BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle will cost $49.99 and be released both physically and digitally in North America, publisher and developer Arc System Works announced.
The six “Cross Tag Character Packs,” which includes three characters per pack, will cost $4.99 each.
A “Cross Tag Character Collection” including all six Cross Tag Character Packs can be purchased for $19.99, which is $9.95 less than purchasing each pack individually.
The first Cross Tag Character Pack, which includes additional characters Platinum The Trinity, Orie, and Kanji Tatsumi, will be available for free for the first two weeks following release.
A Digital Deluxe Edition including the full game and all six Cross Tag Character Packs will also be available for $69.99.
Speaking to Destructoid, BlazBlue: Cross Tag Batle producer Toshimichi Mori discussed Arc System Works’ faulty initial messaging regarding the downloadable content.
“I’m in total agreement,” Mori said. “We’ve been making efforts to make the price accessible for everyone, but we should have communicated it a lot more clearly though so we didn’t have that misunderstanding. Our first mistake was announcing [fighter] Blake as downloadable content before saying he was free. What should have happened is that we should have said Blake is coming as downloadable content for free. But because of so many events late last year and early this year, we wanted to announce things little by little. Unfortunately the first announcement was muddled. We said Blake was downloadable content but we should have announced it all at once. That caused confusion and Arc is very sorry for that.”
Mori added, “But at the same time not everyone is going to agree or understand what the developer thinks. From the development side it’s hard to convince everyone, but if we listen to everyone we’ll go bankrupt. So what we can do is try to design downloadable content in a way where more people are understanding about it, which is basically all that we can do. I do agree with some people that downloadable content should be in the game to begin with, but thinking about the business side that isn’t always the case. As creators it’s always fun to continue developing for a certain title, but without the gamer’s support it’s hard. For more people to understand what downloadable content stands for, we can make efforts to clarify in the future how it fits into the game as a whole. Hopefully we’ll create a broader perspective.”
BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle is due out for PlayStation 4, Switch, and PC on May 31 in Japan and Asia, and June 5 in North America.