@joshrmeyer: Unfortunately, the early dlc announcements are a standard practise these days. To your other point, i can say with almost absolute certainty that the PS4 version will contain all the upcoming content come its release this time next year. I can't wait to play the game next month, but the PS4 crowd has the Uncharted Trilogy to keep them tied over so no biggie i suppose.
The key take-away is that games are sometimes (not every time) fundamentally changed by design to incorporate these microtransactions, which is a pain to say the least for people like us who are interested in simply playing the $60/£50 game we purchased without developers & publishers trying to tell us that's simply not good enough anymore.
Where I disagree with Jim Sterling is when he says 'it's never acceptable for $60 to contain microtransactions'. Personally, I disagree with that. As you said, if they're cosmetic changes that don't impact on your time, progression or enjoyment of your initial promised experience ie: the single player experience, then they can go right ahead with them & let the market decide whether they should remain a thing.
On a side note, i'll be almost certainly buying this game next month (pending general early opinions of course). If microtransactions & dlc doesn't interfere with me playing through the story, i don't much mind.
@gandospot: Honestly I don't know if that's even true anymore. The PS4 shot ahead with basically no worthwhile exclusives, while the Xbox One (the console I own) is trailing behind with, lets face it, more & generally better exclusives. Heavy association between a specific console & third party game can and clearly has made the world of difference to the average consumers opinions towards which console to buy. Xbox & COD did that last gen & it paid off for them. Having said this, exclusives make ALL the difference to people like us that actually know what we're buying :) Since we're more informed about games in general, we don't need a bombardment of ads to tell us which games to buy or not to buy.I think Sony managed their marketing budget well considering the game still managed to shoot up to #2 on the chart in its opening week, but perhaps i'm underselling the possibility of impulse buying.
Paul136's comments