Dragon Age - DLC Nets a Million

Money talks… Electronic Arts executive vice president and CFO Eric Brown discloses sales figures for DA:O DLC.

Brown recapped the nearly instantaneous success of Dragon Age: Origins, the BioWare fantasy role-playing game that arrived in stores early last week. The executive said that sales of Dragon Age downloadable content are already "well past $1 million" collectively. Brown also reiterated the company's intent to support the game with new add-ons for an entire year after launch.
Dragon Age launched alongside a handful of add-ons, including the $15 (but free for preorders) Stone Prisoner expansion, and the $7 Warden's Keep. EA is also selling a handful of premium Dragon Age themes for 240 Microsoft points ($3) each on the Xbox Live Marketplace.

More information.

I had the Stone Prisoner thing included, but I didn't pre-order. I didn't know it was only for pre-orders (apparantly not!).

Stone Prisoner was not for pre order. Every dvd rom had card which had Stone Prisoner and Blood Dragon armour code in it (at least here in UK)

However if you pre order you got 1 or 2 in game items.

Bloody hell, that's a good effort. Assuming that nobody's really paid for stone prisoner yet (as that'd only be for second hand purchases) that's nearly 150k sales of warden's keep in only a week or so!

Fingers crossed it's beating their expectations and they make bigger chunks of DLC because they think they'll recoup the investment.

When you compare DLC pricing for games such as Dragon Age, Fallout 3 and Oblivion with cost of NWN premium modules, you will see that there is something wrong with that picture. Modules like Mysteries of Westgate or Wyvern Crown of Cormyr had lots of quality content for small amount of money. MoW costs 10$ and has some 10-15 hours of gameplay for single playtrough, with addition of multiple endings and quest solutions that will allow player to replay it more then one with different feel. Then compare that with horse armor and 15$ companion.

I'll just wait for a package deal. $7 for 2 hours gameplay is just not right.

Originally Posted by marko2te
When you compare DLC pricing for games such as Dragon Age, Fallout 3 and Oblivion with cost of NWN premium modules, you will see that there is something wrong with that picture. Modules like Mysteries of Westgate or Wyvern Crown of Cormyr had lots of quality content for small amount of money. MoW costs 10$ and has some 10-15 hours of gameplay for single playtrough, with addition of multiple endings and quest solutions that will allow player to replay it more then one with different feel. Then compare that with horse armor and 15$ companion.

MoW was pretty cheap though IMO. And I'd say there's a difference between the engine creators using DLC to improve profit margins on what they've taken a massive financial risk on and (albeit high quality) amateurs using someone else's engine.

The first rule of DLC is if think it is too expensive then don't buy it. No one is forcing you to get it.

The second rule is that if you choose to not buy it don't whine about it.

$15 stone prisoner in each box, so they've sold roughly 60k copies of the game? Is this a surprise?

Originally Posted by BillSeurer
The first rule of DLC is if think it is too expensive then don't buy it. No one is forcing you to get it.

The second rule is that if you choose to not buy it don't whine about it.

This makes no sense to me. If we feel something is overpriced, anything, be it DLC or not, why shouldn't we express our opinion? Yes, it's less meaningful than simply choosing not to purchase with one's currency vote, but that doesn't mean it's meaningless.

I bought the Warden's Keep DLC for DA:O. Until I played it I could not guess at it's worth. Now that I have played it, I felt it was most certainly overpriced for the amount of content but I'm not terribly remorseful for having bought it since I'm enjoying the game as a whole so much. But I certainly should let others who feel they are like-minded to me know what I think so they can make a more informed judgment than I did when I purchased.

BillSeurer first rule sounds fine, however you really need to reconsider the second.

I could be reading it wrong but, your premise seems to be: If you don't like it, don't tell anyone else, it could interfere with my profits. Or to put it another way, *Having a opinion (gaming in this case) is not allowed, unless it benefits the developer.*

Originally Posted by Guhndahb
I bought the Warden's Keep DLC for DA:O. Until I played it I could not guess at it's worth. Now that I have played it, I felt it was most certainly overpriced for the amount of content but I'm not terribly remorseful for having bought it since I'm enjoying the game as a whole so much.

See? You agree with me. Until you tried it you had no idea if it was worth it to you. I wait for reviews before buying any DLC; despite me liking Mass Effect and Fallout 3 I never bought any DLC for either.

It's the incessant whining about this stuff that bugs me. "Oh they're trying to rip us all off and it should have been part of the full game and DLC kills cute kittens and is going to bring about the end of the world in 2012 and …" If someone brings up the damn horse armor in Oblivion AGAIN…

Originally Posted by lostforever
Stone Prisoner was not for pre order. Every dvd rom had card which had Stone Prisoner and Blood Dragon armour code in it (at least here in UK)

Hang on - my game didn't come with Stone Prisoner and I'm in the UK - did I miss out?

