DLC, microtransaction, Gold edition, ETC...where strated?

[Mariano]

I was wondering, where all this started?. DLC, expansion pack, ETC.
Does anybody remember which game or couple of games that strated with this business practices?

[George]

Some people consider GameLine service on the Atari 2600 and later SEGA Channel as precursors of DLC. In 1997 Total Annihilation had free DLC (free units every month). As for consoles it was Dreamcast... Though the Xbox started the charging (on consoles).

Wouldn't something like Sonic & Knuckles be a expansion pack?

[MadeManG74]

As George said, a lot of this stuff goes really far back. I think it would be hard to pinpoint a 'first' for some of them.

Personally the earliest I can remember would be Command and Conquer on PC getting 'The Covert Operations' in 1996. Before that though, games like DOOM and Duke Nukem had their own expansions and episodic style content as well. Even the concept of Shareware might count, which is how a lot of these games were distributed back then.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shareware


EDIT:
A bit of digging reveals this may have been the first 'Episodic' content game:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kroz_series


Released in 1987, the first Episode was shareware, the rest were sold commercially.