According to the executive producer of Gears of War 3, Rod Fergusson, the reason Epic Games can charge for DLC is because they view discs as a delivery system and not as an actual full product anymore.
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"We're not saying that everything on the disc is the product," Gears 3 executive producer Rod Fergusson said in a telephone interview. "The disc is another delivery mechanism."
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They also responded to the growing resentment at the recent Horde DLC pack being a small 1.42 MB download on Xbox Live Marketplace even though the pack was advertised as all brand new stuff not found in the game itself. This would have meant the DLC pack would have been at a larger size and not been secertly locked away on the disc.
While the executive producer understands why people are upset, his actual reasons for locking content included feeling the stuff already unlocked for players was more than enough for $60 and their schedule getting delayed "messed up" their plans for DLC.
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Fergusson can justify his game's on-disc DLC. His answer is complex, but logical. It goes back to the fact that Gears of War 3 was originally going to ship in the spring, but was delayed to the fall. "We had begun DLC packs early enough, and with the extension to our schedule. It meant we had that stuff done before we shipped." He was talking specifically about this first DLC pack. The others aren't on the disc. This first one included weapons and maps that needed to be visible to all players, even those who weren't going to pay for them.
Game developers don't want to splinter their multiplayer community into sub-communities that each have to own the exact same pieces of content to play with each other. To get around that, they often provide new DLC to all players, ensuring that all of them can see the content. But only those who pay for it can use the DLC weapon skin or host the DLC map.
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The spring delay gave Epic a new option: instead of making every gamer download the Horde Command Pack content, they could finish that DLC before the fall and put it in some of the open space on the Gears game disc. "We felt it was a win/win, because no one is going to have to download anything huge when the DLC comes out."
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Gears of War 3 already had a lot of content, even for a full-priced game. Fergusson said reviewers have said there is as much as three games in one, what with the game's replayable co-op campaign, its extensive co-op Horde and Beast modes and its competitive multiplayer. He doesn't think gamers were short-changed for the $60 even if they weren't getting access to all the content on the disc without paying an extra $10.
"I think the thing that makes it muddy for people is when it's on the disc," he said. But Fergusson views the disc not simply as a purchased game but as a delivery mechanism. "We could have left it off and said, 'Hey, here's another disc.'" ... It all comes down to what people believe they're paying for and, as far as Epic is concerned, gamers paid for the full game that they got access to this past September.
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He also tried to shift blame away from his company by saying other companies were doing the same thing in terms of locking content for DLC and his company nor was Gears of War 3 the first to do this idea.
http://kotaku.com/5856425/gears-of-w...dy-on-the-disc
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Daily Recap:
1) Square-Enix announces a "Winter of RPG" will be arriving on PSN with Chrono Cross (Nov. 8), Final Fantasy V (Nov. 22), and Final Fantasy VI (Dec. 6) as the games avaliable in the promotion.
http://www.screwattack.com/news/winter-rpgs-hits-psn
2) Based on recent patent filings, a sequel to Dead Island from developer Deep Silver studio is in development and could be titled as "Dead World."
http://gamrfeed.vgchartz.com/story/8...o-dead-island/
3) According to an employee involved with work on Fable 2 and Fable 3, Lionhead almost had the chance of shutting down if it wasn't for the eventual purchase of the company by Microsoft in 2006.
http://www.vg247.com/2011/11/04/lion...mental-artist/