DLC controversy

Recently, it's been discovered that, in SFxT, there are folders and files for some dlc, namely the alternate costumes. To some this is controversial because it is content you "purchased" (i.e. on the disc you bought) but are kept from using as it is locked by capcom.

This is not controversial to me. Content that is imperative to the game being locked away would be, such as DLC characters, because if they have time to develop a character and put it on the disc, why not make it available? Then you get into the quagmire of what your 60 dollars purchases and what shouldn't be considered part of the 60 dollars.

Basically you have Microsoft, who has fronted the cost of providing the bandwidth to give everyone the ability to view alternate costumes in SSF4, while Sony did not. You couldn't see DLC costumes on PS3 unless you owned it.

Having it on the disc has 2 luxuries: the first being apparent, that whether you're on PS3 or Xbox you can see the costumes you didn't buy. I think everyone can at least appreciate that. But think about this: As a developer, you put the lionshare of the files for DLC on the disc (in this case costumes) even if it's not quite finished. You prepare a patch for glitches etc. and include supplemental data for the onboard DLC to fix any glitches discovered in testing. This could be an acceptable explanation for DLC characters locked away on discs, if they had time to make them but not time to balance them. Supplemental data could also be provided via the store purchase.

DLC characters are going to be a tough one. I think that for the most part, Shuma and Jill were a flop...I haven't seen many people use them, the pros don't seem to pay attention to them either. And I'm not sure that non-buyers can play with people who had them in vanilla mvc3.

What you will probably see is Volumes (using the word in a similar fashion to magazines). Clusters of characters, perhaps tagged with features and balancing, in much the same way as SSF4:AE v. 2012. This makes it a lot easier to keep everyone up to speed, give everyone what they want, and for a drastically reduced cost (and far less overhead cost for capcom as it is digital distribution.) The problem with this is, these types of updates will be far between. Besides the fact that consumers want to get their moneys worth, Capcom wants the content they provided to get a fair shake before make additions or changes.

Meanwhile, we wait. The most frustrating part to this is that our promise of characters that weren't in SF4 are not present. In fact, with Vita characters announced, only 3 characters that weren't in 4 are in SFxT, and a 4th one that hasn't been in any SF (the 3 being Elena, Hugo and Rolento, the 4th being poison). No R. Mika, no Karin or Sodom. One can't help but think that 3rd strike versions of SF4 characters would've been better in this game (i.e. Necro instead of Dhalsim, Remy instead of Guile, Urien or Sean instead of Abel). So, having broken this promise, to a degree, they aren't even making it right in the near future with the Vita characters! So, even if the Vita characters get ported over to consoles, that still leaves a very large gap between sept/oct and when we could logically expect the next volley of characters.

There, that is most of what I wanted to get off my chest. Lets face the facts, we have a whole half of the roster that is brand new and shiney in the Tekken characters, as well as new twists on older characters. Enjoy the content to it's fullest so when the new characters come around you can honestly appreciate it. As you know, the grass is always greener on the other side, sometimes you should just appreciate the things in the now, and save pining for your missing characters for another day :-) (i got rolento so I'm happy ;-P)