Is the price of the Persona 3 Reload Expansion Pass containing P3 FES content releasing in September 2024 economic rent?

[ggx2ac]

Here is the trailer for the Expansion Pass announced on March 6th, 2024:



If you have played P3 FES (PS2) before (or watched the longplay on YouTube because of only playing P3 on PSP) then you can recognize from the trailer that this isn't just starting in production.

Persona 3 Reload released on February 2, 2024. The P3 FES story announced as DLC occurred a month later, not one year later. This heavily suggests they had already worked on this DLC during production of P3 Reload before it released.

So instead of having this story content being included with the standard edition of Persona 3 Reload, you now have to pay extra for it as DLC.

Let's go over a few things, I am not saying that all DLC is economic rent. There is a labor-cost value for producing Persona 3 Reload, and then there's the profit margin that Atlus gets for selling a number of copies at its suggested retail price.

Wave 3 of their Expansion Pass which contains the P3 FES story gets announced a month after P3 Reload released, the trailer clearly shows in-game footage of the remade story, meaning it is likely that they have already completed the content during the production of P3 Reload.

If the DLC was worked on during production of P3 Reload, then that means that was part of the budget for P3 Reload and not, "We have stopped production of P3 Reload. We now have to start pre-production of the Persona 3 Reload Expansion Pass by setting up the budget that we will need to pay for the labor-costs."

What does this mean? There is a good chance that Persona 3 Reload has already reached profit since they announced their 1M units sales milestone previously. I am arguing that if the Expansion Pass was already in their budget for the production of Persona 3 Reload, then they have already made a profit on the Expansion Pass content.

The Expansion Pass content is not free with the standard edition of Persona 3 Reload. You have to pay $34.99 for the Expansion Pass. This means that Atlus is going to receive an excess in profit. This excess in profit is economic rent, it is unearned income. They are being given money for a product that has already had its costs included in the budget of Persona 3 Reload, they have done rent-seeking by not including the Expansion Pass content with the standard edition of the game for free.

By all means, you can tell me that you are glad to give Atlus thousands of dollars for Persona 3 Reload and the Expansion Pass because they deserve it.

You can also tell them, "Please have an option that lets me set the price of how much I can pay for your game so that I no longer have to pay for the standard price and instead I give you $500 for the game."

I am pointing out how they are extracting wealth from you through "tollbooths" or what people are more familiar with, "paywalls" and that there are terms for explaining that concept and that there are circumstances where it can be correctly pointed out that it is economic rent.

If the Expansion Pass DLC started production after the release of Persona 3 Reload, the DLC would have probably been announced in 2025. Regardless of it being announced in 2025 or later, it would have had a budget associated with which means there was a cost for producing the DLC. I am arguing that isn't the case here because the budget and production for the DLC was already included with the production of Persona 3 Reload.

I have done all this arguing without even referencing the IGN article that talked about datamined data from Persona 3 Reload that said the following: https://www.ign.com/articles/persona-3-reload-looks-like-its-getting-fes-expansion-after-all

Dataminer ruinedsteg0 discovered six titles for downloadable content hidden within the files of Persona 3 Reload, and while this doesn't mean the content is guaranteed, it certainly suggests it's on the minds of the development team. While most of these are just for costume sets, one is for "Episode Aigis / The Answer".

...


This comes despite Atlus saying the team has no plans for any such content. "Currently, we are not considering a revision like with Persona 5 to Persona 5 Royal, which involved significant changes and additions to the original title," Persona Team production manager Kazuhisa Wada said. "Fans can rest assured knowing that Persona 3 Reload offers a complete experience."

Before finishing this post, I will give an example of another title from Atlus where I don't think there is economic rent. Back in November 2021, Shin Megami Tensei V released on the Nintendo Switch. On June 21st, 2024, there will be the release of Shin Megami Tensei V: Vengeance for Nintendo Switch, PS4, PS5, PC, Xbox One and Xbox Series.

Here are details of the game from Wikipedia:

Vengeance allows the players to experience the original story of Shin Megami Tensei V in the "Canon of Creation" route, or choose a second route, "Canon of Vengeance", with drastic changes in the latter half of the game. Each route is estimated to be 80 hours long, and features different endings.[19] The "Canon of Vengeance" features new characters, such as the heroine Yoko Hiromine and a demon group Qadištu headed by Lilith.[20]

This version adds new locations, quality of life features, gameplay mechanics, and over 40 additional demons, including some specifically created for Vengeance by artist Masayuki Doi. The downloadable content from the original release is included with the base game, but Vengeance will launch with its own DLC quests, featuring Dagda from Shin Megami Tensei IV: Apocalypse and a new demon Konohana Sakuya.[20]

Vengeance does not offer an upgrade path or save file transfer for players of the original release. Instead, they can transfer three demons from the Shin Megami Tensei V compendium to the Nintendo Switch version of Vengeance.[19]

The details from the Wikipedia are to tell you what the content is and how it occurs. I don't know the exact details of why you can't transfer your whole Switch save file instead of just three demons, the only guess I can make is that they didn't account that they would be making Vengeance in the future and hence they weren't going to waste time making the Switch save file of the original SMTV futureproof. With the speculation of the Switch save file not being futureproofed, it would end up being a lot of work to make sure things don't break to make a Switch save file from the previous game work in SMTV: Vengeance.

