Holy Money Spinner, Batman! Arkham Knight Season Pass Announced

WB are well know for their DLCs but to be honest, if someone has patience they also do some great sales and lot's of their games are part of PS Plus IQC.
I'll wait for a sale before I get this one.

I got The Witcher 3 + season pass bundle for $76 off PSN. That is about the limit of what I'm willing to spend. I would also only do that very few games...

If the whole package is $90 like Far Cry 4 was then I will wait for a price drop.

Forget these season pass. I'm astonished by how much content was in GTA 5 at launch and how much content Rockstar were willing to give out for free since the game has been out. Smh at some of these games these days...

I must admit I am not a fan of the Challenge Maps and therefore unlikely to buy the season pass. I did enjoy the Harley Quinn's Revenge DLC that game with the garish box art GotY version so may buy the inevitable GotY version of Arkham Knight.

£32.99?! You can purchase a full retail release from certain stores around launch for that price.

@get2sammyb - That cover reminds me that I feel these games are bit overrated. I mean don't get me wrong they a really good but "One of the greatest games ever made" never crossed my mind while playing any of them.

Don't buy it, folks. Simples.

Ugh... racing in the Batmobile is soooo tempting, though X_X
Still! I won't be that easily sold unless it adds some kind of local multi-player content. Until then, colour me disgusted -_-
I mean, WTH? That's a retail game's price!

I mean we all complain about these kind of practice, but yet we support it.
Its like me complaining about how fat society have become but im sitting on my couch with a plate of bacon.
I truly miss the days of doing certain things in the game to unlock goodies.

Dinadinadinadina Cashcow.

@Kayoss Wrong, we can change it. The industry believes we are all gormless, they should make games to fit our budgets not make our budgets fit their overpriced games. A bastion of games should come in right now and say "all of our games have free dlc and no micro transactions" we would all buy their games. They would be rich.

I'll admit I've paid $30 for season passes a couple times but that's as high as I'll go. If story content is sold for a reasonable price alone I may get it but otherwise WB can p*ss off.

They know most idiots will gladly part with their money. Warner Bros can suck it.
Stuff like this makes me despise this rotten industry and the idea that people buy these season passes makes me lose even more faith in humans. No sale for me.

'That's disgusting!'

The Internet shouts as I drive around in the Animated Series Batmobile.

Say that makes the game £80 at retail, which is a lot- that's very much in line with inflation. Gaming is pretty inflation busting most of the time. If everyone didn't view DLC as something evil that they should be entitled to for free, or that it's not a major economic player in a game's (and studio's) lifecycle - all the better.
We are at a point where DLC is a AAA standard and a very good, non-mandatory way for the studio, publisher and everyone else with a finger in the pie to make a little more.
Drive that industry out, we're left with a lot of well meaning indies without the resource to build games like Arkham Knight.

No, simply no. Warner can take their season pass and shove it where the Sun don't shine.
They and others like them will carry on fleecing people - and raising the prices over time only as long as gamers are willing to pay for it. The packaging, content withholding, drip feeding of extras and price hikes are for suckers and shareholders. Count me out.

@themcnoisy
Free DLC worth a damn will never happen. Even CD Projekt Red has been roped into raping customers wallets. They've received a pass though. People don't like Rocksteady as much so people will b*tch. To me it is what is, as long as the main game I pay $60 for has a good amount of content, I'm happy. My problem is hypocrisy. If you hate DLC so much take a stand against all of it.

DLC is totally fine and so are season passes. On one condition; it should NEVER feel like they left out content from the main game just so they could sell it to you later on. Its as simple as that

I love Batman and I'm hopeful of the new game meeting expectations....however I most certainly will not be buying the season pass...I'll save that and use it to buy something cool at London Comic con in a few months.

Ill be passing on this. It'll be cheaper to get DLC without skins. I never use them when I got them from GOTY editions. The only worthwhile DLC Character was the Joker from asylum, and that was free. Plus, the fact that you can't roam the world with side-quests locked with a DLC character also devalues them too.

I don't understand the hype myself, I'll be renting this and probably moving in half way through.

@KALofKRYPTON There is a flipping difference between "normal" DLC, season passes and gated content. This isn't about entitlement...
People like you are the reason this is getting worse.

_{@AyeHaley: Please watch the language -Tasuki-}

@AyeHaley
'people like me' are the reason that the big publishers are still in the game.

