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That Time Koei Tecmo Charged Fifty Dollars for A Video Game Update
Nearly twenty years ago, during the height of the PlayStation 2 era, Japanese game publisher Koei brought the idea of the PC video game expansion pack to consoles in a big way. At the time, it was commonplace for PC games to receive additional content in the form of brand new lower-priced retail releases that could hook on to the original game. In spite of one or two earlier attempts to do this on consoles (like the famous Sonic and Knuckles Sega Genesis cartridge), Koei really went for it on the PS2 as if it was no big deal.
2003’s Dynasty Warriors 3: Xtreme Legends released as a standalone expansion pack with its own set of unique levels and challenges that stood apart from the main game. If you had a save file on your PS2 memory card from the original non-Xtreme-branded title, you could “merge” everything together and play all of the DW3 content inside of Xtreme Legends alongside fun bonus enhancements.
These days, a simple save data verification check would be far too easy to get around thanks to hard drives and cloud storage, so Koei sells their expansions the way everyone else does — as questionably-priced DLC. They’ll often go even further now and also release a new edition of the base game with the expansion content packed in. This helps them keep the profit margins for their games up as they can push older versions right off the market and avoid retail price cuts.
It’s worse for customers’ wallets, and very exploitative of die-hard fans.
The best deals on Koei Warriors DLC come not from their own products, but from their licensed spin-off games. Hyrule Warriors Legends is made by Koei’s internal Omega Force development team but published by Nintendo. So, when it came time to release an expansion, Nintendo decided to set the price at a reasonable $20. It had a decent collection of new characters, stages, and challenges.
In contrast, when Koei’s own Warriors Orochi 4 was set to get its “Ultimate Edition” expansion in 2020…
