What was the reaction to DLC and paid online on the original Xbox? Was there despair and fear even at this point or did everyone accept it and the b***hing didn’t start until Horse Armor?
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Didn't care, no one I knew had Xbox Live on the original Xbox.
My man was not in school from 2004-2006.
I'm a few years older than that, but I only knew one kid with an Xbox. I played Halo splitscreen once at his place and thought it was ok, but not any more fun than a half a dozen online PC games like Counter Strike.
Everyone else had Playstation 2. PCs were also common because you didn't really need a "gaming PC" to play most of what was popular (Age of Empires 2, Diablo 2, Counterstrike, all very low sys requirements).
Dreamcast unironically did it first, not joking.
Consumer opinion doesn't matter much, consumers voting with their wallet is a fantasy that's created online. You will accept the shittiest practices and will defend brand like a religion.
>Dreamcast unironically did it first
It did and it deserves credit of sorts but it was so badly implemented. One DLC could max out a VMU.
>Dreamcast unironically did it first, not joking.
When it decided to work, yes
>you will accept the shittiest practices and defend the brand like a religion
Nope, this is why I don’t purchase video games made after maybe 1996 or so
projecting your habits onto other people is a bad look
DLC was not a new concept and it was a cool thing which expanded upon the games we enjoyed. Back then, I didn't get paying for access on top of already paying an ISP, which was appalling because the Dreamcast's online was basically connecting the wire into the adapter and entering your ISP which was exactly the same as it was on PCs.
The DLC I really remembered on Dreamcast were all offered for free. I particularly remember the move pack for Fire Pro Wrestling D was promoted with a few static images, one of a move called "muscle buster" which my friends were laughing at how f'ed the victim was just from the static image.
The DLC on xbox seemed like a gimmick at the time and was completly relegated to Halo 2 maps.
DLC was mocked for its worst examples and reviled by those that continue to compare it's volume of content to expansion packs of yor. Normies didn't give a shit. The psychological impact of smaller price tags and sheer convenience won out in the end. As for payed online services, I remember some grumbling that mostly evaporated when it became clear the money bought you a rather stable experience, particularly when compaired to Sony. I've never used either service so my perspective is very second-hand. Someone else should wiegh in.
Xbox’s online advantage over PS2 was its centralization. PS2 online was done on a game by game format and needed extra shit to make it work. Xbox meanwhile had it built into itself
Main reason why no post-xbl game can't be played online now. Meanwhile the first Halo was p2p like the all the PS2 games and worls to this day.
You are correct but at the time it was the advantage. Even in the early 2000s people enjoyed having everything centralized and have everything tied to a account even if it fricked them later on.
Remember when instead of monetizing a game for 5 years theyd make the game, wait a year, make an expansion or two then move onto the next game or sequel? Good times
>5 years
More like 10. Skyrim, GTA 5, the list goes on...
You're right I was being optimistic
>particularly when compaired to Sony.
Was it? Maybe I misremember but I was sure that the official PS3 servers were fairly stable. Unless you mean PS2 in which case like 5 games besides FFXI used it.
nobody new it would grow into cancer
yes they did. it was pretty obvious.
first it was why would anyone ever want this
then it was, ok I'll get it if its cheap
these days I like it because it expands games I like such as driving simulators where they spend a lot of effort on each of the cars
I just didn't buy the console, dlc is cancer
Horse Armor was the dawn of the realization that things were going to go sideways. Before that DLC existed in localized contexts so there was a sense that it was just a neat feature. People thought the Sega Channel and Satellaview were cool. But there was a collective 'oh shit' moment when Horse Armor happened.
Horse armor was a shocl mainly ot was priced at about $5 xbl bucks when skins like that were $1. What's worse Todd defended it like it's his birthright.
Yeah but that's what slapped people into reality. It was the first time the stars aligned. You had a popular game and a gross example of nickel and diming and everyone realized that not only was this going to become common practice, it would get worse. It was the moment that DLC as a concept became impossible to ignore.