I point back to the inflation point. £80 all in, about £35 in 1990 money, when MegaDrive games released at £50. Not an insignificant amount of money then or now, but while top developers then we're teams of dozens, they're now hundreds in some cases. Add to that the marketing and the incredibly short shelf life of a new boxed game and dlc just makes sense. Even in the realm of 'gated content'. If they know now they can sell a season pass for extra content down the line to keep your copy of the game off of the preowned shelf, then they will. No dlc for a story based game I've seen to date has left me feeling like I've misses out by not having it, or the 'should've been in the game' feeling.

I'm still not even sure I'm going to get this Batman (didn't finish the last one), but if and when I do, I won't be getting that Season Pass. I can get full games for that much money elsewhere.

Game, day one. Season pass, **** off Rocksteady.

I think every game now is going to have a season pass as standard soon, to milk as much milk from the proverbial cow as possible. this content should be rewarded through time for buying the game, as a thankyou for supporting a companies product.We all know these season passes are pritty crap tbh and its only tiny bits and pieces of dlc such as a gun or double xp half the time anyway.

Absolutely right.
Devs should hand out hours of content that they make at a significant cost for free...
Of course that is ridiculous, the dev teams wages don't decrease to 0 because the game is platinum, the vast majority of extra post launch content costs to make, much the same as a full release.

And to clarify before some spoon jumps on that, I'm not saying the actual cost is the same as a full release, but that it costs to make it, like it costs to develop the initial game.
I agree that there are exceptions where this DLC is abnormally high priced, such as Evolve.

You don't want the DLC or season pass? Don't buy it, don't be "part of the problem".
You are not forced to do so.
If I buy the season pass, you don't then have to pay extra to enjoy the core game, you just pay for the post release content.

@nathanSF it's weird because Activision have been doing this for years with hugely over priced content for their major rehash cash cow, but that never seems to be included in these debates.

The game plus season pass is listed as $99.99 on the PS Store... HAHA! I don't think there is any game I would drop that much on.

So usually I just want the campaign DLC, not the skins and multiplayer stuff. So what I did with Far Cry 4 (because I really loved that game and was playing it every day for a while) was wait until the particular piece of DLC I want releases and just buy that. Problem is I'm still waiting, and lost interest in that game along time ago.

I imagine that's what will happen here. I'll tell myself I'll just wait for the DLC that I want to buy and get it separately, and then by the time it actually releases I'll have moved on to some other game and just won't care.

Only game I'm buying a season pass for on PS4 is Witcher 3. And any DLC they release for Dragon Age Inquisition that's not multiplayer based (which was all microtransactions anyways- ruined the MP mode).

Buy one for the price of Two.

Well, I am really looking forward to this game but being a single player title I certainly wasn't going to pre order. But now seeing the season pass price I'm quite willing to wait until there's GOTY edition. I have plenty of other titles to be getting on with in the meantime.

@get2sammyb I hated that case so much...

@JaxonH

One thing I feel they need to get better at if they want to do single player DLC is releasing it in a timely manner. I can't remember the exact timing but I'm pretty sure Arkham City's story dlc was released about 4 months after the game. I was a huge fan but at that point (early 2012) I had moved on to some 3DS games and was saving for a Vita. The best time to hit with story DLC is, at most, a month after release, unless you're talking about a game along the lines of a Skyrim or Dragon Age or like I assume The Witcher will be.

No sale, ill be the dlc piece meal if I really want it. Im not gonna front $30 ( PS Plus discount) on content thats not officially announced and that I might not even want. I can live without skins, extra story content on the other hand....

why surprise? Warner Brothers has been doing this, and Batman is their biggest franchise. It'd be fool of them not trying to milk it.

$60 for a game + $40 for the season pass... not including taxes. This is a minimum of $110 -_-

Depends on the content. I would shell out if its decent, not many games coming out over the summer so not against the idea if the content is worth it

I buy certain DLC if I really enjoy a game and the contents of that DLC improve and/or prolong my enjoyment. Something like CoD (for example) adds more than double the maps as well as a lot more co-op Maps too. As a fan of Zombies, you go from 1 Zombie Map shipped with the game to having 5 and these are actually quite big and often more complex than just a Horde mode - also a lot bigger and more involved than a MP map. It therefore makes sense to buy the Season Pass and actually save money.

