Why aren't NetherRealm being scrutinized for DLC?

you're absolutely right it does. i'm 100% behind putting your money where your mouth is.

but in your comparison you're talking about a platform-holder with an audience of tens of millions and game-restricting DRM vs. a niche developer with a (relative to microsoft) modest but fervent fanbase and the console version of microtransactions.

don't get me wrong- i'd love to see all the kontent for a mere $60.00 buy-in. but i have zero faith that a) the mortal kombat faithful will embargo this release and b) enough people WON'T buy the paid-DLC for netherrealm to effectively say, "this pittance of sales doesn't justify the ill will we're generating."

Y'know, I'd consider paying $90 for the Lin Kuei Bath & Bedtime set...

For me it's not that bad. A bit overpriced maybe, but as a guy who pretty much only plays fighting games for the SP content, I just see the DLC as a totally optional bit of extra content to keep things fresh. By the time I'm ready to buy new content, either the pass will be on sale or the extra content will be available piecemeal and I can just plop five bucks down every so often for a new character. Still pricier than I would like, but at least I won't feel the need to put out $90 or more up front for a "complete" experience. NRS are excellent about filling games to the brim with stuff to do. Even if I never touch the DLC, I'm easily getting $60 worth of game.

And it's not as weird about it as Injustice was from what I've seen, so that's good. (pre-order here for Red Son challenge missions! And here for Earth 2 skins!)

That said, I fully understand why people are against it, and I won't exactly shed a tear if they stop putting characters, fatalities and skins behind paywalls. Although it doesn't affect me in single-player-town, fighting games can definitely suffer from having characters that not everybody can access, and that sucks. It's like map packs in shooters.

(can you tell how hard I'm waffling on this? I'm of two minds about the whole thing)

this war on dlc stuff is silly. just speak with your wallet and move on. your needs may be different than others.

I would never buy bath time dlc but good for people that want to. and im glad It doesnt need to be included in the price.

Meelina is already in the main roster so I dont need more characters unless I get really into it. than buying dlc makes the game feel fresh. I enjoy that.

games are super expensive to make so lc is essential for AAA games. id rather choose to get a core game and pay for more if I like it then spend more on games 70 bucks is enough.

Ill go by the @jeff rule for DLC: as long as the game feels complete than DLC isnt an issue.

there is what 10-15 characters in the main game? plus a story mode etc. seems fine to me. at least at tthis point. if the game comes out and feels half locked up then we can talk.

I'll be honest I'd really like a new MK game, but I'll wait for the eventual Komplete edition.

@mellotronrules: You're right that the fanbase might bitch and buy anyway, but over the last year and a half we've seen a lot of people finally get tired of crappy DLC policies and crappy anything policies. Evolve went from a Game of Show for E3 what, two years in a row? To having all of its positive word of mouth evaporate into thin air over the course of a few weeks. I have to think that if enough people are pissed about this it's going to hit WB/NetherRealm where it hurts, especially because fighting games are a niche genre and those games live and die by the community's whims.

People are really starting to get sick of this shit to the point where their anger is becoming action. I wouldn't be surprised if MKX takes a big hit because of this aggressive DLC policy.

It's the price that puts me off, because that's roughly as much as I'm paying for the game itself and as has been mentioned already they did the Injustice season pass and then did characters who weren't included in it. I'm torn on getting it though, If there is a character I like using then I'll probably buy some costume packs and I really want to see what Jason is all about.

However, is it really fair to take this anger out on Netherrealm? This always smacks of a decision someone in publishing makes and not the people making the game itself. Games are weird.

you might be right, i guess we'll see. i just worry that should this distasteful DLC model fail, WB will glean the wrong message and myopically say, "well fighting games and mortal kombat are done."

don't forget- despite appearing otherwise, egregious DLC is often built-in to a product's path-to-profitability. we all know the $60.00 price tag no longer makes-ends-meet with traditional, high-production value games.

I have heard many people that don't want to get the game until there is a "GOTY" edition.

So I guess they have.

@mellotronrules: the path-to-profitability you speak of is the developers/publishers fault, though. Telling me that gamers must pay the price for bloated budgets doesn't exactly illicit sympathy on my end. The thing is, there are plenty of studios producing "AAA" games that are made with modest budgets (Metro Last Light, The Witcher). There are also plenty of "indie" games that have inflated, bloated budgets (Broken Age, anything by Tim Schafer ever). I outright reject this idea that the consumer must expect to pay more than the MSRP for a full experience because the money men at these studios/publishers can't do their jobs, or that they make niche titles while operating in a city that is actively pricing the middle class out, like San Francisco.

