Don’t expect any character roster DLC for Dead or Alive 5.
Unlike Capcom, NetherRealm Studios and Arc System Works, Team Ninja apparently won’t be offering extra characters as DLC for its latest fighting game.
“We don’t feel that it’s right for fighting games,” Team Ninja boss, Yosuke Hayashi, told VideoGamer when asked for his opinion on on-disc DLC during E3. “We feel like this is a kind of sport, and you don’t change the rules for sports. Everybody plays by the same rules. You don’t have a 14-player soccer game versus an 11-player soccer game. That’s just not fair.”
“It’s a similar thing to if certain people have all these characters and others don’t. It makes it an unfair game, and we don’t think that’s the right way to go for fighting games,” he continued, before adding, “we have no plans to sell characters as downloadable content.”
Hayashi concentrates on the balancing and production issues roster DLC represents, but it can have profound PR effects as well. Capcom has recently faced a deluge of criticism following the release of Tekken X Street Fighter, which locked away a sizable portion of its cast as on-disc DLC. The title didn’t reach Capcom’s sales expectations, but the Japanese publisher put that down to the crowded fighting game market.
“Balance is extremely important, and it’s also very hard to do,” continued Hayashi. “Even with over 20 characters that’s still a real challenge. If we had 50, how much more time would [we] need to balance the game? It gets that much harder to get it right, and it’s already very difficult to get right.”
Source: Videogamer
