BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle’s US pricing revealed; producer comments on DLC controversy and Switch development
Much has been made about BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle’s DLC and how much it’ll cost to obtain everything. After Destructoid spoke with the game’s producer, we finally have some clarification.
BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle will be sold at $49.99 with DLC offered outside of that. You’ll also be able to pick up the Deluxe Digital Edition for $69.99 featuring the main game and Cross Tag Character Pack 1-6.
Here’s a full breakdown of pricing:
Retail: $49.99 (Physical & Digital)
Cross Tag Character Packs (3 characters each, 6 in total): $4.99 each
Cross Tag Character Collection (Characters Packs 1-6): $19.99
Deluxe Digital Edition (main game & Cross Tag Character Pack 1-6): $69.99
Cross Tag Character Pack 1 available for download free at launch (first two weeks only)
Producer Toshimichi Mori also told Destructoid the following in response to the faulty communication by Arc System Works about BlazBlue’s DLC:
“I’m in total agreement. We’ve been making efforts to make the price accessible for everyone, but we should have communicated it a lot more clearly though so we didn’t have that misunderstanding. Our first mistake was announcing [fighter] Blake as DLC before saying he was free. What should have happened is that we should have said Blake is coming as a DLC for free. But because of so many events late last year and early this year, we wanted to announce things little by little. Unfortunately the first announcement was muddled. We said Blake was DLC but we should have announced it all at once. That caused confusion and Arc is very sorry for that.”
Regarding DLC and why it’s necessary for fighting games, Mori said that it can offer surprise for players and keeps them going “in the long term.” He added:
“But at the same time not everyone is going to agree or understand what the developer thinks. From the development side it’s hard to convince everyone, but if we listen to everyone we’ll go bankrupt. So what we can do is try to design DLC in a way where more people are understanding about it, which is basically all that we can do. I do agree with some people that DLC should be in the game to begin with, but thinking about the business side that isn’t always the case. As creators it’s always fun to continue developing for a certain title, but without the gamer’s support it’s hard. For more people to understand what DLC stands for, we can make efforts to clarify in the future how it fits into the game as a whole. Hopefully we’ll create a broader perspective.”
Finally, Mori talked about developing BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle for Switch. Here’s what he said on that front:
“We are having some trouble, but mostly because it’s a new console. But we planned to release on the Switch in the beginning, so there was always R&D taking place. One of the key concepts for Cross Tag Battle was to play a fighter using a gamepad. The Switch allows that but in order to provide the full experience we had to make sure it would run well. I’ve been playing the game on Switch at my office and it’s running smoothly and really fun to play on the Switch. For future games it is a possibility for us.”