At the end of the day publishers/devs can moan and whine about how they need DLC to stay afloat, but gamers aren't the ones who got them bent over a barrel in that situation, they did it to themselves. And I should probably point out that I don't mind DLC or add ons. I've bought more than my fair share; I find the policy for MKX to be egregious however. Same for Evolve. Same for Assassin's Creed and a bunch of other titles. If they really need to sell $30+ worth of DLC just to maintain some margin of profitability, then they need to take a long and hard look at how they do business, because it's in dire need of a shake up.

you'll get no argument from me in that regard.

and your examples of Metro and Witcher are apt. i don't know how or why those games succeed where others don't. maybe it's a euro thing (tax incentives, subsidies, etc)? or maybe the stakes are just much lower? what kind of numbers did those games sell? i honestly haven't a clue. can you think of north american examples where a recent game didn't include some form of DLC or season pass?

nonetheless, were i a betting man, there's no chance in hell i'd wager we end up in a place where we go back to the way things were in a pre-DLC world. the genie is out of the bottle, and publishers are more interested in chasing the microtransaction-dragon than taking big financial risks (produce a full-featured, $60 product and hope it ends up profitable). but i'm also a deeply cynical person.

I don't really care anymore.

Me too. Injustice came out in April and by November the complete edition was out with all the DLC for less than $40.

this seems pretty assumptious. I mean with people expecting bigger and bigger production values its going to cost more. and games like the witcher dont have even close to the needed budget as an advanced warfare.

certainly what you say about budgets going crazy happens but I feel your globalizing a little bit.

we live in a time where people put graphics and framerates under a microscope . if they simply spent less money to make it look good there would be a backlash. and they cant increase price of the game or people will get made. they are kinda dammed if they do damned if they don't.

no ones being "put over a barrell" you simply choose to buy the extras or dont. will Mk really be a bad game because you cant use a classic scorpion costume?

Every video they post, I see people complain about the Goro Pre-order. Not going to stop people from pre-ordering though. It's like the unstoppable force meets the immovable object, it'll just teeter back and forth forever.

As for their DLC plans, I mentioned it before, but I'm just confused. There's so many fucking packs they're talking about and I don't know if the $30 thing is everything or just a separate pack. It's really turned me off of the whole game. As I did with MK9 and Injustice, I probably won't get any DLC characters. I don't have enough time to be #eSportz and master every character released. I won't have enough time learn 1 fucking character and I'll probably just get frustrated in the first week and give up anyway (if I even buy the game, waiting to see if the NRS garbage netcode continues).

@epidehl: you're just justifying the problem, instead of actually acknowledging it. I don't think any content should be held from consumers just because they didn't preorder.

Maybe Goro does make the most sense for you, but I have more fond memories of using him than someone like Kenshi.

Sun rises, sun sets. Game gets announced, DLC gets announced. It is just the way things are because it works for the publishers.

While you don't really have a point( as an ass load of 'non-die-hard' people bought/played MK9, seeing as it was the most successful iteration in the series), there are A LOT of us diehards fans... Have you been to an MK community message board?

Has there been any bigger preorder bonus that hasn't been available for everyone at a later date?

Capcom fighters don't have much solo content but they're still played today widely, unlike MK9. That's more important to me personally, though yes having a better story mode than just arcade is preferred. (but really I couldn't care less about SF or MK 'lore')

I mean, I understand people don't like DLC. I don't particularly like it either. But scrutinizing every developer that adds DLC is just getting kinda tiring. They'll never stop and I think the best thing is just don't buy the game or the DLC if you don't want to support it. But that probably won't be very influential, because there are plenty of gamers that aren't on the Internet that don't really have any problems with DLC and will pay for it no problem. It's pretty easy to ignore the people that think they're the majority when they're actually the minority, especially when money is involved.

@bradbrains: If what you said was remotely true in 2015 then The Order 1886 would've been a hot selling title. It's not. It's not a hot selling title because it's a mediocre game that looks gorgeous. That used to be enough, but not anymore.

