Downloadable content ,or DLC as it’s commonly referred as, can be a double edge sword for developers. If done properly, players won’t hesitate to open their wallets just for a chance to extend play time of their favorite game.
But what happens when said content is promised in the game’s accompanying Bradygames Official Strategy Guide, proven to be on the game disc but only to be labeled as ‘Japan Only’ by said game’s publisher?
This happens to be the case with Level-5’s PlayStation 3 exclusive online rpg, White Knight Chronicles II. Published by D3Publisher in North America and by Sony Computer Entertainment in other regions, the lies surrounding WKC II’s DLC debacle began nearly a year ago when D3P announced on FaceBook that it’s impossible for them to release any further content for the game due to it being Japan Only.
Since its release in Japan nearly three years ago, WKC II has received a plethora of new content in the form of quests, armor, a story based on your created character and more, while its western counterpart has only received a single update in over a year.
As mentioned above, the so-called Japan Only DLC can be found in the game’s official strategy guide while much of it has been unearth by hackers who cracked the game’s disc. In an email response, developer Level-5 has reportedly stated that whether or not the content they created makes its way overseas is up to the game’s publisher(s) who was given the rights to it by Sony Computer Entertainment Japan. Level-5’s response means that the Japan Only excuse made by D3P is just that.
When confronted with much of the above information, D3P has kept to its original JP Only statement and without pressure from the appropriate parties ( be it Sony or major media outlets ) nothing will change.
One has to wonder if this practice would be acceptable if it happened to a bigger franchise like Final Fantasy, Metal Gear or Resident Evil.
Microsoft announced its financial results for Q3 of fiscal year 2026, including an update on its gaming Xbox business and more.
Not looking good. Hopefully Asha Sharma is able to turn Phil’s disaster around.
To me it's still quite remarkable how they can cash-in 5.3bn in revenue in a single quarter, since their hardware is basically dead.
The stock mark is what makes Microsoft remarkable, They have convinced every institutional and retail investor to just keep piling money into them. Like many big tech giants they are just a big growing pyramid scheme. As long as people keep dropping money into ETF's that cover the market Microsoft will always be liquid. At the same time it is completely stifling innovation and competition. People need to start being more discreet in how they invest their money as it's killing the system.
Riiiiight because people will just flock back to them for one or two games per year.
15+ years of bad performance is what they call irreparable in business. It is time for them to sell off the assets and get out of entertainment.
These declines are on the back of extra revenue received from releasing games like Forza horizon 5 on PlayStation. So I’m being sarcastic here when I said they should go back to exclusives. Killing off a revenue stream from Ps5 sales will only make things worse
The charity event will be streamed live from Gamescom in August.
Thanks to the slip-up of an artist working on the title, we now have more evidence that a new Injustice game is in the works.
The practice is not acceptable for a game like White Knight Chronicles and it would never be acceptable for games like FF, MG, or RE. You'd still find people defending the decision though.
Interesting that both the author and ZombieNinjaPanda mention Metal Gear.
MGO had content and patches released in Japan that were not released in the EU or US. They also released a standalone MGO for Japan which isn't strictly classed as DLC but its still content made available to one region and not others.
Probably still needed to be translated/bug tested for localization. Imported WKC2 to play it before it was confirmed for US/EU release. When WKC2 was being localized, Japan was already in the process of releasing new quests, including the avatar story. The teaser after beating the game is pretty much like twisting the knife cause that was something I was really looking forward to playing with my friends. A pity it was not to be.
Another reason could be to save bandwidth. Many of the JP updates were big compared to updates on US/EU versions.
Edit: Whoops. Meant to be a reply to MaideninBlack.
This article is late, did you just recent start playing WKCs2 or something? All of us have expressed our gripes over the situation for months and the community has mostly given up and moved on by now. Nothing will change, maybe if more people had purchased/played the game they wouldn't have been so quick to abandon supporting us.
Even WKC 1 aka international edition had content on the disc that japan received that was never officially released outside of japan. Things we only saw hackers wearing. It was much worse this time around because of it being our characters story and lots of additional quest but it's beyond time to give it a rest.
They won't do anything for us and this isn't going to influence any other devs from pulling the same trick.
Sucks to say it but you're beating a dead horse.
What's sad is that this game sold less than 7000 copies in Japan in the year all of this DLC was released when more than 110,000 copies were sold on our server (US+UK+FN+EU+GM) in the same period.
With the NA region having sold our share(33% of total sales) and the rest of the countries on the server picking up the rest of 50% total world sales, there is no argument that we deserve our share of the content.
Overall I blame SCEA for not picking up the title in the first place and dumping the game and the management of the server on a poorly prepared or advised publisher.
Though D3s behavior has been fairly deceiving throughout the entire period.
-Their facebook stated we'd not receive additional content followed the next week by the release of content they had stated we would not receive(guilds).
-They started acting like they were thinking over releasing content for a few weeks in March last year in letters requesting clarification.
-They finally issued a statement that the rest of the content was for "Japan Only" only to release 4 downloadable weapons a month later.
Overall Sony should take a good share of the criticism for not having faith in their product and fracturing it's release (since D3 did their own localization, content on the NA and EU disks are different, no doubt leading to the need of a much larger patch for the updates).
Though I'll still never buy an online game from D3 again.