First in Alaska: Is the growing importance of Downloadable Content for the Xbox 360 console a good or a bad thing?

Although there are many example of incidents in which the Xbox Lives Downloadable Content capabilities are been exploited, the positives of this function vastly outweigh the negative. It could be at first viewed negatively, with the possibility of games being released in a sub- standard state, relying on DLC to fill the game out at a later state. The Xbox Live marketplace is growing rapidly, as expressed in an interview with Microsoft’s Director of Global Marketing, Albert Penello. Penello stated in an interview with Gizmodo.com (2007) that “There's been 135 million downloads from Live Marketplace, and 70 percent of the people connected to Live are downloading something.”

Games need to make money. They are a business, and one that makes a large amount of money. Professor Espen Aarseth states that “The industry only wants to make a certain kind of game: games that people spend money on. It sees games as a kind of product, or as a sellable service.” (Aarseth,2002) When looking at DLC for the 360 there are two main examples of this, but in far different ways.

The first example is EA Games and their treatment of the Godfather Videogame for the Xbox 360. The game was released for essentially every current system on the market at the time. Each version contained the full amount of weapons and access to in-game cheats, except for the Xbox 360 version. These parts of the game were sliced out and presented on the Xbox marketplace as enticing bundles which such descriptions as

“Become a ‘made man’ with the ultimate collection of weapons, money and in-game items.” (Xbox.com.au,2008). These bundles were sold for 800 Microsoft Points, roughly $15.

The second example, and a far more positive one, in fact the way in which it is hoped all downloadable content will be handled in the future, is the issue of Mass Effect and the ‘Bringing down the Sky’ downloadable episode. This episode adds around an extra 4 hours of game play, furthering the story and keeping the player engaged with a over arching story. There are planned episodes for the future, periodically put out until eventually Mass Effect 2 is released. This an example of that “sellable service” a technique which has already been used effectively for MMORPG, such as World of Warcraft and the Lord Of The Rings Online game. It allows developers to make “opportunities for adventures in downloadable content, presenting new information, through a very compelling storyline,” stated Casey Hudson, Project Director for Bioware in a 2008 interview with IGN.com.

This is a new and exciting way of getting content to your gamer. Once done by the expansion pack, which took up a large amount of time and money, it is now been achieved for a smaller price and in half the time it takes to get an expansion pack on the market. It allows games not to be just seen as standalone stories, or ‘movies,’ but rather as the starting block for a series of episodes, much like a TV show. This will not only allow developers to make their games more expansive in the long run, but also allow greater opportunities for the exploration of the various characters and locations contained within the videogame.

But there are still negative ways in which DLC is being used, or more accurately, was going to be used, is once again concerning EA and their treatment of the upcoming Battlefield: Bad Company. According to their press statement they intended to charge people for the use of better weapons. These weapons could be purchased off the Xbox Marketplace for a certain amount of money. Not only is this an erroneous business tactic, but it also threatened to create a highly unbalanced online playing field, with essentially the richer players having access to the better weapons. EA soon retracted this statement, stating that you would no longer have to pay for better weaponry, but instead participate in a special BETA test to receive the weapons. Many online websites, see this as “EA testing the waters.”(Kotaku,2008) Meaning that in the future it is possible that we will see more games than wish to utilise a system of ‘money over skill’.

DLC is no longer the gimmick that it was when the Xbox Live system was first launched. Back during the networks launch in November of 2002 it was mainly used to distribute minor patches and insignificant game changes, such as a flowery cover for your favourite steed in Elder Scrolls: Oblivion. But now it is a huge factor when a game is being constructed. A most recent example of this pre-planning of DLC is with Grand Theft Auto 4. Microsoft paid out an alleged $50 million for exclusive rights to two ‘episodes’. This excitement over DLC can only mean good things for Xbox owners, and will no doubt result in some excellent content being released soon.

Whilst the Xbox Marketplace is still being used as an excuse to chop up games and sell the pieces later, these instances do not weigh down overall advancements being made. With episodic content already being released and more games being shaped with downloadable content in mind, it is easy to see the see how this is an area which will keep improving.

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