Being an avid shooter fan you’d think I’ll Run up and down screaming the glory that is a new Modern Warfare 2 DLC. However the awkwardly named DLC “stimulus package” is far from the new testament of gaming despite the popular opinion from fans, that MW2 is the alpha and omega of gaming.

Seriously the only thing this “Stimulus Package” is stimulating is Activision’s Package. With a $15 American price tag for only 5 maps and 2 of those 5 are reused ones from CoD4. With nothing to add to Spec Ops mode or any new perks or weapons this is literally playing $5 each per map, I didn’t include the old maps as part of the paid package simply cause if you want to play the old game so bad just pop in the damn disc and play some CoD4.

This kind of overpricing is totally not in the consideration of the average gamer it’s a means to boost revenue and stock prices only used because it is a MW2 DLC, and it will make a profit. No matter what price they put on there is going to be someone willing to pay to play it first. With that mentality Microsoft has paid out Activision for rights to be exclusive vendors of this DLC at least for a month before PS3 is allowed to sell it to the public.

With Money being the bottom line and all things else seems to faultier, overpricing DLC is only the start. Soon we’ll have content stripped out just to pay for it as DLC because people will pay for it. We all as a community gamers and the gaming industry needs to promote the idea where DLCs should be an enhancement of our gaming experience for a mild monetary gain as incentives for the developers to develop better content, not as a means to simply make more money.

The obvious first problem is, what will the games run on? Without a console to run the games, Activision would have to develop and build their own mini console in order to play their games (which will probably come preloaded onto the system itself). This in turn would automatically raise the price of an already expensive peripheral game. The next issue is online connectivity. No console, again, means Activision would have to build their own network infrastructure to support any online play, download packs, or game patches. Once again, raising the price.

The social aspect is another flaw in Kotick’s brilliant plan. With no console, there is no connectivity what so ever to your friends on Xbox Live or PlayStation Network. No trophies, no achievements, no cross game text/voice chat, no comparing scores against your friends, no reason what so ever for some people to even play the game in the first place.

Next is timing. As popular as Guitar Hero and Rock Band are, the overall sales and time spent on such games have been on a steady decline for months. If Kotick had implemented this idea 3 years ago it probably would have worked. But the games are getting stale, still expensive and very little is improved or more innovative from game to game.

Nice try Kotick. Back to the drawing board with you.