I never feel that 'content' in CoD is kept back for use as DLC. If anything the amount of Content on-disc over the years has grown. Its a lot easier to see in long standing franchises as you have more to compare with. CoD4 for example didn't have anywhere near as much in its MP (less customisation, killstreaks etc) and no co-op modes (zombies, extinction, survival). Its DLC was just 4 maps for £12. Regardless of what you think about the actual game play of games like Ghosts and AW, the on-disc content is a lot bigger and even the DLC has more content - A weapon (in some cases), 4 new maps and a new co-op map - for the same price as CoD4's. To buy all 4 separately costs £48 but a Season Pass is £40 so it makes sense to buy a season pass instead of all 4 separately. The season pass was introduced to reduce the cost for those fans of the game who are likely to buy all DLC but its still optional - you don't have to buy the Season Pass at (or even pre) launch but can wait until all DLC packs have been released if you want to see what the content is like. In some cases, buying a Season Pass also gives you something 'extra' like cosmetic items or early access. You can buy 1-3 DLC packs for less money separately if you want to be more selective or none if you want - either way it doesn't affect the on-disc content or feel like its been kept back because the game has more on it than earlier games in the franchise. New games, like Evolve or Destiny, have no previous game to compare with so get compared with other 'similar' games. Because games like CoD offer a lot of content, we expect other games to deliver too. Titanfall is a classic example, It shipped with no real Campaign, no co-op, very limited weapons, a few game modes and less maps than CoD. Its DLC was £10 per pack and only offered 3 maps. People felt that as an MP only game, it should have offered more to make up for the lack of content - more Maps, game modes, weapons, customisation etc etc compared to other FPS games and the same is true for Evolve. What makes it worse for Evolve is that a lot of Day 1 content was also released. Because of the lack of content on-disc, people rightly ask why this DLC couldn't have been included or worse 'cut' from the game to be DLC.

Day 1 DLC in itself isn't bad either. A lot of games are basically finished months before going Gold and the majority of the development team have the opportunity to work on the DLC whilst others are polishing and testing. AAA studio's have big development teams so those involved in creating the DLC are not those that are involved in polishing, testing etc. A game like CoD has different teams involved in co-op, MP and campaign so you can't expect the majority to be sat idle whilst a few finish the game - its not good business and you don't get rid of these people when their part is 'finished' you put them to work on the 'next' phase.

Moving onto Batman: Arkham Knight, there are other games to compare with. Arkham Asylum and Arkham City. In terms of on disc content, I felt that City was a bigger game - not just because of the more open world environment. I can't say that the DLC was of particular interest as I don't really play the 'challenge maps' but the 'Harley Quinns Revenge' was enjoyable - I didn't buy the DLC but bought the GotY version. I expect judging by the numerous videos, that Arkham Knight will be a big game in terms of scale and length - probably bigger than Arkham City so the on-disc content has been expanded. Chances are I won't buy the season pass because the majority of the expected content is of no interest. The cost of the game though is still the same (or similar) to Arkham Asylum was on release yet offering more.

I could understand it if people were buying games like CoD for example and had to buy the campaign, co-op or MP separately as DLC when previous games had this on disc. I can understand why people felt the way they do about Evolve when comparing it to other similar games.

DLC in itself isn't a bad thing. I know it can make games a lot more expensive if you want all content but the point is, its optional. Batman games are SP story driven games and that isn't changing with this. Its not like the DLC is needed to finish the story. If you want all the 'extras' then its cheaper to buy the Season Pass - its better for those gamers. If you don't want any then don't buy, its not going to affect your play through.

I know there are good and bad examples of DLC and in terms of costs too but that is no different from games in general. I know it makes games seem more expensive as well. I paid £60 for Goldeneye - I know it was on a Cartridge and therefore production and manufacturing costs were higher but the amount of content available is less than something like CoD. If it had been possible to buy more maps then, I probably would have because I knew I would get hours of enjoyment from playing it. Some of the 'best' DLC packs (in terms of rating) have been additional story based - Like Minervas Den from Bioshock 2 - but in terms of the cost per hour, its more expensive for me than a CoD Map Pack. Same with something like Harley Quinn's Revenge but I never felt these were cut from the game or examples of 'bad' practice, but more extensions and reason to revisit favourites. I never felt they were 'necessary' but totally optional.

I could go on but appreciate I have probably rambled long enough but the gist is that not ALL DLC is bad, it is 'optional' and Season Passes are better for gamers than making us to fork out more for all the content.

That price is ridiculous. I've only bought one season pass it was for Shadow of Mordor. What a waste both story missions were OK at best and nowhere near worth the $25. I assume this one will be like the other Arkham games and have one story mission and a bunch of challenge maps and skins. I hope that season passes eventually go the way of online passes.

I really want the Season Pass contents but $40 is absurd. I might just wait for GOTY seeing that both the previous Batman games got GOTY versions.