking about how much time should pass before dlc drops in price. I am not sure I have an answer myself but I do belive that it should not still be full price 5 years (ME2) after the game has been released.

And fuck Biowear points. Not really important or relevent to the topic but I just felt like saying it.

 

[tippy2k2]

I never buy DLC unless I really really REALLY like the game or when it goes on sale.

However, to answer the question, it seems like when the GotY edition comes out would be a pretty good time to drop that price. If a GotY edition does not come out, about a year later seems pretty reasonable.

Ultimately, it's up to the game companies obviously. If they want to keep the DLC at full price forever, that's their choice but I feel that come the one year mark, anyone who was buying that DLC has already done it. Those who have not might be tempted to come back to you if you drop your price...

 

[shintakie10]

As far as I've seen, its really rare for DLC to drop in price. GoTY editions might accompany a price drop, but its not guaranteed.

Sometimes you'll get lucky and see some dlc on a price drop (Steam just recently had a bunch of Borderlands dlc on sale for example and I've seen really old BF3 dlc on sale), but its totally random and entirely up to publishers.

 

[veloper]

It's not uncommon anymore for gold editions on sale to end up being cheaper than the DLC at the same time. Just only a couple days ago this was the case for the game Endless Legends on Steam.
If we didn't have enough reasons to wait for the complete game.

 

[BarryMcCociner]

$32 For 3 games with DLC's? That's.... honestly not bad IMO.

The main quest of every ME game is 30 hours round about if you don't do side quests, so that's 90 hours, 32 dollars for all three, that's be... $2.81 an hour? That's quite a value, I'd take it.

Plus, Mass Effect is a game you're GOING to replay a few times.

 

[Gizmo1990]

$32 For 3 games with DLC's? That's.... honestly not bad IMO.

The main quest of every ME game is 30 hours round about if you don't do side quests, so that's 90 hours, 32 dollars for all three, that's be... $2.81 an hour? That's quite a value, I'd take it.

Plus, Mass Effect is a game you're GOING to replay a few times.

$32 is £20. For me to get all 3 plus just what I consider to be the good story dlc would cost me £46 which is $71. Considering I have all 3 plus the DLC already £46 is personaly too much just for the convenience of having it on my PC.

 

[Batou667]

Sounds like you'd be potentially better off getting it on Xbox - either 360 or Xbone if the backwards compatibility is in place yet.

When should DLC drop in price? In a reasonable world, about a year after release. In reality? Sometimes never. This can result in ridiculous situations like buying a bargain-bucket game and then having to fork out ten times the cost on an expansion pack. As ever, whether it's worth it is defined by whether you want it enough. *shrug*

 

[Morgoth780]

Publishers seem to want to drop the price of the game much more quickly than the dlc, perhaps to get more people playing the game and thus attempting to get more people hooked on it and want to buy the dlc

 

[FalloutJack]

I do not like the DLC practice on the whole. I think they should either be in the game or material for a NEW game. You know, like normally.

 

[Darks63]

In regards to omega it is not really worth it to buy it is a DLC that really doesn't go anywhere ultimately. Leviathan on the other hand is interesting and worth picking up. In regard to the topic when it comes to console dlcs you should be prepare to bite the bullet since it is very rare to see it dlcs either drop in price or go on sale.

 

[FPLOON]

The same amount of time it takes a video game to drop down in price: A Month

Other that that, I don't care if the DLC price drops to the single cent decimal as long as it's cheaper than the initial price of said DLC...

 

[FalloutJack]

I do not like the DLC practice on the whole. I think they should either be in the game or material for a NEW game. You know, like normally.

I disagree. If I made a game, I would keep releasing DLC for it for years. I wouldn't want to make a sequel. I would want to bring the game closer to what I originally envisioned with each DLC. We have too many safe sequels. It's suffocating.

No, you see, before DLC we had these things called expansions. They were their own self-contained game that had the mechanics of the previous game but were a whole new chapter. Starcraft had Brood Wars, Doom had its fourth episode (Thy Flesh Consumed), and so on. They could stand alone without the core game and you couldn't piecemeal the game by ripping something out of the game and selling it separately. Dishonest game trade hadn't been invented yet. You got sequels or expansions, and that's the way I like it.

 

[Hairless Mammoth]

When buying the GOTY, "Legendary" or "Definitive" edition is cheaper than buying the all of the DLC (included in the GOTY edition) for the base game, it might be time to at least price match it. Steam seems to do that with some games (Skyrim being the one I know of.),

I do not like the DLC practice on the whole. I think they should either be in the game or material for a NEW game. You know, like normally.

I disagree. If I made a game, I would keep releasing DLC for it for years. I wouldn't want to make a sequel. I would want to bring the game closer to what I originally envisioned with each DLC. We have too many safe sequels. It's suffocating.

No, you see, before DLC we had these things called expansions. They were their own self-contained game that had the mechanics of the previous game but were a whole new chapter. Starcraft had Brood Wars, Doom had its fourth episode (Thy Flesh Consumed), and so on. They could stand alone without the core game and you couldn't piecemeal the game by ripping something out of the game and selling it separately. Dishonest game trade hadn't been invented yet. You got sequels or expansions, and that's the way I like it.

I agree with how a lot of companies have done shady things with DLC and there's now way to know what content they are holding back from the original retail release of a game (unless info leaks). Although, DLC does let them make smaller, unrelated things and release them one by one, instead of holding on to all of it for one big launch a year or two after the original game came out. (Whether or not they nickle and dime us for all of that DLC depends on how scummy the publisher wants to be.)

That said, I still extremely rarely buy DLC at all, and I do miss the larger expansions that seem to be incredibly rare today. (Not counting buying Guacamelee: Super Turbo Championship Edition on Steam with the Guacamelee Gold Edition owner's discount a few days ago, the last DLC I remember buying was Trine 2's back in early 2013.)