Zack Alklazaris said:
There is absolutely no reason they couldn't of included this in the game straight out of the box.
I wish I still had the link somewhere to what I want to explain, but there are plenty of good reasons why they couldn't include it straight out of the box.
Game development doesn't work like you think it does, where they can add things to the disc after right up until launch.
Developers have deadlines, and with how complicated and involved games are these days, even more game content is left on the cutting room floor than has happened in the past. It is just now in the era of being able to offer DLC, companies can get that to people now, instead of forgetting it because they couldn't get it to people because consoles weren't complex enough and didn't have the ability to get such content after a games launch.
Things that are cut like that are things that the makers consider not to be main content anyway, and it doesn't matter if a whiny bunch of gamers think it is, they are entitled to jack-crap.
When a title nears a deadline, the developer, if it isn't finished with some things in the game, can ask the publisher for an extension, but that doesn't always work. The publisher is the one holding the money so the developer has to comply. So the developer has to pick things to leave out, and those things will be the parts that don't matter in the long run, side missions and characters and such.
A game goes "gold" months before it is released, because they have to have time to produce and package the final product. When that happens a bulk of the development team is either sent to work on other projects or they are allowed to continue work on things that didn't get into the final product, so that it can later be released as DLC.
Now most of the time that content takes longer to get finished, but in this case, BioWare was able to finish work on the content before launch. The gamer isn't entitled to that content, it is for the most part owned by the publisher, and they are the ones that determine what to do with it.
They had three options of what they could have done:
They could have slipped a DLC code into the packaging for all the copies, which means that the player gets that content for free, the previous purchase price doesn't matter because it was the price for the final content. The DLC isn't part of the final content.
The could have held onto the content and sold it to everybody later.
This third option is what they went with: They used the DLC as an incentive for people to buy the special edition of the game. Everybody else has to pay for it later.
I don't see a problem with this as it is a normal business tactic. They reward customers that go the extra mile with their purchases. The DLC gets tacked on as another special edition extra.
In the grand scheme of things, it doesn't matter what the customers think. The content was finished after the main product was finished and the game disc was sealed. It is extra content, and what is extra content for, selling. I for one am happy they included it as a special edition incentive, since I am getting the special edition. It was only twenty bucks more.
Besides to me, people that are whining that hey have to spend extra money on the DLC, make no sense to me. They could have went with the special edition, but of course the will whine about having to pay an extra 20 dollars for it, and usually will say that they couldn't afford it, which I find stupid. If they can't afford an extra twenty dollars, or even the extra ten dollars for the day one DLC at launch, then they really had no business buying the game in the first place if they are that strapped for cash.
The final product is the final product. It doesn't matter how long or short after the game is boxed to be sold, the consumer isn't entitled to content that comes after. It is the company's content and they can do whatever the hell they want with it.
If I ran the company, if I was in their situation, I would have used the DLC the same way.
