ThThe date is April 3, 2006; Bethesda have released some new Xbox 360 Downloadable Content for their latest best-selling title in the Elder Scrolls series: Oblivion. Only it's not as exciting as you may think - the content in question? A now infamous little "mod" called Horse Armour.
"What does it add?" I hear you asking in wonder.
In 8 words, It's a couple of new textures. For your horse.
"Oh, that's alright, I suppose. I'm guessing it's free then?"
Well, see for yourself!
200 Microsoft Points (roughly £1.50, although you can't really tell because of Microsoft's stupid Points system), for a couple of textures that have no other effect in-game other than aesthetically. That screengrab has just been taken, so Bethesda haven't even bothered to make this DLC gratis, even after 3 years! There's not been many debacles like this on the Marketplace since, and that can only be a good thing, right?
Well, I'm a pretty big fan of the RPG genre, I'm not stuck to liking JRPG but I consider them to be one of my favourites (Final Fantasy X, in my opinion, is one of the five greatest games ever made)
Over a week ago I ordered Tales of Vesperia (despite it taking just over a week to actually get to my house - cheers, Tesco!). It's a solid title in its own right, but I was wondering if it had followed the same vein as (another Bethesda title) Fallout 3, drip-feeding DLC expansions for players who wanted something fresh to do in the game. So I decided to take a look on the Marketplace, where I promptly had my retinas burned in bewilderment:
There are 35 of such DLC, all of which contain this handy message in the "More Details" tab:
Oh, well thanks for that. I could spend (I have worked out) 6,000 Microsoft Points (roughly £51.00! ) on items for my game, or I could just, y'know, play the game and earn them that way, for free.
I truly don't feel sorry for anyone who had the stupidity to throw away money on these pointless downloads.
This is the problem that so many developers run into with DLC. They use DLC to add on to a game without actually adding new feature or new depth. I wrote a blog about this a little while and discussed the "horse armor" fiasco. Bethesda was still testing the waters in terms of what was appropriate for DLC, but I'm surprised they haven't made it free.
