Well then that's definitely Soul Edge, right? Just in a pre-Nightmare/Pre-Cervantes/Pre-who-knows form? And no, no comic (that I know of anyways) but aren't there some roughly sketched cutscenes in the story modes? Or am I entangling my memories of IV and Broken Destiny? Anyway, I thought one of those might have been what you were getting at, because I'm like 97% sure that the sword in the SCIV opening cinematic is Soul Edge.
I wouldn't expect the 3rd character to be released this month, but I do hope to see a trailer...
A trailer is certainly a more realistic possibility, but still not terribly likely, in my estimation. Haohmaru just dropped, and the timetable on these has been between three and four months between releases, with the trailer preceeding by a span of weeks that has varied between 2-6, as best I can recall? And that was definitely under much more ideal production condition, so I don't think this is the time where they are going to buck the trend and get the content out in a rushed condition; it seems we may very well have more Tekken content coming, and if that is so, any relief help that might have been coming from Tekken staff being re-assigned temporarily to PS will be minimal, if there is an at all. Unfortunately, when you consider both past precedent and the current circumstances, it's not very realistic to hope for a third character release this month, and I'd be genuinely surprised to see even a trailer before 6-8 weeks from now.
While I wouldn't say good will is irrelevant, I think the decision can be better explained in terms of market factors. Past developers would have wanted to include as many legacy characters as possible, no doubt, but they would have lacked the ability to circumvent the fact that with a base game's price point being set in most markets, they could only develop within a budget that matched what the publisher's market research division suggested would be the resulting sales, with no ability to calibrate the game more finely to demand. Now, for more than a decade, there was a technical solution to sidestep this issue: the very method they are pursuing today of extensive post release support via iterative DLC drops.
Capcom's on disk "DLCs" didn't help to build up any goodwill in the past, also even today things like DoA6 season passes for $90 don't help either.
Well, I'm half on the same page as you there: without question, there are some industry practices from certain market players about ten years ago that go a long way to explaining why consumers got their backs up and became reluctant or outright intractable about new content delivery models. In more recent years, I've often described the more entitled, irrational behaviours of consumers when it comes to this sort of thing as a Frankenstein's monster of the industry's own creation: certain companies (cough EA, cough Activision) pushed the limits on how they charged for content so much in such a short period (and with a type of consumer who knew how to organize and push back online, no less) that they created an immense overcorrection in the other direction, where even the vast majority of reasonable companies employing reasonable practices got opposed by consumers--even where said practices would have given them more of what they asked for at a price that was more feasible for the developers and publishers.
Here is in my opinion a better analogy considering on disc DLCs.
No, I'm sorry man, but that's absolutely a false analogy/non-sequitur. If you bought the base game for SCVI at the flat price and the next day you also decide to buy the first DLC, you haven't been deprived of anything with regard to your original purpose. And in any event, they didn't hide so much as a single thing from you: you were perfectly capable of doing due diligence in researching the content (or not), but they can't be blamed for your having been surprised that there was something extra--and even if they could that still would not mean you were entitled to it for free.
I was mostly talking about Capcom's on disc "DLCs" from 10 years ago. By definition, if something is on disc, it's not really DLC at all.
True enough, but the term DLC is often used idiomatically these days. The ultimate point is that you have two purchases: a core product and peripheral product. But just to try to put us more on the same page, I think it's useful to consider the older (and yes, sometimes less defensible) practices in this area. If a company pushes the line on holding back content they have already developed to such an extreme extent that you are no longer getting a value which matches what they want you to pay for it, then yes, that absolutely becomes a problem. But in that situation you already have a solution: vote with your dollars and just don't buy any of the product, or wait until its pricepoint drops to something that is more reasonable for you.
Why not both? We can in fact vote with our wallets and whine and cry online about our reasons for doing so. If we only withhold our money and don't tell anyone why, publishers might learn a completely wrong lesson from the whole experience and try to change something else that was not broken to begin with instead of addressing the actual issue preventing people from purchasing their stuff, not helping at all at best, making things even worse with bad alterations nobody asked for at worst.
I disagree, I think it does matter or at least it absolutely should. A line has to be drawn somewhere unless we want our rights eroded by companies constantly pushing the boundaries of what's acceptable further and further little by little to their advantage. What is or is not on the disc is a perfect objective visible clear distinction such a line can be drawn at. It's not vague and for that reason it's useful and good.
Well, I'm not saying don't complain: you absolutely should let a company know if they are not meeting your expectations. I'm just saying one form of complaint/expectation is vastly more reasonable than the other: Saying "I don't feel you are giving us enough here: I really need at least 22 characters to feel like spending $60--you should have added Tira to the base game and now I am not sure about buying the product at the current price." is completely reasonable. Saying "You already did the work of making Tira--therefore, I am entitled to her as a part of the core game." is not really rational or reasonable. And I think the distinction is an important one when we try to gauge where our response has jumped the train from reasonable and logical consumer push-back based on an analytical assessment of actual value received, and just bitching because we "feel" like it should be ours because its done now.
Eh, I'm sorry man: I really appreciate that we are able to discuss this civilly despite very different views and I don't by any means wish to change that, but if I am blunt, describing this as an "erosion of rights" is both inaccurate and histrionic: there is no such thing as a "right to force all work on a product done by Day X to be included in the base product." There never has been such a right, and trying to create and enforce such a right would actually step all over all manner of actual deeply important property rights that underpin modern commerce and law.
