Nintendo Details Mario Golf: World Tour DLC With 108 New Holes And Additional Players

Man, I guess I’ve changed my mind about this game. I’m definitely getting it now with the season pass to go with Kirby Triple Deluxe (which I’ve already preordered and payed off.) May’s gonna be a great month for me. I might get MK8 later in June. :D

Nintendo DLC is high in quality but expensive. I’d rather they didn’t do it but ultimately I know that it’s a smart business-decision to do so – and if people enjoy the game so much that they want more then it’s there for them to get. I don’t really care whether the DLC is Day 1 or Day 301, that’s trifling to me.

The current state of affairs in companies using DLC and microtransactions, or perhaps i should say ABUSING, in order to try to shake people down for as much money as possible and give very little bang for one’s buck is a valid reason for people to be cross about the DLC thing as a whole.

HOWEVER! DLC is not inherently bad. It can be used as a supplement to a complete game to make it better, all the while being entirely optional and not making players feel as though they’d need it, like some companies withholding a piece of a game to sell to you later as DLC which is the wrong way of going about it. In the case of Fire Emblem Awakening, the paid DLC has nothing to do with the regular campaign and exists mostly for nostalgia for older Fire Emblem games, flavor text fleshing out characters and their relationships, additional challenges, or an easier source of EXP, gold, and powerful weapons to help with said challenges. None of it is or feels required to do anything in the main game and none of it feels like it was taken away from the main game to make a quick buck. The regular game boasts 27 maps for the story mode and 23 side missions which gradually open up as you play through the story. With a total of 50 missions, Fire Emblem Awakening certainly isn’t a malnourished game (and possibly has the most ingame missions of any Fire Emblem game at a glance) and the DLC comes as an entirely optional source of additional gameplay that in no way detracts from the parts of the game you get for free.

Moving on to Mario Golf, it is also a game which appears to have around the standard amount of content for a game of its series, perhaps even more at 10 courses. On top of this is a large amount of additional courses that can be bought at a fair price, being 6 courses. The DLC tells you exactly what you’re getting for your money, it’s not over-expensive, and it doesn’t gimp the game for the sake of trying to make more money off of it. If you want the extra stuff then buy it, but your experience won’t be hurting for content if you refuse.

On top of that, this Mario Golf game is priced at $30, 25% less than the standard 3DS game pricing of $40. The DLC bought in its entirety would run you $15, bringing the total to $45. Based on this, gamers have two very valid options to choose from:

1) A game less expensive than the norm and with all the content one could come to expect of a Mario Golf game. Or

2) A game /slightly/ more expensive than the norm with all the content one could come to expect of a Mario Golf game with the supplement of the slew of additional content.

Finally, some math. At $30 you get a Mario Golf game with 10 courses. At $45 you get 16 courses and also 3 more characters to choose from if that’s important to you. So for 1.5x the price of this game (which, as has been established, is less expensive than normal 3DS games), you are getting MORE than 1.5x the gameplay, meaning that this DLC as a whole is priced in a fair manner and has no intentions of ripping anybody off as so many companies have done before.

Honestly if this game had been priced at the standard $40 with all of that DLC valued at $5 and NOT called a Season Pass, then nearly nobody would be complaining about it because it would be seen as an amazing deal. It’s just that the stigma around paid DLC costing more than it’s worth and the idea of a “Season Pass” has left a bad taste in many people’s mouths in the past few years. That, along with the $15 price tag everyone’s looking at without noticing the reduced price tag on the actual game, is causing a lot of the negative reactions. In actuality, Nintendo’s doing DLC the right way here.
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TL;DR version:
DLC isn’t bad when used properly. Nintendo’s used it properly before and is using it properly again here. It’s just that the wording of some of it has given worry to people because of how they remember other companies abusing it for their own money-grubbing purposes rather than to the benefit of the consumer.

How do I purchase the Seasonal Pass?or is it even available yet?

Day One DLC !!!!!
WTF !!!!!

How is anyone supposed to know that they even want DLC until they get the game and play it for a while? Like me, I’d have to buy the game and really love it before I’d pay extra for DLC.

I hope they do DLC for Mario Kart 8, personally I would gladly pay for a season pass if it meant getting all the tracks ever made for a Mario Kart game redone in glorious HD. On DLC in general though, it only bugs me when the DLC is included on the disc or in the download for the main game in the case of digital downloads already, anything that’s included on the disc should be available without a paywall, the clue is in what DLC stands for DOWNLOAD CONTENT, not download a file that unlocks the content already on disc.