Next XBox: XBOX One

[Freude am Fahren]

Yeah, I think the purpose of DLC should be to extend the life of a game. If your game needs to be extended on day one, well...

The price point is a good one though. Weren't PS2/XBox OG games $60 too?

[21Kid]

This is 7 years old... But they were at least $50 for most of the time up until about 10 years ago. That's pretty remarkable for any product. I'm surprised they aren't $75 or more when you get games like Witcher 3, GTA V, BOTW, etc... that provide hundreds of hours of gameplay and look so amazing.

Game cost in USD at system launch year-----Adjusted for inflation as of December 2010
System (year)
NES (1986) $29.99-49.99 ----- $59.79-99.65
SNES (1991) $49.99-59.99 -----$80.17-96.21
N64 (1996) $49.99 ----- $69.60
PS2 (2000) $49.99 ----- $63.41
Xbox 360 (2005) $59.99 ----- $67.10

[Rare White Ape]

From the same article Carlo posted:

"Nope. Microsoft's Kevin Gammill confirmed to CNET that developers won't charge for 4K patches and other Xbox One X enhancements: "It's one of the policies we put in place: there will be no Xbox One X paid upgrades."

This makes sense, because it's ultimately Microsoft that will want developers to get content up for the X, so logically if any developer needs compensation it will be Microsoft themselves paying for it. And I bet that's exactly the sort of things they've been working out with their "development partners" behind closed doors.

[Rare White Ape]

It takes a few months between wrapping up development and putting a game on store shelves, so day one DLC will usually represent several months of work after core game development is done. Not having day one DLC would either mean perpetually putting off a game release for a few months or just artificially holding back the release of DLC to create a delay.

Good developers (i.e. nobody on Kickstarter) will run by a design document that defines the minimum standard and content of their game. Most games go gold only a few weeks before launch - Breath of the Wild went gold on February 8th before its March 3rd release. That short turnaround means that any DLC for most AAA games is either planned for at the beginning of development (SW Battlefront) or culled from the design doc and turned into paid DLC (Deus Ex: Mankind Divided).

[Freude am Fahren]

Perhaps a slew of game-tied-in consoles when the X launches? Like the F6 One that I bought.

As for the price point thing we're talking about. Thank, kid, for actual numbers, but your point of "when you get games like Witcher 3, GTA V, BOTW, etc... that provide hundreds of hours of gameplay and look so amazing" got me thinking.

First the game play. Is it the games, or culture that makes newer games seem more lacking? I mean that, back in the day, it seemed like when you were done playing Metal Gear, or Banjo Kazooie, or hell, even Donkey Kong Country 3, that you felt like you really experienced and achieved something, more so than current titles. Was it originality, my age (early teens), or was it that there really was something more to them.

[Jason]

What I've started doing with DLC, is if I've gotten a lot of entertainment out of a game, I'll buy the DLC even if I'm not interested in it. FFXV and BotW being good examples. Combined I put about 240 hours into them, so giving the devs more money isn't at all an issue. I used to buy "complete" versions of games at launch, and it just started feeling like I was getting ripped off, if I ended up not being super into the game.

That being said, modern games are dirt cheap compared to years past due to inflation (see above table), and development costs have increased, so it makes sense from their perspective.

[Kchrpm]

Was it originality, my age (early teens), or was it that there really was something more to them.

It's because you hadn't experienced as many things like it before. It's not as much of a life changing experience because you've been playing games for decades now.

[thesameguy]

Good developers (i.e. nobody on Kickstarter) will run by a design document that defines the minimum standard and content of their game. Most games go gold only a few weeks before launch - Breath of the Wild went gold on February 8th before its March 3rd release. That short turnaround means that any DLC for most AAA games is either planned for at the beginning of development (SW Battlefront) or culled from the design doc and turned into paid DLC (Deus Ex: Mankind Divided).

Agreed, but you are still talking about finite resources. All the game and all the content at once requires more people than all the game and all of the content over time. These days especially, when a game release will likely be followed by weeks or months of bug fixes, building up a huge development team to have them go idle makes far less sense than a less ambitious release cycle, where content can be doled out over time - even if that first content comes only a month or two after a game has gone gold. That's still a month of extras rather than combining that with core development. IMHO, Nintendo is probably not a good example of typical, since they are an in-house operation - they don't have to deal with multiple hardware and network platforms... much less PC development.

[Rare White Ape]

Yeah, they're not a good example, because of their overall development style. But they are, in my books, the gold standard that everyone should look toward if they're planning a large and ambitious title. BotW took five years, and probably achieved content lock (where no new features are added) two years ago, then spent the rest of the time squashing bugs. But as a result there have been no major bug-killing patches post-launch, just minor performance tweaks. It was a team of about 300 people, not including contracted assistance from outside firms like Monolith Soft.

[Jason]

It's because you hadn't experienced as many things like it before. It's not as much of a life changing experience because you've been playing games for decades now.

Also, games (or at least the ones I play) are a bit easier now. Back then, playtime was extended because of dying and doing an entire level over, but now that things are open world, it seems a bit different. You might die once in a while, but you go back to the last autosave (2 seconds before you died) to re-do that specific moment.