CD Projekt Red
When The Witcher 3 released last year, CD Projekt Red came out with a rather impressive statement regarding future content for the huge open world fantasy RPG. Rather than releasing small additional bits of content at a cost to the player, they instead opted to just release all of this over a number of weeks following the game’s release for free.
This still hasn’t changed. Even if you’re just about to start your Witcher adventure tonight, you can pick up a range of quests, outfits, armor, horse armor, and every other microtransaction-like product for free. In terms of more substantial DLC for The Witcher 3, CDPR released Hearts of Stone and Blood and Wine. While Hearts of Stone is a little shorter, the price reflects it and still offers great value for money. At $9.99 and $19.99 for easily another 50 hours of content, and no charges for that horse armor you always wanted, CD Projekt Red nailed DLC and showed how much they appreciate their fans in the process.
Bethesda Softworks
In recent years, Bethesda has been pretty damn good at listening to what their fans want and giving it to them in additional content for their two huge RPG franchises, Fallout and Elder Scrolls. While Fallout 4’s Season Pass provided a 50/50 split of actual questing adventures and content for those seeking to get a little more creative in the wasteland, picking it up before its price hike gave you some serious bang for your buck. While the increase in price was disappointing, the additional content (particularly the final Nuka-World DLC) more than made up for it.
A similar story can be told about Bethesda’s other huge RPG series, Elder Scrolls. Though Skyrim’s DLC was a little more of a mixed bag with Hearthfire not quite being what fans were after, it was priced to reflect its minor additions to the base game. If Fallout 4 was anything to go by, Bethesda Softworks is done with nickel and diming fans for horse armor, and is all about providing substantial content drops for a fair price.
Blizzard
Whether it’s Overwatch, World of Warcraft, Hearthstone, or any of Blizzard’s other games, they’ve always received excellent post-launch support from the team. While Overwatch continues to bring new characters or maps every so often completely free of charge, Hearthstone receives free updates for balancing and still offers paid content for those die-hard fans.
As for World of Warcraft, Diablo III and Starcraft 2, each and every one of them has received some form of update, be it paid or free, that has breathed new life into the standard mechanics of the game on its release. What’s more, any paid content (barring few exceptions) has been received incredibly well among fans and critics alike. It’s Blizzard’s understanding of what their fans want, and their constant efforts to offer the best content for a reasonable price that helps to see their games stay relevant for far longer than many others on the market.
Rockstar
Rockstar’s forays into DLC have been rather quiet as of late. Apart from the Shark Cards for GTA Online, you’d have to go back to Red Dead Redemption’s 2010 Undead Nightmare expansion for anything truly substantial. Yet, Undead Nightmare and GTA IV’s DLCs were so vast and filled with content that it had players in their masses heading back to worlds they had thought they were done with exploring.
In the realm of GTA V and Online, while there’s been no sign of single-player content, the free updates and events that frequently hit the Online service keeps giving players a reason to come back and try something completely off-the-wall in the vast playground of Los Santos.
Nintendo
Nintendo may not be a company you commonly associate with throwing out DLC, yet its forays into paid, post-launch content on the Wii U and 3DS haven’t been bad at all. Mario Kart 8 saw new racers join the roster, a faster CC mode, and some new courses to test it all out on. Meanwhile, Super Smash Bros. Wii U saw some pretty big names from the gaming world join its roster.
Fire Emblem Fates also received a bunch of DLC in the form of map packs, rewarding players with items for completing each map in the pack. While you could buy the 12 and seven-episode packs for $17.99 and $7.99 respectively, if you’d rather just pick and choose, each map was available individually for around $2. Not bad if you’re looking for a quick fix of tactical action.
Nintendo’s DLC offerings may be somewhat small in comparison to the 30+ hour offerings from one of The Witcher 3’s expansions, but they certainly showed that the company was listening to what fans wanted, and even gave them things they didn’t think they wanted until they tried them. With the NX on its way in the near future, it’ll be interesting to see just how Nintendo carries on its DLC plans and continue on its initial successes.
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