It makes sense then that production for SMTV stopped. Then after some time, a greenlight was given and pre-production started for SMTV: Vengeance which is not only for Switch but is also getting ported to other platforms. They are given a budget for making this new content and for getting the game released on multiple platforms.

I would argue then that SMTV: Vengeance is an example where economic rent is not occurring because it is a completely new production with a new budget to cover the labor-costs. There is no scenario where they completed all of Vengeance using the budget of the original SMTV which results in an excess in profit.

 

[Drblitzk]

Can't say I disagree since anything I know about the topic comes from your threads lmao, but this is obviously scummy, as this being a remake everybody knew this content existed, Atlus just planned this game to be a $100 game and split a part of it to have the usual $70 MSRP.

 

[SquidEnthusiast]

Can't say I'm a fan of remaking a game, cutting out a portion of its existing content, and then reselling the content for an additional thirty bucks. Seems like a practice that should not be rewarded.

 

[Undead Warrior]

While I don't necessarily disagree, there is a misconception going on here.

DLC is worked on in tandem with the main game, yes, but it is also budgeted as such. If they didn't plan on making DLC, then the budget would be adjusted accordingly. This is just how the industry works, because unless your game is Elden Ring you don't really have the luxury of waiting 2+ years for development of a DLC that will only cater to a small subset of the people who purchased your game. You need to sell it when the CCU is still fairly high, and for RPGs that means the day it goes on sale.

It's just garden variety fleecing.

 

[Kirby64]

While I don't necessarily disagree, there is a misconception going on here.

DLC is worked on in tandem with the main game, yes, but it is also budgeted as such. If they didn't plan on making DLC, then the budget would be adjusted accordingly. This is just how the industry works, because unless your game is Elden Ring you don't really have the luxury of waiting 2+ years for development of a DLC that will only cater to a small subset of the people who purchased your game. You need to sell it when the CCU is still fairly high, and for RPGs that means the day it goes on sale.

It's just garden variety fleecing.

There was that Tales of Arise dlc that came out like 2 years afterwards (and after like 99% reduction in ccu)

 

[Undead Warrior]

There was that Tales of Arise dlc that came out like 2 years afterwards (and after like 99% reduction in ccu)

And how well do you think it sold...?

 

[ggx2ac]

While I don't necessarily disagree, there is a misconception going on here.

DLC is worked on in tandem with the main game, yes, but it is also budgeted as such. If they didn't plan on making DLC, then the budget would be adjusted accordingly. This is just how the industry works, because unless your game is Elden Ring you don't really have the luxury of waiting 2+ years for development of a DLC that will only cater to a small subset of the people who purchased your game. You need to sell it when the CCU is still fairly high, and for RPGs that means the day it goes on sale.

It's just garden variety fleecing.

You are right regarding that if they didn't plan on making DLC the budget would be different. This means there would be no physical deluxe edition, no digital deluxe edition, no premium editions of Persona 3 Reload.

All there would be is a standard edition.

DLC is usually cosmetic stuff (or digital artbooks/soundtracks) that doesn't significantly affect the gameplay experience to justify the prices but, you still had an option to buy a standard edition of the game.

That is the misconception that had to be cleared up with how budgeting affects the final release of the game.

What could have happened instead was, we get Persona 3 FES Reload a year from now instead and it would be like Persona 5 Royal for PS4 (before it got ported to other platforms) and, Persona 5 Royal still managed to sell well on PS4 despite no save file transfer.

This is just how the industry works, because unless your game is Elden Ring you don't really have the luxury of waiting 2+ years for development of a DLC that will only cater to a small subset of the people who purchased your game. You need to sell it when the CCU is still fairly high, and for RPGs that means the day it goes on sale.

Expansion content has actually become pretty common with releasing a year or two from release of the original game since it's cheaper than developing a whole new game. It obviously only happens to games that sell well which is why the expansion even appears. (I've already mentioned Persona 5 Royal above when it was just on PS4 in 2019/2020 before it became multiplatform in 2022)

I don't think the timing is a problem at all regarding CCU because the publisher releases a new edition of the game where you can get the base game with the expansion. This means there is opportunity for a new audience to play the game because, "Oh, it's that game my friend always talks about" and such. You're not only selling the game to the people who already have your game, but it helps to renew the product lifecycle of your game, with a year or two passing from the release of the original game, the number of hardware users would have also increased.

