I've been asking both myself and lot of my friends and online associates about their feelings on Downloadable Content (DLC). As the console generation enters its 3rd year (4th for Microsoft), DLC has become less and less of a battleground, because everyone is pretty much offering the same stuff. I am not talking about audio and video content, because I look at those as separate market-places.

DLC refers partially to the "arcade" market-space. Each of the console manufacturers has some varaint of an online store-front to peddle their "light" games that you download to the accepted storage medium for that platform. Each manufacturer has a slightly different approach to this market-space.

Microsoft seems to be concentrating on offering legacy arcade and PC games, to capture the consumer's feeling of nostalgia. It also leverages the fact that finding legacy games and then making them run on today's hardware is often more pain than it is worth. The easiest way to play a legacy game is to find the original hardware it ran on.

Sony seems to be focused on offering titles from independent developers. This is because they already have a huge catalog of games to deploy for sale on the Playstation Store from the PSOne. Additionally, Sony is using the store a lot like STEAM for the PC, where they are offering full titles that you might otherwise buy at retail. Sometimes the games are sold via both logistics chains, but more and more, certain titles are only available via download from the PS Store.

Just as a note from one consumer, Sony's strategy has proven the lesser with regards to how much of my cash they have been the recipient of. I am a Cold War Kid, as I suspect a lot of 360 and PS3 owners are, because kids (and a lot of 20-somethings) don't make enough money to be able to frivously part with the amount of capital that was required to enter this console generation in the launch windows. As such, Microsoft has hit on all cylinders by offering 21st century ports (and in some cases upgrades) of titles that I plinked quarters at all day as a child. Sony's offerings of indy content? No thanks. Don't get me wrong. I think it is a good thing, and I think it is an important dynamic to impart to the industry. But I have yet to see a title that I personally want to play.

Nintendo is focused on making the vast majority of their offerings ports of legacy platforms that now have no home, as the original hardware platforms are now defunct and had no successor. In this realm exist the titles from Sega and titles that were originally available on the TurboGraFX and 3DO platforms. Nintendo has scored points with me as it has been fun revisiting those old Sega games that I once played. So where is Shadowrun? That's all I want to know. Still, a lot of Nintendo's offered conent is their own legacy content. Having never owned Nintendo hardware platforms until this generation, old Nintendo games were the exact reason that I never bought a Nintendo platform. I know that old Mario and Donkey Kong games for sale on the Virtual Channel are making Nintendo money hand-over-fist (like they need it), but not from me.

Where Sony may have struck paydirt is with their new Playstation Home central hub. I hate to admit it, but I have already spent money there. Home is a neat concept. It is neater when you have stuff that other people don't. It will be interesting to see how they develop it. While it is neat on the front-end, there is a dangerous precipice they are flirting on. If Home becomes a version of "The Sims" plastered in a Sony wrapper, there may be a customer lashback. Right now, they do not offer a lot of variety in the pieces that are available in the Home Mall. They need to offer some level of individual player customization. They also need to come up with some way that individuals have access to uniqe content for their character. Possibly based on their number of hours logged in a particular title, or based on the trophies they've earned. You would think that they would leverage these two firmware updates (their previous rollout of trophies and the new rollout of Home) into an integrated package that made players feel like they were getting the full deal. How hard would it been to have conceived of each player having the ability to place a certain number of their PSN trophies as 3D trophy assets on their mantle in their Home homes?

The second half of DLC that bears consideration is the expansion offerings of titles sold at retail. The retail games and their DLC are almost useless as a discussion topic, and have since rendered themselves useless as a competitive yardstick amongst the three console manufacturers. You release a racing game? You will offer DLC consisting of new tracks and cars. You release a shooter? You will offer DLC consisting of map packs, maybe new character classes, armor, or weapons, and the occassional add-on mission pack or campaign. These consistencies occur across titles released for the both the PS3 and the Xbox 360, including titles that are exclusive to one or the other. The Wii differs in that I have yet to see DLC specific to a released retail game title (of course I may have missed it).

However, DLC still remains relevant as a market dynamic more so for the industry itself than as a competitive advantage for one corporation over the other. DLC is a dual-edged sword I think, and I am not ready to sign-off on saying that it is inherently "bad" or definitively "good".

When DLC first launched (remember when we used to call them "microtransactions"?), it received a well-deserved bad rap due to the tendency for some publishers to nickle-and-dime you to death over chincy add-ons that were of questionable long-term value. I do not mind buying a map pack of 3-6 maps that I know are going to be in the rotation in a lot of rooms online. But I am not paying for a horse, and I do not concur with people being able to buy weapons or add-ons that they have not earned in the game, that they can then use in the game to boost online stats and especially when it is permitted in a multi-player (PVP) arena.

Since its initial inception, DLC has taken a much larger role in the market. In a recent podcast, I commented that the release of certain map packs and add-ons were garnering as much media attention as full-game releases. In fact, certain DLC has led to a better balance in the old market model of good titles only coming out in Q4. Now, big title add-ons sometimes lead to a title's resurgence in the spring and summer months and fill-out a gamer's timeline until we turn the corner into October. I regard this as a good thing, or at least a decent thing with some arguably good benefits to the industry. Games that I buy in the holiday season one year receive an update and/or add-on in the spring/summer, and the game continues giving me ROI through the next holiday season.

However, some of the chinciness continues. Releasing a game and then releasing DLC which is just a token or key to unlock content that is already on the disk is flirting with the cheesy side (ok, not merely flirting). Releasing a game that immediately has a significant amount of DLC available within a few weeks of its launch begs the question as to why they did not just delay release of the game in order to pack the DLC in (I will exclude Rock Band and Guitar Hero from this categorization).

So, that's my stance on DLC in general, but other gamers continue to ask questions, and a lot of us wonder if this market model could stand some evolutionary changes; or is this just the way it is going to be for the foreseeable future? Part of the problem with the DLC is its delivery medium, and its lack of persistence. A lot of us go through a second hardware set of a particular platform in a single console generation. With the PS3 and the 360 each having hard drives now, having to swap out hard drives when you upgrade is akin to upgrading or replacing a PC these days. A lengthy restore period can sometimes follow, and some services and hardware platforms have had to contend with unanticipated behaviors experienced by customers executing such upgrades when they are occuring for the first time in the product's life-cycle.

So the question I would ask is, if the DLC could be delivered to you via some other medium, would you be more accepting of its place in the market? If you could get the media shipped to you on a disc or some other media that you could then install, at the exact same cost as others pay for the DLC direct, would that interest you more? I have to admit, if this option were available, I might use it even though I live in the US and have access to a broadband pipe to download the stuff. This would prevent problems if I ever swapped out my PS3 or my PS3's hard drive and could prevent me from having to download all of the updates again.

For that matter, it is interesting that you can download PS3 firmware updates to a USB drive and then install from there. Maybe it would be nice, if they could figure out a way to police it to keep people from stealing DLC (which I admit would be difficult and a pain), if you could download the stuff for DLC to a thumb drive. Wouldn't it be neat to have all of your map-packs and arcade games backed-up onto a thumb drive? I reckon we are a long way off from a solution like that (like maybe never), but they are interesting possibilities to consider.

- Vr/Gull..>>