Gamers these days put graphics and framerate under a microscope because they want to make sure the performance is there. Also, if you want to narrow the AAA market, how about Saints Row 3 and 4? One game, THQ bet the entire company on it doing well (and it did) and Saints Row 4 also did great numbers. Both of those are AAA games (because AAA is a designation given to budget, not scope, quality, or size), both of them were profitable, and both them are the reason developer Volition is still doing well. Yet for some reason, a game like Tomb Raider (2013) sells nearly 4 million copies and it's seen as a loss? Tomb Raider didn't look any better than Saints Row 4; how is it a failure? Where did the money go? What kind of money did they spend? Apparently Sleeping Dogs--which sold substantially less than Tomb Raider--made enough of a profit for UFG to get another crack at making video games. How is it that UFG can manage their money well enough to break even on a product (or there abouts) and still have enough coin to make another game, while Square Enix claims that 4 million copies sold is a net loss?

Furthermore, how did Bethesda Game Studios manage to survive when they were making games like The Death and Return of Superman for SNES? All of it comes down to budgeting. All of it comes down to money men knowing exactly how much they'll need and where to spend it. A part of that is definitely studio location; Volition is in Champagne, Illinois and Bethesda is located in Rockville, Maryland. It's not hard to see how things go off the rails when it comes to budget and marketing in video games when you've got situations like Broken Age. It was supposed to be a classic point and click adventure in the vein of Monkey Island. Who decided that a game with a budget of $3 million needed actors like Elijah Wood to voice characters? Who decided that the story was "too big" and needed to be done in two episodes? Who decided that it was okay to burn through $3 million on half of the promised crowdfunded game? Bah. You get my point.

The culprit here is not gamers and their expectations; the culprit is money men asleep on the job. I still don't think gamers should pay the price for developer or publisher incompetence.

@oldirtybearon: i take your point about sales, but I'm not sure saints row should be used as an example for anything (other than a LUDICROUS amount of worthless dlc and a lame season pass).

You're not necessarily a bad person but it does contribute to the problem when they see the season pass numbers and with enough purchases it somewhat validates their decision and they'll probably do it again. It's tough. You want to at least support the developer by buying the game but at the same time stuff like this is kinda gross.

@oldirtybearon: Nowhere did I see graphics alone will sell a game but it is something people look at . Your response I think is a bit of a straw man. Some on a quite high regard. Look at people who go crazy over digital foundry posts and comments saying they won't buy it because of it.

And yes I said in my post that misbudgeting can certainly hurt some games but to say that's every games problem is a fasehood.

Games don't take full advantage of this new extremely high take hardware without time and money. And that money has to come from somewhere, that's the only point I'm making.

@mellotronrules: True. Saints Row had worthless DLC and lame season pass. The argument that the other gentleman was making, though, is the same tired argument I see a lot of developers make--usually with hat in hand. It's crocodile tears. Trying to convince your consumer that they are the reason your company might close because damn it, you just demand too much!

Instead of, you know, knowing exactly what you're going to do with your project and budgeting accordingly.

Yep. Not to mention there is not a direct Mortal Kombat competitor out there offering a better solution. Let's pretend Time Killers was super successful and still around and people always argued what series was better, and they were viewed as similar products.

MK comes out, says you get 4 characters for 30 fucking dollars (oh, and a couple of skins). People are pissed. Time Killers comes out, says you get 4 characters and skins for 20 bucks.

Instant internet reaction - everyone is buying Time Killers. MK either changes plans or suffers from backlash/loss of sales.

Since MK doesn't have to worry about anything but relatively minor backlash, they don't care.

FWIW (next to nothing), this'll be the first MK game I probably hold off on. No reason to bust your pockets for this nonsense. The Goro bullshit doesn't help their cause, either.

I didn't get into Injustice until the "everything comes with this" edition because I don't care for DC, but did they fix the huge DLC issues that plagued MK9? I remember the launch of MK9 being completely miserable because of all of their costume packs. I don't mind buying DLC (even though having Jason as the first DLC character had me rolling my eyes), but if it makes playing other people a chore, that sucks.

This is an apples and oranges comparison. For one, DLC doesn't really prohibit you from playing the core game. It's extra content that may have been cut within budget restrictions. A lot of the issues with the Xbox One would flat out not allow some people to play games on that platform.

