Quote Originally Posted by Psychotic View Post
Or let me put it another way. If FFVII had removed the Wutai Pagoda, chocobo racing and Cloud/Zack/Vincent flashbacks and made them DLC, and if they'd made Cloud's Nail Bat an Amazon pre-order bonus (did Amazon exist in 97? I bought my FFVII from Woolworths!) would the game be utterly ruined? No. Would it be worse? Yes.
I get that, but I don't think Square Enix would take the initiative to make these extra things if it weren't for the fact they knew they would be getting paid for it. The money, time and development it takes to do each individual thing these days is growing at a high rate. That's why we get these huge development schedules - even for indie games with no frills - and these things (skins and weapons aside, more talking about 'episodes') are no longer as viable as they once were if you want to include everything else.

They did include the fishing, they did include the cooking, they did include the random endgame dungeon in FFXV. Why would they have to do these episodes?

It's a weird thing. We'll never know if these things would or wouldn't be made if DLC wasn't a thing. It's possible they only do it because of the funding that will provide for it to be viable, or it's possible that it would have been done anyway like you say. It's literally an impossible thing to know for sure unless you're in the company at a high level.

But Sims 4? Hmm. The base game is rather raw... I'm not sure they didn't get the funding for every DLC in the base game despite that. For me, Pokemon is worse. They make you buy the game twice if you want to get everything on your own, despite the differences being so easy for them to integrate into a single game.

Also, for what it's worth, the DLC was free for me since I pre-ordered. Say what you like about the whole pre-ordering thing, but I bought the game at 100% price and got 100% of the game.

Still haven't played the DLC though. xD #someday?