Look. Guys. I get it. You're butt hurt. You're hearing in big bold letters that stuff exists for your game and you aren't getting it with your 60 buck entry fee. which you think is a pretty hefty entry fee. believe me, I get it. And now they tell you you can get part of it, but you have to chose which part like its the holy grail or something.
But here is the thing. In this world of million dollar game development. When a game is planned, a publisher says, hey, we're putting up a couple million for this, and this is whats up if you want it released. It has to come out on this date, cost this much money to make, and it has to make this much money if you want to make another. PERIOD. There's no telling a publisher, hey, fuck you, we want to put more / less in. There are a FEW devs, who get to push buttons; Nintendo, Valve, whoevers driving MS' carriage but they are a minority.
Now in the olden days, when shit the devs want to do didn't fit within that scope, it got cut. And i'm not talking about hardware limitations (MK3) or motivation restrictions (mk4) I am talking about project scope limitations. For example; Dairou in MKDA, the DA characters in MKDe, Endings / Profiles in MKA. This is why you can find half baked data files for T Hawk in Vanilla SF4 along with Ono's claims that the game was prepared with DLC characters in mind. They really did want to put him in Vanilla, but he just didn't make the scope.
Later, publishers realized that alot of this half baked cutting room floor stuff could be pieced together with minimal effort and released via dlc, to tack a few extra bucks onto an already completed market cycle. These used to be called expansion packs. See: Most RPG / Action game expansion packs. A good example of this is the Force Unleashed, where content that was only partially finished made it into the technically inferior Wii port, but made it into the proper 360/ps3 release as (you guessed it) DLC.
Nowadays, publishers start a project with a clear vision of what is within the scope of the project, and decide pretty early on what they are going to nickel and dime the fans for afterward. It is not equitable to provide infinite resources from the start and then just try and chop it up a month before the gold backs get shipped. They say we want this much game now, build ti ready for more, and we will entertain it, if resources allow. This is why MKvDC was DLC ready, but never got it, because Midway could not deliver on the resources to finish assets like Quan Chi / Harley.
The point I'm making here is that you can bet your ass that 3rd fatalities, classic costumes, and probably an bunch of characters were trimmed from the project outline MONTHS AGO. "Fans" will bitch and moan when they turn up with a price tag on the marketplace because "they should've been on the disc in the first place", but you can comfortably assume they were never going to be on the disc. Publishers plan that kinda DLC now, and extra shit to be served up post release for premium prices is part of the project plan. This is why they can offer DLC codes as pre-order incentives, its not a gift, its a calculated promotional loss. And if Boon and Co came to the table saying their concept engine was DLC ready from MKvDC framework, you better believe WB was already microtransacting every feature in the game.
Meetings came and went NRS said we have the desire to do X amount of content and WB said thats great, but only this much is shipping. Get that done, and then the sky is the limit on DLC. The same discussion happened with Capcom / Marvel heads and Nitsuma about Shuma and Jill, the same went on with Ono and Inafune and Yun / Yang and two sets of DLC costumes.
And this is important to grasp, because if we lived in your "perfect" world where publishers only ever delivered a "complete" game, you would never have even heard of classic costumes. You would have just heard whats in the game, and when it came out and your shit wasn't included (again, See MKDA, MKDE, MKA) you would have just said at best "maybe next time" or at worst (given your temperment) "fuck them for not finishing the game."
You know this, because thats the way it was 10 years ago. Hell, thats the way it was 5 years ago. A game came out, and that was it. Half baked content or good ideas remained just that. And if x character was missing, or x move was cut from an alpha demo, or y stage was a copy paste job, it was just okay because you never heard about all the shit that didn't make it because it was beyond scope.
Now, you may feel betrayed because at some point you heard Ed say he wants to do /this/ or they're planning /this/ and you assumed that meant /this/ was in on disc. And you are certainly just in that, because that is a lie, but he doesn't say those things to be malicious or deceptive. Ed Boon is just a guy who likes to make video games, and he gets his pay check regardless of how many copies a game sells. He really has no incentive to lie to you. MK started with him and 10 guys in Midways basement. Do your really think this is some marketing super genius with a doctor in screw your customers-fu?
He says what he does because he's not in charge of whats in and whats out, ultimately. If Boon comes up with a million ideas and WB shoots every one of them down, its fucking down, thats it. Thats the publisher dev relationship. And honestly, I prefer Ed Boon missing the mark on his promises than the way it used to be, which is knowing absolutely nothing from start to finish or knowing everything from day one. You get on twitter and facebook and youtube and forums and you want to know every goddamned detail about development, but then you get pissed off when you find out the ugly parts. Not all dreams come true.
You can stand on your podium and say you've been dicked on content, but the reality is you've ALWAYS been dicked on content. Always. Always. As far back as Mario 1, as far back as ET on Atari. The only difference is now you have something (DLC) to throw your tomatoes at. You have evidence of it. Before it was just some construct like "time" or "misfortune".
Now I'm fucking done with this. I'm excited as hell about the game and whats in it. I would rather celebrate the 25 goddamned characters, 50 goddamned fatalities, 25-50 costumes, hundred+ moves/promoves , xrays and everything else thats fucking in it than sit here and trash NRS because I can't have Reptile's and Sub Zero's classics for free.
If you can really tell me that the existence for $s of extra skins of characters you've seen a million times detracts in any way from all of that to you, well, I am rendered fucking speechless by your arrogance and sense of entitlement. It could be a lot fucking worse people, it could be Mortal Kombat goddamned Armageddon again.