And that went nowhere as people are fine with DLC lootboxes gacha the whole shebang.
Ganker is a homosexual that does not like nor understand capitalism
People aren't "fine" with that. They're pretty much hostages at this point. You either play ball or don't play new video games.
Profits say otherwise homosexual. You lost you will eat that bug, will suck my wiener, will own nothing and will be h a p p y.
Or you hack, man.
Pirate the frick out if it.
You can even buy the game and just hack the DLCs, if you insist on supporting the devs and stuff.
99% of the DLC are inserted into the game from the start nowadays, so all you gotta do is to flip the boolean that says DLC = 0 to DLC = 1. And there are at least half a dozen of ways to do it.
Hell, even console-exclusive DLCs are usually actually left in all versions of the game because nobody fricking bothers actually cutting them out.
Micro transactions were similar. They existed on FIFA, MMOS and Mobile for a bit but when Dead Space 3 had items you could upgrade with real money it was a pure panic mode even when the game underperformed
Dead Space 3 is weird, but even modern Ubisoft titles do it as well and it still makes zero sense. The games already are easy and paying basically removes any challenge along with removing any semblance of structure the game might have had, what would make a person pay for that?
Horse Armor only happened because of Valve pushing Steam and people being stupid enough to support and lovingly defend the practice of installing invasive DRM for game rentals.
Steam was widely mocked up until the early 2010s where sales became common place. So the horse armor seems knee jerk at best
>widely mocked up
Channers doing that thing again where they think their tiny community is a representation of all consumers.
That's some wild revisionist history. Steam was barely present when the horse armour dropped.
I remember seeing debates online between people who saw horse armor as a slippery slope, and much louder people who declared it "fun" and nothing to worry about.
It was cool because most of them were free and were included in demo discs if you didn't have Live. Most of them were just little extra things the devs made for fun, like skins or extra missions or challenge stages, more multiplayer maps if the game was popular online.
It was AC2 when I realized how much bullshit dlcs had become when they straight up cut two missions out of the base game to sell them as dlc.
A few Xbox games had a nasty habit of taking out modes to sell them as DLC. The Incredibles game was the example I remember where a battle mode was cut out and sold as DLC while everyone else got it on Disc
Most xbox users were braindead americans who also paid for online gaming
The Halo 2 DLC was probably the best old example. But it was just a generic update compared to today.
Just a handful of new maps.
> But that alone was a crazy concept to all of us obsessing over the game.
But didn't that stuff end up on the goty edition? Remember goty editions.....
The Multiplayer Map Pack physical release didn't have the final map pack, so it was basically lost to time until the MCC edition came out. Not that they were great maps but still.
neither were remotely new concepts at the time
ahem
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayCable
I think there was a phone-line based system for the Atari 2600 too, but I could be thinking of what you linked. The Intellivision was some weird shit.
I graduated in 2007, so I was very much in school from 04-06, and playing Halo LAN parties with my friends who were REALLY serious about Halo at that. I did not have my own Xbox however, and am generally rather shitty at Halo.
SegaChannel and Satelleview are both instances of games via subscription, and not really DLC.
Earliest DLC I can think of was for the Dreamcast, where specifically loading up in-game browsers could typically point you to getting extra content for Sonic Adventure and other games saved to your VMU.
The WonderSwan also had stuff downloadable via the WonderGate, and while most games had content that was already on the cart, Lode Runner is the one instance where you actually downloaded specific data to add stuff to the game, and held it on the SRAM.
Unless there was something similar for the Saturn, I think this was it. The issue is that you didn't have a lot of space back then, so you needed to have a lot of save space / back-up storage, or you had to pre-plan as a developer and load most of the meat of the DLC onto the physical media.
A lot of people did care and saw the evolution of what it has become even back then.
Anyone has a list of games that don't have dlc?
