- Joined
- Mar 7, 2022
Eh, I disagree, respectfully. It's been over a decade since it really started to become commonplace, and it's unfortunately now just a rooted part of the Western games market.Lack of feature complete games is a new phenomenon.
That's the thing, "live updates" were rare back then, even for PC games. If a patch came out post-launch, it was usually jam-packed full of bug fixes and that's it. Partly because games back then still shipped feature-complete, partly because internet connections were still pretty iffy, and partly because storage space was much more limited, so relying on post-launch patches for things you should have included by default was a bad idea.It bled over from the pc market in the mid 2010s after Sony started doing the stuff pc devs did, stuff like dlcs and live updates which existed in pc games since the late 90s early 2000s in the form of expansion discs and steam updates.
And expansion packs were...well, exactly that, they expanded a game's pre-existing amount of content. To use a meme from years ago, "Expansion Packs" of the past were the Fries and Drink, while the base game itself was a Deluxe Cheeseburger. Today, the "base game" is just the bun, while the patty, lettuce, ketchup, mustard, onions, and tomato are all "paid DLC". The mayonnaise is a "pre-order" bonus.
I think it's a fair metric to factor in because, frankly, it is super rare nowadays for AAA and AA games in the West to ship feature-complete and not rely on "roadmaps" and "day 1" patches.I don't think it's a fair metric to consider currently, it is becoming more relevant but it needs another year or two to be considered fair.
The only game example I can think of that released feature complete and didn't need a shit ton of patching and "paid DLC" post-launch in recent yers was Terminator: Resistance. It had some post-launch patches, but only to fix bugs, then to introduce the free DLC for playing as a Terminator, and then the expansion Annihilation Line.
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