Team Ninja has done it again and released the fourth season pass for its fighting game Dead or Alive 6 in less than a year, making it potentially one of the most expensive current gen games on the market.
The latest season pass for Dead or Alive 6 was released on January 21 and dedicated fans will need to dish out $89.99 to get their hands on it. That price might seem a little high, but it isn’t even the most expensive season pass available for the game. The release of the first season pass coincided with the game’s launch on March 1, 2019, and cost $92.99. Four months later Team Ninja unveiled a second pass with a price tag of $79.99, and three months after that yet another pass was made available also for $79.99.
Each season pass does offer a large amount of content that undoubtedly required a decent amount of work to put together. The fourth pass, for example, gives players a new Dead or Alive 6 character and 52 new costumes, some of which were created by fans of the series in a design competition held by Team Ninja in 2019.
It’s also not mandatory to invest huge sums of money to play the game. Some costumes can be unlocked through regular gameplay and there is even a free-to-play version of Dead or Alive 6 that allows players to try out some of the different gameplay modes and participate in online matches. However, only four playable characters are accessible in the Core Fighters edition and the story mode is locked.
So gamers who tire of using only Kasumi, Hitomi, Diego, and Bass in their online battles will need to purchase the game’s standard edition to gain access to additional Dead or Alive 6 characters, and that will cost the usual $59.99. If they also want to enjoy some of the premium costumes and purchase all four season passes, that will bring the price of the game to a whopping $402.95.
It’s also important to note that purchasing the season passes does not give players all of the content available for the game up to that point, contrary to how season passes tend to work with other games. Additional Dead or Alive 6 content is released simultaneously to the season passes and must be purchased separately, such as the Revival Maid set that also launched on January 21, costs $19.99, and features the same maid costumes from Dead or Alive 5.
This plethora of downloadable content might seem like a blatant money grab by Team Ninja, but the season pass offerings seem to be precisely what some fans of the Dead or Alive games are looking for. While there are player complaints on various message boards and review sites about the amount of DLC content and the high price tag, most negative comments are about lag, connection issues, and lack of depth in other areas of the game. And in general, with or without hundreds of extra costumes, the game has received mostly positive reviews since its release.
Dead or Alive 6 was released in March 2019 for PC, PS4, and Xbox One.
Source: Team Ninja