The whole point of a season pass for a game is to give players upcoming DLC in a nice little package around $20-$30. By buying a season pass, customers will get future paid content for no additional cost along with some extra goodies, like a free gun skin.
Now Dead or Alive 6 is available on Steam for $60. DOA6’s Deluxe Edition Costs $80 which adds a couple of characters along with a bunch of neat costumes. What would you expect a fighting game’s season pass to cost? It’s not $20, it’s not $30, it’s not even $60. KOEI TECMO decided to make DOA 6’s Season Pass costs $92.99.
Dead or Alive‘s Expensive Past
DOA6’s Season Pass includes two unique costumes, 26 wedding themed costumes, 26 extra costumes, two characters including Mai Shiranui, and their own set of extra outfits. With all this content included the pass could be something like $20 since there’s only two characters and costumes normally aren’t expensive. According to Dead or Alive 5’s DLC pricings this is not true. The game with all of the characters on Steam, including every costume, costs $1,289.79. Season pass-wise, it includes 78 costumes with the 6 costume packs included for around $92.99. And no new characters were added afterwards.
Tekken 7 Adds New Characters
In comparison, Tekken 7’s first season pass cost $25. It added Noctis, Geese Howard and a new bowling gamemode. Tekken 7 then released a season pass with 6 additional characters to the roster and some new cosmetic items, costing around $30. The price is a bit higher but the addition of six more characters to the fairly huge roster of 35 is great. Despite everyone hating the first season pass for only having two guest characters, fans became happy in the end with the inclusion of Negan’s super armor and the extra $30 for eight characters. While the season pass is pushing the limit of being just under $60, it could be a bit cheaper with the alternative where players buy their favorite DLC characters individually from $6-$8 each.
Tekken 7’s Season Pass 2 includes 6 characters
Street Fighter V Adds Up
Street Fighter V is complicated but for the better. The game started with 16 characters and added 6 characters and stages within the first Character Pass which was $9.99. Then the second Pass, which was $19.99, came in to add 6 more characters. Capcom then decided to sell Street Fighter V with the first two pass characters bundled together for $39.99 with Street Fighter V: Arcade Edition. Then the third Fighter Pass with 6 more characters costs $29.99. Of course the newer season pass characters are great, so the extra $30 isn’t too bad unless you paid for the very original Street Fighter V in 2016 for full price, then everything is actually $120 altogether.
Street Fighter V’s Character Pass 3 includes 6 characters.
So here’s why I feel Tekken 7 and Street Fighter V have better Season/Character passes overall. It’s because Tekken 7 and Street Fighter V have been actively making characters throughout the years and releasing them at a small premium and they’re marketed pretty well. That’s it, there are some extra costumes, but many of the outfits in SFV and Tekken 7 can be bought using in-game currency. DOA’s Season Passes are just for costumes as far as I’ve seen with haircuts and glasses being available with in-game currency with probably more outfits in the future. As fun as Dead or Alive 6 is, it’s just a huge turn-off to see that a glorified $90 costume pack be the “Season Pass” for the game.
