Cognition Dissemination: It’s Perfectly Believable That Single-Player DLC Isn’t Selling Well

I was taken aback at the news that Square Enix cancelled three of the last four downloadable content episodes for Final Fantasy XV. The remaining members of the development team at the newly-formed Luminous Productions confirmed that only Episode Ardyn will release, while those for Aranea, Lunafreya, and Noctis will not. The old schedule showed how Ardyn was the first one due for release, so it likely only remained in development because closer to being finished than the others. Given the headlines that followed the announcement, I was far from the only one surprised at this development.

My surprise was due to how it made no logical sense on the surface. Final Fantasy XV was one of the best-selling installments in the franchise, and Square Enix recently touted how it sold over eight million copies worldwide. Given that, the previous DLC episodes must have sold well, even if their sales were only a fraction of the main game’s. But there’s a chance that assumption could have been misguided — here, and with other DLC of this type.

Shortly after this news broke, Kotaku’s Jason Schreier tweeted that he received word from several developers that single-player DLC doesn’t sell all that well. This sounded unbelievable upon first hearing it, but there’s a good chance that I’ve been taking the presumed success of extra content for games that sold well for granted. My assumption existed because publishers don’t usually disclose how well DLC sells unless its sales are very good.

There have always been signs showing how single-player DLC doesn’t reach as wide an audience. Whenever you go through the storefronts of PlayStation Network and Xbox Live, you can see how the DLC never has anywhere near as many ratings as the base game. This was thought to be an unreliable method to determine sales, as there were likely several players who perhaps played and rated the main game but didn’t do so for the DLC. It seems this is where Occam’s razor comes into play: The DLC has less ratings because less people purchased them.

If you’re like me, you probably feel that info merely points to a good-enough presumption in lieu of a lack of sufficient evidence, understandable considering there are few hard numbers. But there’s an even better — though still hardly definitive — method to determine this: Through seeing how many players have unlocked the trophies or achievements compared to the main game. If you’re on PlayStation 4, and you see how even the easiest trophies in the DLC are rare compared to even some harder ones from the main game, it means the number of players who’ve played the former is considerably lower. These two methods make it easy to believe that single-player DLC has been selling in underwhelming numbers compared to the main games.

There are a couple of reasons for this. For one, games take longer and longer to complete these days, thanks to how many developers are making open world titles loaded with main and side quests, and other extras. It’s easy to be burnt out on these upon finishing the titles, especially for anyone 100-percent completing them, which reduces the desire to return to them for extra content. The second one pertains to the quality of single-player DLC. There are several good examples, but for each one of them, there are several others that either feel unfulfilling compared to quests in the main game or unsubstantial in terms of length for the price.

While we’re on the topic: The first four FFXV episodes ranged from okay-to-good, though were equal in quality to some quests within the main game. It helped that they were cheaper than the average single-player DLC quests, too.

The disappointing sales have resulted in several publishers shifting their business methods in the last few years. Instead of making DLC quests, there’s been an increase in the number of standalone expansions. Uncharted: The Lost Legacy was initially planned as DLC for Uncharted 4, but became a standalone game thanks to the development team’s desire to create a more robust quest. Bethesda has also made several such expansions in the last few years, including Wolfenstein: The Old Blood and Dishonored: Death of the Outsider. Another key recent example is Xenoblade Chronicles 2: Torna ~ The Golden Country, a prequel to the main game. More expansions like this are being made, and I prefer them when they can expound upon their concepts without making the game feel stretched.

This isn’t to say expansions weren’t always a thing, like they were for other games like The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and Dark Souls III. It’s just that making them standalone is a new hotness.

Despite that noticeable trend, several games are still receiving DLC episodes. The recent release of Marvel’s Spider-Man for PS4 has received two of them so far, known as “The Heist” and “Turf Wars,” with the final “Silver Lining” episode coming next month. They’ve been considered good at best, though not quite on par with the main game. There’s no telling how well the DLC has done compared to the main game in terms of sales, which is one of the fastest-selling PlayStation-exclusive titles around. Sony is unlikely to give numbers, so the public won’t be able to determine whether they put up impressive sales or not unless they change their business approach for extra content with the definitely-happening sequel.

The current trend shows how we’ll be seeing more standalone expansions in the future, but DLC episodes will still work for other single-player games. Several will also receive a little of both, like the recent Assassin’s Creed games. Different options work better for different games, but we’ll get a chance to see which format wins out between the end of this console generation and the beginning of the next one.