Major Nelson just announced “Extended Play Download Days”, where you can get some prime downloadable content at cheap prices.

The Bender’s 8th episode, a day late but packed full of gaming stuff. Only side tracked once with The Dark Knight talk and a little China stuff, we surprisingly are all about the games otherwise.

Being a big Soul Calibur fan has made me follow the development of this game quite a bit. From the extremely large breasts added on to the announcement of Star Wars characters stealing the spotlight in an already great game. More recently was the possibility that Vader and Yoda would be featured in both consoles in the form of downloadable content. The recent release of the below video has now taken hopes and wishes and made it fact:

What isn’t shown, is the price you will pay and the likely fact that…. the content will be on the disc already. PS3 owners may not be aware of a practice that some developers/publishers attempt to make a trend by abusing the positive side of downloadable content.

When a game comes out and we all love it, we all gladly take out our credit cards and purchase new maps (Call of Duty 4, Halo 3) or songs (Rock Band, Guitar Hero). When we are blessed with good games and the developers are still working on great add-ons, it’s no problem to cough up a few bucks and get some added enjoyment.

The negative side of this is greedy developers who take advantage of our love of gaming, and one of these guilty parties is Namco. Sometimes a game comes out and the same day there is DLC offered… what they do goes past this. On the disc that you have already purchased is content they are holding back from you until you give them more money.

Recently I purchased Beautiful Katamari (it was $8!), to my chagrin I was reminded of a post made by Aaron Linde of Destructoid, in which it was brought about that Namco had ready for you 4 whole levels the day Beautiful Katamari came out, and all downloads were only 384kb. Stop and take that information in. They are selling you keys to unlock content on your disc!

Kotaku has posted in the past with similar findings, however the games in question were definitely not in the same league as what Soulcalibur IV is about to sell (Rapala Tournament Fishing, Cabela’s Safari, plus more)

I wrote all this as a warning. Do not support this! I have no doubts that PS3 owners can easily keep Yoda at bay, but 360 owners might not be so easy to hold back when they want their Vader. Please, do not be part of the problem. Make your online petitions, tell a friend, digg, stumble, call your congressmen, do what you have to do so we can start making other gamers aware of this practice. At the very least, hopefully some sort of uproar will ensure that Vader and Yoda will be free!

Pre-E3 Special! I don’t think we have ever been so focused on games in one episode of The Bender. Listen now!