E3 2013: You Have to Buy Every Killer Instinct Character

Hard to judge without seeing the pricing. If the price you pay for all the characters etc is equal to the price you would have to pay for a game at retail then i don't think anyone can complain. Essentially you are just getting a demo version for free. If it costs more, then screw them.

To me, it's a matter of principle. The idea of charging for each character is just ... scummy. Don't advertise a free to play game if it's not actually free to play. I think people would be willing to just buy the game and its features.

I've actually been discussing the merit of fighting games embracing the LoL style of F2P ever since that whole scenario with the SFxT on-disc DLC characters. While I am much more in favor of playing a fighting game in order to unlock additional characters, that has sadly gone to the wayside as of late and most fighting games, especially the prominent ones, have all the characters unlocked from the get-go.
However, the idea of only having to pay for the characters you actually want to play as rather than paying the full price for a roster of 20 characters even though you only want to play as, say, 3 is, in my opinion, a great business model for fighting games because it lowers the entry bar that would keep a random passerby from picking up a fighting game. Instead of having to pay 60 some odd dollars on a game that he gets his butt kicked in, he can jump in for free, try out a character to see if he likes the feel of the game, then if he does he can buy characters that he thinks look cool or watch youtube videos to see what other players are doing with these other characters to see if that's the kind of play style he wants. Then, if he wants to play with a friend, they only have to buy the characters that the friend is also interested in or, in a better world, have the friend sign into his account so that he has access to the characters he has purchased.
Now, my ideal was that the free character would be on rotation so that throughout the course of a few months a player would get to try out each character to see which ones they like, but if Jago is a middle-of-the-road then he can hopefully adequately serve as a good entry character for anybody wanting to play the game. The only other issue I personally have with this system is the tournament issue, since a multitude of characters are played at tournaments, but hopefully close to KI's release there will be someway for tournament organizers to unlock all the characters for their events. Other than that, this seems like a fine idea to me and hopefully will be executed well.

It might not be so bad if you can at least try every character in training mode. Everyone's going to know how to kick the crap out of Jago in a week though.

Yeah, Sorry Microsoft, but this isn't really a free to play game when you need XBL Gold to get the game. Way to take away the one interesting thing from your console.

At first I was
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JkpzR5vVA9k
but then I remembered this was the XOne and realized I don't really care.

Seems like they are following the EA model for free to play games.

We'd best get used to wide variety of strange and cynical business models for console games as this will not be the last or most extreme.

I think it was Joseph who had the machiavellian idea of paying for fuel in a driving game. Evil genius that he is. ;)

The Killer Instinct model also raises the problem of just how you review a game like this. Do you base your review on the one character or pay out for all and assume the consumer will do the same? Nor is that the only example where assessing a game will be very tricky when it is heavily based on content that is not available without further payment.

I like the points about fighting games and the multiplicity of characters versus the gamers perhaps limited time to master every single one and instead concentrate on a core character or just a few.

It's sad that this does seem to take away from the feeling of achievement that unocking characters in a single player mode would give a gamer and it could be unbalanced if the more powerful 'end boss' characters are also not unlocked but purchased.

Skullgirls crowdfunding of DLC characters did show that there is a desire among fight game fans for more characters to purchase. It also demonstrated that making such characters can be a costly business with all the art and sound assets required.

I personally dont like the model and since xbox Gold games have a limited demo anyway to try before you buy so this is not quite the 'bargain' free to play implies. These payment models never are on the whole but it's the consumer who will decide. It will either make it's money and there will be more just like ot or it won't and soon be forgotten.