Downloadable content. DLC. It's a fairly new phenomenon, born into the digital age of broadband internet. DLC is essentially extra content for your game, something you can download to extend the life of your purchase. DLC is also available in two different flavours: paid and free.

Free DLC is good: there is nothing bad about it. Seriously. Try and think of something bad about something that costs you nothing and adds value to a game purchase. Finished? Yeah me too. I couldn't come up with anything either. It's just fantastic and makes my heart glow a happy glow whenever I read that a game is getting free new content. I think everybody does, and why not? What's not to love about free stuff?

Paid DLC is also good. Really it is. You have the option to buy extra content, but if you choose not to, that's fine too, because you still have all that good stuff that comes on the game disc. If you want some more, however, you can buy it at a reasonable (hopefully!) fee. Let's get into some examples shall we?

Note: The discussion below may contain spoilers for the latest Prince of Persia game, in the sense that the ending is rated by this writer. No actual storyline or content is divulged. You have been warned...

Rock Band (and Guitar Hero for that matter) is a perfect example of this paid DLC. If you choose, you can purchase additional songs to augment your plastic instrument playing experience. If you choose, you can be perfectly happy playing the songs that ship on the disc. Or you can find a happy balance between the two and eagerly download all the free scraps that are dropped from the publisher's table. Either way, the key concept is choice.

If we are talking about "bad" DLC, then we can look at the latest Prince of Persia. Ubisoft sold us a so-called "Epilogue" which takes place after the main game. I don't want to spoil anything, but suffice it to say that I personally felt that neither "ending" (that on the disc or that of the DLC) was worthy of an otherwise good game. And if that is the case, why sell us a different ending to the story? I believe they call this "nickel and diming" - when content that should be on your disc is sold to you afterwards.

Another case study we can look at is Criterion Games' Burnout Paradise. They started things off with a few free DLC packs, including some online game modes and challenges, and then a big one when they included bikes into Paradise City. That was awesome of them. After getting people hooked on new content, they flipped their approach and began releasing (I want to say churning out?) DLC pack after DLC pack. There is now six available expansions to Burnout Paradise, and each is available for a modest fee. I fully support this model of DLC: give people the option to buy your stuff. This will lead to better quality content, as people will not pay for rubbish.

So DLC can be a mixed bag, both good, as in the optional extras that are for sale; or the bad, as in selling consumers things which should have been originally included. In general I believe that most companies are getting it right, selling people what they want at a price they want to pay. And I think that's what we all want at the end of the day: choice.