It seems the Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment marketing department heard the gaming public loud and clear after it was announced that the Season Pass for the highly anticipated video game, Batman Arkham Knight was announced with a $40 price tag. The price was met with a wave of overwhelming negativity against the game. In general, season passes for video games are not offered for a price that high. Previously, Warner Bros. Interactive offered season passes for a price that were much lower for its other major game releases. Batman Arkham Origins had a season pass for $20. Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor had one priced at $24.99. Dying Light had a Season Pass priced at $20. The Kombat Pack, the season pass for Mortal Kombat X, was the highest one with a $30 price tag. While some prices tags for the all-DLC-in-one season passes were growing higher, the idea of paying $40 for one seemed horrendous. As a result of the negative publicity, Warner Bros. Interactive should have been more upfront about the details of the season pass to at least give fans a better idea of what they were potentially forking over another $40 of their hard-earned money for.
The new details for the Batman Arkham Knight Season Pass offer a much better breadth and width that will be available for the game’s downloadable content expansions. However, I am still not sure if the new details really convince me that price of $40 should be OK. For that price, it should be something more comprehensive than a Season Pass. It really should basically be, Batman Arkham Knight v.2.0. This Season Pass is two-thirds price the price of the actual game. That is a lot more than your typical Season Pass.
Now are there good things in the Season Pass? Yes, there are. Batgirl: A Matter of Family will feature a prequel story mission where players get to play as Batgirl for the first time. However, this could easily be a short, quick prequel mission. That said, the opportunity to play as Batgirl is huge. Warner Bros. Interactive should have revealed that with the initial announcement. It very well could have softened the blow of the huge price, or at least gotten fans excited about the Season Pass instead. Maybe fans think Batgirl will be worth the extra money.
The Season of Infamy honestly sounds like story-themed content that was already included in the core gameplay for all the previous Batman Arkham games. The description for this particular part of the DLC makes me think that Rocksteady is essentially putting additional side-quest content as DLC. For a next-gen video game, Rocksteady taking that route would be a huge disappointment.
Unfortunately, I believe these publishers and developers could take a page out of CD Projekt Red’s book for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. The game will feature tons of core gameplay plus 16 pieces of free DLC. There will be paid expansion content with The Witcher 3 Expansion Pass, but it will offer over 50 hours of more gameplay content.
Batman Arkham Knight is set for a June 23 release for PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Windows PC.
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