It's why WoW which has been around for 20 years has a completely different audience today compared to even 10 years ago. Your sales ceiling isn't restricted by the active users of the base game when it comes to expansions.

Monster Hunter World: Iceborne is a good example of this, where the base game has continued to sell even after the expansion released.

 

[SinCityAssassin]

It gets pretty funny when this is released while the yen is still down, so its much cheaper in Japan than anywhere else because they're releasing at near "numbers" parity.

 

[ggx2ac]

This was apparently planned to be included from the start but issues in development (COVID?) caused them to almost drop it. I guess the prospect of the fans willing to pay extra for it was motivation enough to actually go through with it.

Oh wow, this changes some things now that we have more information.

I'll write a transcription of the video:

I'm Kazuhisa Wada, Producer of Persona 3 Reload, Atlus Co., Ltd.

I hope you are enjoying Persona 3 Reload!

Thank you so much to all of you around the world who are playing our game.

Today, I am excited to introduce you to the Persona 3 Reload: Expansion Pass and major DLC, Episode Aigis -The Answer-.

Episode Aigis is an epilogue to the Persona 3 main story, starring Aigis, who has awakened to the power of the Wild.

Originally, the Episode Aigis content was added with Persona 3 FES, which was released in 2007 as an expansion to Persona 3, which initially released the year prior.

This was an additional story scenario packed with a variety of new elements, created in response to the incredibly strong reception from gamers of Persona 3.

The newly released Persona 3 Reload is a faithful remake of Persona 3.

As such, I believed that Persona 3 Reload would not be complete without Episode Aigis, the conclusion of Persona 3.

From the beginning of the project, we had strongly considered the idea of remaking Episode Aigis.

However, for challenging reasons, we were almost forced to abandon this idea.

When we announced Reload, we received an outpouring of requests from fans around the world for Episode Aigis.

We as a development team also wanted to live up to those expectations.

The project faced many setbacks, but things eventually fell into place, and thanks to your voices encouraging each step of the way, the project was officially moved into development.

Today, we are pleased to present it to you as part of an Expansion Pass.

This is a remake of the original Episode Aigis with the all of the improvements and gameplay experience of Persona 3 Reload.

While the story remains the same, the content has been fine-tuned to allow players to become more emotionally invested with the characters.

The addition of the special attack, Theurgy, plus new dungeons will provide a new experience for players who have already completed the original game.

The epilogue is sure to satisfy both those who have played the original Persona 3 FES and those who are just starting out.

The Persona 3 Reload: Expansion Pass will be available to purchase on March 12th.

We are currently diligently working on Episode Aigis -The Answer-, the third and final DLC wave, which will be available in September.

We hope you enjoy the first and second DLC waves as you wait for Episode Aigis -The Answer-.

With this, Persona 3 Reload will be complete.

We invite you all to witness the full Persona 3 Reload with your own eyes.

(Yes, that "with the all of the" typo did occur in the video.)

Source.

We have to take at face value that they "strongly considered the idea" of remaking Episode Aigis but ran into development problems.

That means those development problems are the reason Episode Aigis wasn't included in the base game.

"When we announced Reload, we received an outpouring of requests from fans around the world for Episode Aigis.", I don't remember the order of events, but I am assuming that people would have been saying, "Does this include FES?" and then the gaming journalists interviewed Atlus to confirm that it doesn't include FES, and then people on social media were requesting FES.

I'll check this IGN article from June 2023 that released on the same day as the Xbox Gaming Showcase when Persona 3 Reload was first announced: https://www.ign.com/articles/person...-or-portable-including-the-female-protagonist

The Persona 3 remake has long been one of Atlus' worst-kept secrets, but Persona 3 Reload was finally officially announced at today's Xbox and Bethesda Games Showcase. The game's first trailer showed combat and graphics updated to resemble Persona 5, but fans noticed that something big was missing.

Namely, Persona 3 Reload appears to miss the additional content from Persona 3 FES and Persona 3 Portable, which includes the option to play as the female protagonist. In an interview with IGN, Persona 3 Reload producer Ryota Niitsuma and chief director Kazuhisa Wada confirmed that Persona 3 Reload only features content present in the original release of Persona 3.

"So first I'd like to mention that since the basic concept of the Persona 3 remake was to remake the Persona 3, we don't have the FES and Portable contents included," Niitsuma said. "We wanted to really genuinely work on recreating the Persona 3 experience."