Why are you moron equating full games being rented in sega channel to dlc maps or special mounts
Is not the same
When Xbox Live first came out, broadband internet was more of a premium service still in the early adoption stage. Dial-up was still far more common, and phone bills from heavy internet usage on dial-up could get really nasty. Broadband killed off the volatility of pay-per-use dial-up and replaced it with flat monthly rates that were often faster and cheaper. As ethernet was still in the early adoption phase (enthusiasts, nerds, and angry parents who got burned by their kids racking up ridiculous phone bills), Xbox Live was basically a premium atop a premium. It didn't take long for broadband internet to become much cheaper than dial-up internet. By the time Halo 2 came out, you probably saved more money with ethernet and a Live subscription than you did paying for dial-up.
Almost everyone I knew who had Live on the original Xbox got it shortly after Halo 2 came out. That's when online gaming became mainstream. It got even more popular during the Xbox 360 era, but H2 was like the spark that made the gunpowder blow up.
Others have answered but it was Not much cared about except that it was considered somewhat a cool novelty. The main anger came during the 360 days. Horse armor and a tomb raider game revealed to have stages cut from launch to be sold later were controversies. By this point it’s simply accepted. All dlc taught me to do was wait until the “game of the year” edition came out with everything included two years after launch, then eventually I stopped buying modern games altogether.
Generally the attitude was that as annoying as payment for online play was, XBOX Live was a much better system than what the PS2 or GC had. you got what you paid for. PS3 free and comparatively easier than PS2 online was a selling point over 360, but notretro
DLC was met with more contempt, especially as it got more shameless, but in the gen 6 days it wasn't as big a deal.
First DLC I remember really kicking up a fuss was the horse armour in Oblivion. Maybe the CoD4 maps too but you could at least still play them if in a party and one of the players owned it.
it was dlc
>pirate game
>includes all the DLC
>start the game with a shitload of OP items, level skips, out of place cosmetics, pestered by side quests before the main story barely begins
You could download Pac-Man without going to a store or needing a disk, it was amazing.
e-reader cards acting as DLC to unlock hidden on-disc content
DLC is an inevitability with the digital age. I don't think anyone could expect how scummy it would have gotten.
As for paid online, even if you were against the idea it was really easy to argue that XBL was a premium service compared to PSN and NWFC during the 6th and 7th gens, but it only became a weaker argument as those services caught up. Paid online these days is just a fricking joke.
>Paid online these days is just a fricking joke
You serious? With the amount of free shit they throw at you for subscribing these days, you'd be a fool not to. You don't even need to subscribe to play most online games people care about, which are free
>With the amount of free shit they throw at you for subscribing these days
I don't want any of that I want to play online for free.
So the games are free but the connection is paid, what difference does it make?
So buy a PC or use XLink Kai or whatever
>the amount of free shit they throw at you for subscribing
It's not free though as you're paying for it. The online functionality costs them pennies if even that.
>It's not free though as you're paying for it
No shit
Why are you acting like you didn't say that though?
True, I guess nothing is truly "free" since there is always an opportunity cost associated. Unless you have access to a pc/console and electricity/internet for free somehow.
>you pay for it and it's free dude it's heckin great
LMAO!!
my friends and i were frustrated with paying to play online considering we were already familiar with MMOs. eventually it became a settlement on "what do we play right now" and at some point getting into Halo 2. honestly it was the fricking oblivion horse armor that really started worrying me.
Paid online did kinda suck, but pretty much every console online service was paid so nobody complained too hard.
DLC on the original Xbox was mostly good from what I remember, and as a kid, the idea of being able to download extra content onto a console game felt revolutionary.
DLC could be annoying at times, but it wasn't the perfect storm of popular game, insane price, and unnecessary content that horse armor was. Most people didn't give a shit about Xbox live costing money because of what it offered. While all games usually had fragmented online, with Xbox live you now had a universal tag that worked for all online games on the Xbox, making it much easier to connect and play with those you know in real life or people that you met in a completely separate game. It was absolutely a game changer, even more so on Xbox 360. But after PS3 had their version, steam did something similar, and the fact that now people will just use discord to talk with friends, the idea for paying for something like that has gotten pretty antiquated.