What’s that? A game developer saying they have no plans to launch any post launch paid DLC? That’s unheard of! But, that’s also what Team Ninja head Yosuke Hayashi is saying about the upcoming Dead or Alive 5.
When talking with Videogamer, Hayashi said that characters being released as downloadable content is “unfair.” Here’s the full quote:
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.
We have no plans to sell characters as downloadable content.
Of interesting note is that while, yes, he says that there’s no plans for paid DLC, don’t get your hopes up for free DLC either, as Hayashi mentions how hard the game is to balance when you’re adding more and more characters to the mix. He further mentions that balancing a roster of 20 characters is already a tremendous challenge.
For what it’s worth, the final Dead or Alive 5 roster does actually plan to have over 20 characters; the E3 demo had 12.
Dead or Alive 5 will launch on Xbox 360 and PS3 September 25th. Be sure to check out what we thought of the game from E3.