Batman: Arkham Knight season pass costs £32.99

Warner Bros has, three months ahead of the game’s release, announced that the Batman: Arkham Knight season pass will cost 32.99.

For the money gamers will get access to what is described as six months’ worth of post-release content including new story missions, additional super-villains invading Gotham City, legendary Batmobile skins, advanced challenge maps, alternative character skins and new drivable race tracks”.

Alternatively the season pass will be included with the Premium Edition of the game, which Warner says will cost 87.98 on consoles and 67.98 on PC.

The high price has already online re-ignited the already heated debate about DLC that is announced ahead of a game’s actual release.

Last week the creator of Super Smash Bros accused rival publishers of withholding content from their games so it can be sold at an additional cost for more profit.

These days, the ‘DLC scam’ has become quite the epidemic, charging customers extra money to complete what was essentially an unfinished product,” Masahiro Sakurai said. Why, then, do you think so many titles provide premium DLC on or shortly following a game’s release? It’s because that’s the easiest way to make money.

After all, if you wait too long after a game’s release to distribute additional content, players will already move on to the next title. Even long tail titles–that is, ones that perform consistently well over an extended period of time–make more money the earlier they come out.”

Elsewhere last week, a DICE producer took to Reddit to defend Star Wars Battlefront against accusations that it too was fencing off some of its content behind a premium DLC wall.

If you think there’s anything we’re not including in the game to save it for DLC, I can tell you you’re 100 per cent wrong,” they said. In this project, I’ve never heard anyone say ‘let’s not do this for launch so we can do it as DLC instead’. Ever.”

Ultimately, of course, whether the Arkham Knight season pass is deemed a success and value for money will be decided by consumers. Destiny’s first DLC The Dark Below was criticised for being 19.99 and has seemingly been a commercial success for Activision and Bungie.

Batman: Arkham Knight will be released on June 23rd.