Summary
Stellar Bladeis only a few weeks away, which means developer Shift Up has started doing its best to convince people why they need to play it.Its excellent demo is definitely helping the team achieve that goal, but director Kim Hyung Tae has been doing the rounds to provide more enticing details about Stellar Blade, and they’renot just about Eve’s figure.
Speaking withKorean outlet Ruliweb, the director goes into great detail about Stellar Blade’s post-launch updates, stressing that most of the new content added to the game “will not require any additional expenses” that people aren’t currently aware of. Everything added to Stellar Blade will come with the price of the game, which includes potential new costumes and a New Game Plus mode, which will be added shortly after launch.
There is one exception to this rule though, and that’s if Shift Up decides to work with any other developers for “collaboration costumes”. Kim Hyung Tae states that any collaborations between Stellar Blade and other IP “may be sold for a fee,” but that everything else will come in post-launch update with not a single microtransaction to be seen. That’s what we like to see.
Stellar Blade’s Bucking The Year’s Worst Trend
Whatever you think of Stellar Blade, it’s nice that Shift Up is choosing to provide new content for free rather than asking for more cash on top of the base price. We’ve already seen multiple controversies regarding microtransactions and DLC crop up this year, especially when it comes to the biggest games of the year. Capcom ended up throwing away a lot of pre-release hype around Dragons' Dogma 2 to stuffrelatively pointless microtransactions into the game.
Even a title as well-received and beloved as Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth caught some heat prior to launch when it was revealed thatits New Game Plus mode would be locked behinda special edition, rather than included in the standard game for free as is expected these days. Sticking with Sega, Persona 3 Reload’s recently announced Expansion Pass, revealed alongside Episode Aigis, was alsocriticized for being a “cash grab”.
With these shenanigans happening on a pretty consistent basis, it’s refreshing to get a game made by a developer that is happy to dish out minor post-launch updates for free. We’ll have to wait and see how extensive Stellar Blade’s post-launch updates are, but at least it’s good to know they’ll more than likely be free.