There is a lot of overhead in developing and producing a AAA game. I know that people got pissed about Turtle Rock guy saying if people just payed $120 they wouldn't need DLC. That is pretty true. There are many many reasons why DLC actually makes a lot of sense to developers and producers where it doesn't make sense to the consumer. This is another reason why I kinda get annoyed with people being so upset about DLC. It's going to go one of two ways, either you will end up paying more for games to have them more fully featured, or you'll just get less content. You can't have your cake and eat it too.

Fighting games used to be one of my favourite genres. Ever since DLC for fighters became a big thing, I don't want to dish out more money for characters and shit and thus I feel like I'm not getting the full experience. It's the same reason I don't play F2P games, I feel like I'm only playing a shell of a game. I've stayed away from so many recent fighters for this reason.

Are people really up in arms over Goro and Jason dlc?

I can understand a lot of the criticisms being leveled at publishers for DLC practices. But I don't follow @white_sox's argument. Goro hasn't ever been a regularly playable character, despite making occasional appearances in off-shoot revisions (Trilogy), or games of generally ill-or-neutral repute (4, Armageddon). It's not like Netherrealm stowed Scorpion behind a paywall.

The complaint gets lost on me, sort of, at that point. Is the grievance that Goro might upset the balance? That pre-ordering gets you a high-tier character out of the gate?

The real, more salient arguments concern the ethics of keeping four additional characters on the outside of the main roster for a fairly substantial fee (half the game's retail price), or the salesy approach of pumping your pre-order bonus after literally every public teaser, large and small. (The latter I, personally, feel people are maybe too offended by. It's not a tactic other publishers don't use elsewhere. I guess I'm over it.)

But throwing a fit because the pre-order bonus is Goro doesn't seem justified, totally. Furthermore, Netherrealm has a track record, with both Mortal Kombat 9 and Injustice, of opening pre-order bonuses up to the public after an exclusive window. You'll get to play as Goro whether or not you reserve the game ahead of release. Though, to be fair, pre-ordering will likely be the only way to ensure you can use him for free. Which isn't necessarily better.

@mustainium:

My permanent approach with all Netherrealm games (until I see change from their end) is to wait for the inevitable GOTY edition that includes everything the year or whatever after release. Usually the community is still OK and the game is often much more fun when all the moves are understood. At least I prefer to play fighting games that way.

My argument is this: Features that were once free have been cut and put behind a preorder. The publisher requires me to forgo reviews and blindly trust them. Enticing me with features to fall into this trap is gross, especially when those features have been in previous iterations of the franchise.As a consumer, I feel like I'm being punished for not preordering.

And if you feel that I'm "throwing a fit", then my apologies. You're right, I should just throw my money away, grin nicely, and ask where I can sign up for my lobotomy. I'm glad you called me out when you did, I was really getting out of control there.

@white_sox: Wait for the review and get the dlc when it comes out later,

Also it's not like they are using the Armageddon engine. They had to code him from scratch . They didn't "cut" anything

@rayeth:

That's certainly what I'll try to do

Keyword is "try" because, despite my season pass greivances, this game does look absolutely stellar.

DAE mad about products that we want but don't want but want?!

I have no problem with DLC, I just wish they were more clear on prices. I don't care about costumes but want the fighters. But I have to shell out 30 bucks because I want the "best value" since buying each character individually through time will probably be more expensive?

One thing I keep seeing people bring up is the Injustice Season Pass and how it only included 4/6 DLC characters and I really don't get why people have such a problem with this. They literally said there would be 4 characters in the pack, it sounds like the last 2 were developed after fans asked for them. They said they were charging you x amount of money for 4 characters. Even if they did have all 6 planned and made it a 6 fighter season pass I sincerely doubt it would have made any difference on pricing for a 6 fighter season pass vs a 4 fighter season pass + 2 separate characters. If the reason people were upset was that they wanted those last 2 to be included in the season pass that they already paid for (basically throwing in 2 free characters) I think that's kind of naive.

So on their stream they just said that they were unable to show Jason since they are in the process of making/testing him, noting that their DLC is not on disc and is truly extra work being done outside of the original development to add more content.

I think the main difference is that NRS doesn't work on the DLK until after they've finished up the main game, whereas folks like Capcom have it on-disc, completely (or close to it) finished when the game ships and then charge you for an unlock key afterwards.

