Those that frequent the mainstream games industry will be familiar with the season pass. It’s a means of pre-buying additional content for a new game, likely at a slight discount, to prep you for its arrival after the initial launch.
Along with an extra source of revenue, for many publishers and developers this is a way to reduce the number of people trading in their games and others buying them second hand. It’s not a strategy we’ve really seen executed in the VR industry yet, but one of the first big passes will come next week with the arrival of Capcom’s anticipated Resident Evil 7, which supports PlayStation VR on PlayStation 4.
This is more of a knock-on effect of a big budget game that optionally supports VR using this business model rather than a developer testing the waters of the new market, but it’s still interesting to see. Resident Evil 7‘s Season Pass is now listed over on Steam — where VR isn’t currently supported — with the first details of what it actually contains.
The content, which will likely be released separately over the course of this year, will be comprised of two ‘Banned Footage’ scenarios. IGN reports that the first is called “Nightmare – Bedroom – Ethan Must Die” and the second is named “21 – Daughters – Jack’s 55th Birthday”, though it looks like this information has since been removed from the listing. An ‘Additional Story Episode’ is also on the way, so it sounds like protagonist Ethan’s tale won’t finish in the main game.
The Pass is listed on Steam for $29.99. You can get it as part of a Deluxe Edition bundle on PS4.
We don’t know if this content will definitely support PS VR, but it’s a safe bet seeing as the rest of the game does. We’ve reached out to Capcom to confirm this either way.
Not long to go now: Resident Evil 7 hits on January 24th. Get ready for launch with our Coward’s Guide to surviving the game.
