After confirming it in today's Gamescom, Team Xbox posted on their blog about their tiered pricing model for Xbox One launch title Killer Instinct. At its highest tier of $ 39.99, you get the price and value comparable to a conventional fighting game release.
This is how it breaks down:
At its lowest tier, you can simply download the game for free with one free playable character. Additional playable characters can be purchased for $ 4.99. Notably, they did not say outright that Jago is the first playable character, possibly alluding that you will get to choose your first character too.
The Combo Breaker Pack provides the first eight characters for a mere $ 19.99, as they say, giving you the bare essentials to practice the game for competitive play at half off.
Finally, the Ultra Edition comes for $ 39.99, and provides the most available content. You get all eight characters, their accessory packs, costumes, and a copy of the original Killer Instinct arcade game. This is definitely the most value, especially for fighting game and retro game fans.
Now, it must also be noted that only six of these characters will be available at launch, and two more will be released later. If you did the math, downloading the game free and buying each character individually would cost you a total $ 34.93, although at launch you would only have to spend as much as $ 24.95.
The pricing is very impressive, but I’m sure many fighting game fans like me have concerns about the game being digital only. In fact, the impression I get at the moment is Double Helix hasn’t actually done enough work on the game to justify a full retail release, and not that the game got a discount for going digital at all. I am giving them benefit of the doubt here for now, of course, but my expectation is all versions of the game should come with Practice, Online Play, and other modes that we've become accustomed to from other releases. Still, the good news for Killer Instinct fans is it won’t be that pricey a purchase at all – assuming you can afford the Xbox One itself.
Source: Xbox