Originally Posted by CutLunch
Hang on - my game didn't come with Stone Prisoner and I'm in the UK - did I miss out?

Yes. Where did you buy it from?

Originally Posted by kalniel
Yes. Where did you buy it from?

My mistake - I just turned over the Blood Armour glossy brochure. Bloody lucky as I threw out the plastic case a few days ago.

BillSuerer +1 Pretty much nails it for me too. Nobody is forcing you to whip out your credit card. Don't buy DLC if you don't feel it's justified, but don't whine about not getting it for free.

However, I don't have a problem with folks who have bought DLC reviewing it for the rest of us and telling an opinion whether it was worth the expense. To me, that's a great idea. I don't think Bill has an issue with this either.

Originally Posted by wolfing
I'll just wait for a package deal. $7 for 2 hours gameplay is just not right.

I actually agree with you, but the Keep helps you for the rest of the game via storage, vendor and a metalsmith. That said, I got a keep in Baldur's Gate 2 just for going to the first tavern. It cost me nothing.

Originally Posted by BillSeurer
It's the incessant whining about this stuff that bugs me. "Oh they're trying to rip us all off and it should have been part of the full game and DLC kills cute kittens and is going to bring about the end of the world in 2012 and …" If someone brings up the damn horse armor in Oblivion AGAIN…

I suspected that's where you were coming from. I've explained elsewhere why I've tended to dislike DLC. It's not because of the kitten killing , it's because I like to play an entire game w/ any in-OC addons on my first playthrough. So 0-day DLC actually appealed to me and I went ahead and purchased Warden's Keep. As I said I don't really regret it.

However, I do feel the amount of content in all DLC to date (for every game of interest to me and for which I've read DLC reviews) has not been in line with their prices for us as consumers. When I compare them to quality expansions of yesteryear, even adjusted for inflation, which have a similar advantage in that the engine is complete and much of the game assets can be reused, I find the content : price ratio to be poor. I think it's important for people to speak up about this even if it's opinion and speculation. I am not arguing that DLC should be free or that they are cutting out OC material for DLC - although it may have been the case on occasion. But it's entirely possible they are gouging on DLC because many consumers don't have the self-control to resist. Of course one can live without DLC! In fact, Warden's Keep is the first DLC I've ever bought for any game and I intend to be similarly cautious in the future. But why not discuss these feelings within a community like this? I suppose I'd rather put up with a little paranoid whining - irksome as it indeed is - if it has even the possibility of engendering productive critical discussion amongst consumers. The only power we consumers have against anti-consumer practices is communication and protest via not buying or convincing others not to buy a product.

And while some of the paranoia about DLC is obviously just that. If consumers remain careless about their purchases (microtransactions are even more dangerous for this) then, eventually, some of those conspiracy theories are likely to come true. The devs and publishers are out to make money, and I applaud them in that and want the good ones to thrive. But if we don't foster intelligent consumerism amongst our peers, it will negatively affect us all because they will take advantage of us.

We probably largely agree on all of this. I just want to be careful to avoid extinguishing critical discussion in order to weed out pointless whining. At times the two can appear awfully similar and often it takes awareness of a post author's previous opinions and point of view to distinguish between the two.

Crap - after writing all that I'm torn between being too embarrassed to post such a monstrosity and not wanting to make all that typing be for naught by not posting it. On the bright side, probably no one will have the patience to read it.

Originally Posted by kalniel
$15 stone prisoner in each box, so they've sold roughly 60k copies of the game? Is this a surprise?

This isn't how I read it. I think this is additional income from sales of Warden's Keep, not adding up the freebies.

Originally Posted by BillSeurer
The first rule of DLC is if think it is too expensive then don't buy it. No one is forcing you to get it.

The second rule is that if you choose to not buy it don't whine about it.

It's the incessant whining about this stuff that bugs me. "Oh they're trying to rip us all off and it should have been part of the full game and DLC kills cute kittens and is going to bring about the end of the world in 2012 and …" If someone brings up the damn horse armor in Oblivion AGAIN…

And why do you whine about someone criticizing a product one thinks its overpriced, especially compared to similar products. I was not aware that there was universal set of rules made to forbid customers from making negative opinions about products they bought. There is nothing wrong with DLC if they offer their moneys worth, problem is not in developers but in customers that will buy anything no matter the price (horse armor, horse armor, HORSE ARMOR!!!!). I bought Dragon Age and would like to expand my gaming experience by purchasing DLC but what Bioware offers is too little for the price. What you suggest is that everyone who has negative opinion needs to shut the hell up, I think that fans need to openly say that this ratio of price and content is not right, because thats the only way to fix this problem.