PC Gamers Denied "Prince of Persia Epilogue" Downloadable Content

Two days ago, I expressed my glee to discover Ubisoft is releasing 3 more hours of downloadable content for Prince of Persia on 26 February 2009.

I was ecstatic; but now am an angered. I found out today from several friends (all sending different links to all sorts of gaming sites around the net) that the content WILL NOT be available to PC Gamers. UbiRazz, who also let us know that the PC DVD version would be DRM-Free was the bearer of the bad news, when he said:

"Sort of an unfair poll to prove a point really - if you're on this forum then you're likely a PoP fan, you clearly have a PC and you probably played PoP on PC, so therefore it's very likely you'll want the DLC. Therefore the number of 'no's should be 0.

Unfortunately for business reasons we won't be seeing any PoP DLC appear. Sorry guys!"

I have a few things to say in response to this:
1. How is it an unfair poll? The whole point of it was to show Ubisoft that there is a demand for Epilogue on the PC; we want to spend more time with Elika!!! Otherwise, why would we have made "the choice" at the end of the game?!

2. "Business reasons" - I fear that this comes back to the whole piracy thing again. I wish Ubisoft would release reports of the Prince of Persia sales. I certainly hope they've hit the numbers they were looking for... Heaven knows we've been trying to get the word out that we paying PC gamer customers support Ubi's move with trusting us with no DRM.

I speculate that Ubi fears they would lose all console sales of the downloadable content (DLC) if they released for the PC at the same time the console version was released; due to the same rhetoric I saw on the Ubi forums during the DRM-free discussion.

It seems the attitude is: "If we release for the PC in tandem with the console release, no one will buy the console one, because they'll just go pirate the game (if they haven't already) and then also pirate the downloadable content."

I can understand the thought behind it, but again, judging us as guilty before given a chance to prove our merit. Though I'll concede, if the goal is to milk the console sales first, THEN release to the PC. If that's the game plan, I'll suffer the wait... but if the plan is to NEVER release for the PC, Ubi's going to have a lot of satisfied PC Prince fans blowing a gasket; myself included.

I'll gladly pay for the Epilogue as gladly as (or more than) I was when I purchased the game itself.

Ubisoft, whatever your "business reasons" are, (which, for reasons beyond me, UbiRazz is always so elusive about) please reconsider offering the Epilogue to your devoted PC fan-base.

I shout kudos to Ubisoft on such an excellent game. I haven't been this immersed and engrossed in a single-player video game in a REALLY REALLY long time and I thoroughly enjoyed every second I spent in the jaw-dropping-gorgeous world the Prince of Persia allowed me to escape to.

Needless to say, I can't wait for the next release of the game; but I also don't want to miss storyline if Epilogue is offering more. There is no technological reason you can't offer this to the PC gamers; so please figure out a way to do so... please don't pull an EA and have many of your PC fan base boycott/desert you because of a silly decision like this.

Here's to hoping that in a few days/weeks I'll be able to post again with opposite news.