EA Planning to Release Paid DLC Prior to Game Launches

After EA was paid a visit from an investor, plans for strategic “Premium Downloadable Content” came to light. Analyst Michael Pachter wrote that “PDLC would be sold for $10 or $15 through Xbox Live and PlayStation Network, and would essentially be a very long game demo, along the lines of 2009’s Battlefield 1943.” As to avoid confusion, EA stated that, “None of the proposals call for charging consumers for traditionally free game demos.“

In essence, EA would be releasing short 3 – 4 hour “episodes”, if you will, of a major release. This could be the first couple levels of a game, for example. This wouldn’t be the first time such a system would be implemented, nor I fear the last. When EA decided to release SPORE, it released the Creature Creator first. This in itself wasn’t a functioning game, and all you could do was create creatures to prepare yourself for the retail game.

Despite Creature Creator being a piece of the real (then upcoming) game, EA still charged $15 for it. Gran Turismo 5 Prologue did a similar thing, by releasing half of a game early for people to “test” and whet their appetites, whilst making them wait another couple of years for the finished product.

The way the article is worded seems to give it a negative twist, and “expensive demo” is the initial reaction. To me, this seems to be what episodic content should be… small packages released as mini-games over a few months before the final game is released for a single purchase. This is how DVD sales and series are done; the release volumes of a few episodes at a time, with a month in-between. When all are available, the company re-releases the entire slew of episodes in a single boxed set.

I, and many others, are not great fans of DLC. It comes across as expensive vs. what you’re actually receiving. It seems to be 1% of the gameplay time for 10% of the game price. But episodes are appealing; it keeps you yearning for more, and it would seem like a successful plan if they can pull it off. By releasing small game packs in conjunction with a physical retail release, though, it could lead to confused customers. Say for example a company releases the first part of a game as a PDLC and then the full game in stores… some people may end up buying both, thinking that the PDLC is just an add-on, only to find it’s a small fraction of the same game.

“EA’s view is that the PDLC costs a lot less to develop (essentially, it’s the first few levels of the full-blown game), and they have the opportunity to fix whatever needs to be fixed in the packaged product that is released a few months later, whether that entails doing more of what people like or doing less of what they don’t like. It sounds like a brilliant strategy to me.” Gamasutra has contacted EA for further clarification about the new strategy.