...

"So we can't really go into the details at this point yet, but we have remade basically everything from scratch as for Persona 3 the original version," Niitsuma said. "So we have newly recorded voices, we have new scenes and events. We also have both new and arranged music. We'll be kind of releasing that information, following everything. So please look forward to that."

It's certainly possible Atlus will release another version of Persona 3 a few years from now that features the missing content — as they've done with Persona 5 Royal and Persona 4 Golden — but Atlus obviously isn't saying anything about that now.

Instead, Niitsuma and Wada are focusing on the updates added to the original version of Persona 3 that make it more in line with Persona 5.

"So the basic concept of recreating the Persona story was that we wanted to keep everything from the original version, but update everything to the modern day," Wada said. "So at the same level of Persona 5, basically. So we have the newest graphics, we have updated the system to the newest usability… We have the voice lines in [both Japanese and English.] We also have the text available in 13 languages. So you should be able to have similar experiences to that of Persona 5."

Persona 3 Reload is set to launch in early 2024 on Xbox and PC, although more console announcements may be forthcoming. It'll also be available day one on Game Pass. For more, check out everything announced at the Xbox and Bethesda Games Showcase.

So the order of events going by this article is:
- Persona 3 Reload gets announced.
- People are wondering if it has P3 PSP or P3 FES content.
- Persona 3 Reload Producer Ryoma Niitsuma says, "So first I'd like to mention that since the basic concept of the Persona 3 remake was to remake the Persona 3, we don't have the FES and Portable contents included," Niitsuma said. "We wanted to really genuinely work on recreating the Persona 3 experience."
- He then adds, "So we can't really go into the details at this point yet, but we have remade basically everything from scratch as for Persona 3 the original version," Niitsuma said. "So we have newly recorded voices, we have new scenes and events. We also have both new and arranged music. We'll be kind of releasing that information, following everything. So please look forward to that."

Niitsuma said, "We can't really go into the details at this point yet".

IGN releases the article. It gets spread around, people on social media exclaim they want the female protagonist and FES content.

Now we get back to the video released today where Producer Wada says, "When we announced Reload, we received an outpouring of requests from fans around the world for Episode Aigis."

Keep in mind that also in that IGN article, they never revealed they had development troubles as a reason for why they couldn't put in the FES content that they strongly considered as an idea at the beginning of the project.

Anyway, because of the power of the consumer demanding Episode Aigis at the time when Persona 3 Reload was first announced, Atlus decided that the right thing to do was to give you that episode... for $34.99.

Lastly in the video, the Producer Wada says, "We are currently diligently working on Episode Aigis -The Answer-, the third and final DLC wave, which will be available in September."

Conclusion:

We have to take at face value that they had development problems which was why they couldn't add in Episode Aigis in the base game. Only thanks to the power of the audience demanding Episode Aigis that Atlus had no choice but to give you what you want... for $34.99.

They would have had to adjust their budget to add in this new piece of DLC along with the other stuff in the newly announced Expansion Pass.

It can be argued that Episode Aigis wasn't originally included in the budget for Persona 3 Reload, therefore, this is not economic rent because the budget had changed to add the labor-cost value for Episode Aigis. Since they couldn't release Episode Aigis along with the base game, it became expansion content and is currently in development.

I would still argue that $34.99 is an excess in profit/economic rent. The expansion content is cheaper to develop than a full-on sequel and is also based on content that already exists i.e. Persona 3 FES for PS2. If anything, Episode Aigis should be way cheaper than $34.99, but they went and bundled it into an Expansion Pass so that "Oh, the cost comes from all these DLC bundled together".

 

[Aostia82]

to me, we can dig whatever details and reasons but

- a 35 bucks DLC is way too expensive
- a remake should include all the contents from the beginning


so let's wait for the Switch 2 Ultimate Definitive Late Not Major-console version at 69 bucks for Persona 3 Reloaded Again

lol

 

[Lite_Agent]

SEGA era Atlus is gonna SEGA era Atlus, I guess. When you see they can't even offer the expansion as DLC for Persona 5 Royal and SMTV Vengeance, this looks like natural evolution of their business practices.

so let's wait for the Switch 2 Ultimate Definitive Late Not Major-console version at 69 bucks for Persona 3 Reloaded Again

With $35 FeMC DLC 6 months later

 

[Baobab]

What i know as a consumer, now, is that i should never buy a new atlus game at release.
The better version will fallow.
Infact Atlus with their behaviour is making me consider about unicorn overlord and i will now wait before buying that game.
Better safe the sorry..
So concerning the"rent" question, i do not know but i sure feel cheated from the company, so my purchasing habits will change in their regard.
With the backlog most gamers have these day this is very, very easy to do....