Originally published on Trevor Trove on January 15, 2016
So when I started writing this piece, it was with a very different tone.
You see, a few days ago, LEGO Marvel Avengers Game Director Arthur Parsons announced via a PlayStation blog post that Tt Games had a couple of DLC packs coming out for the game centered around Captain America: Civil War and Ant-Man.
Now I thought that when the post was saying they would be free to PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4 owners they would still be available to every other platform for the standard cost. Because I thought that Sony and WB Games had finally stumbled upon the idea of a DLC deal that doesn’t equate to Sony paying WB Games to keep Microsoft players from the content. I thought that Sony was paying WB Games for the DLC for their players as a thank you for playing on a PlayStation platform while still allowing Xbox or PC players to enjoy the same content day and date on their preferred console if they wanted to just pay the few extra dollars.
But I was wrong.
Instead, it’s the same bullshit we saw with something like Destiny. Where Sony has paid for exclusive content that only their players can get. Even a few days later, reports seem to vary on whether or not this is a completely exclusive deal or some timed-exclusive DLC. If timed-exclusive, it will at least come to other platforms eventually just as the Destiny content did.
I should have known better. WB Games are the one’s behind the gross Arkham DLC practices like retailer-exclusive content and season passes announced well in advance of the game but with no details as to the content.
But it’d just be so easy to spin it the other way.
Sony Exec: Hey, played the game. Loved it. What are you guys thinking DLC-wise?
WB/Tt Rep: Oh, probably a few different packs: some level and some character skins.
Sony Exec: Here’s a bunch of money to give one of each to PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4 players for free.
WB/Tt Rep: Do you want us to wait six months before we release that content on Xbox?
Sony Exec: Not at all. We’re doing this as a thank you to the players who choose to play in our ecosystem. But if someone wants to play on Xbox or PC, you should go ahead and just charge them for the content like you were going to.
Sony gets the sales pitch of saying you get free content for playing with them (which they spin as giving back to the gamers) and Microsoft fanboys can’t accuse Sony of paying to keep content locked behind their consoles.
It’s so simple! Somebody hire me as a low-level Marketing Manager!
All this said, I’ll still get the game and probably enjoy it with Cat for my Co-op with Catherine series but it’s still a load of crap.