Here's the thing, you're assuming that they were "once free" and now we're being charged. That's not necessarily true. Publishers have a time table and before characters that didn't make the time table got cut. MKX is releasing April 14th and NRS is saying that the DLC is not done yet. Meanwhile they have already submitted the final product to Microsoft and Sony for certification.

In the old days what they would do would be make new characters and release a whole new 50-60 dollar game every time. There was MK3 and Ultimate MK3 which had more characters. There was Street Figher Alpha, Street Fighter Alpha 2 and Street Fighter Alpha 3. There was Street Fighter 3, Street Fighter 3 Second Impact and Street Fighter 3 third strike. Capcom is still following that model. Hell i ended up buying SF4 four times (SF4, SSF4, SSF4AE, USF4) and one more time on PC (not to mention they are constantly selling costume packs) and i spent way more than what NRS is asking. People think it's gross but really the developers just want to make more content and their time isn't free. How they sold it used to be a real problem; they HAD to make a whole new release. Now they can do DLC and die hard fans end up paying substantially less. What NRS is doing is releasing a full fledged game and releasing fun characters like predator and jason, which aren't core to the story, as DLC. They only thing to complain about is Goro, which is clearly done in time for release. That being said the game is full fledged without Goro and they need to offer some incentive to pre-order. What other incentive could they offer. Die hard fans who are going to buy the game anyway are encouraged to buy it early instead of waiting on it which boosts their sales numbers. I guess that's important for some reason. You don't have to preorder, you don't have to get Goro, you don't have to get the DLC and you're really not losing out on all that much.

And why is it a bad thing if they make new fatalities and costumes and sell them? They make a new thing for the game and people can buy them if they want. It keeps artists and designers employed. I'm not going to buy a Fatality but some people might. If they can make money off that then why shouldn't they. How cool would it be if you could just get a different outfit for subzero in the old games. What you got was Blue Subzero and Somewhat Darker Blue Subzero. You don't lose anything from them making little knick kancks after the games release. People say they're selling what used to be hidden content but MK9 had way more hidden content than the old games did. It was fully featured. Nobody ever seems to remember that.

I'm upset to see people selling what looks to be an awesome game short just for business practices that are BETTER than the old business practices. I think what I'm saying here is that we complain a lot about DLC but the situation in reality is really a lot better than it used to be for us and for developers. I guess we just don't have very good hindsight (maybe because some of us are too young to remember the bad old days).

Do you want to get punched by a ninja? I thought not.

It sucks, but money speaks way louder than words in this situation. The bottom line is that people will buy this stuff, and so this trend will likely continue.

When you pay for your copy of a game, you are buying a license to play the game. You do not own it. In turn, anything on the physical disc that a developer or publisher doesn't want you to have access to? They don't have to give it to you.

Honestly, if they have to front-load all their DLC onto the disc in order to keep away all those fucking compatibility packs, then I'll take on-disc DLC EVERY FUCKING DAY OF THE YEAR!

No, I'm not. Where did I say this? Please use context. Also, I'm not sure why this even matters. I'm not commenting about paid DLC, the specific preorder incentive is what I find abusive and disturbing.

"You don't have to preorder, you don't have to get Goro, you don't have to get the DLC and you're really not losing out on all that much." Yeah, and I also don't have to buy the game. I guess we all have our choices, but choosing to give me less for potentially paying the same as someone else does not sit well with me. Therefore, I can't consciously give my money to this product. Hopefully they do better with the inevitable Komplete Edition.

Additionally, your rational of "the good old days" is funny. Excuse my all too young 25 year old mind, but I vaguely remember developers supporting their games after release to incentivize new and old users to keep playing instead of nickel and diming them for things that used to be free.

I CARE, but not THAT much. MK's always had a really robust, full roster and, here's they key in my opinion, they've always had at least one alternate costume for every single character. Often a costume that looks COMPLETELY different from the default one, and is 100% free within the game's framework. And now with the 3 different "styles" each character has, that could actually be even more.

That and the fact that they have 2+ Fatalities, a massive challenge mode, and one of the most full-bodied story modes in the industry makes it a little hard to be well and truly pissed that we don't have EVEN MORE, especially when it's things like guest characters.

How does that work? The version of Last Round I played (ps4 and PC) had over $200 worth of extra costumes you can purchase.