At the moment The Division seems to be creating quite a few waves around what sort of a game it's meant to be. Shooter? RPG? No one can seem to agree. Of course there's also the typical question that surrounds any new game: what about the DLC and any possible microtransactions? Now in an interview the game's Creative Director has confirmed that the game will not have any microtransactions... sort of.
Speaking to Eurogamer Magnus Jansen said that the game would just be supported by the DLC, and not microtransactions. At least, not as they define the word.
"It's definitely just the one - the DLC," said Jansen. "I don't know if there's a globally agreed definition of the word microtransactions, but you don't pay to win or advance or anything like that. We have DLC plans - which we're not talking about now - and obviously you'll pay for that, but in addition to that there's no microtransactions, as I define them."
Ubisoft have since stated that there will be vanity items being sold through "first-party stores", but calls it all DLC. The fact that it is just vanity items that are being offered as opposed to any weapons etc that could give someone an unfair advantage is good but...
I have always seen DLC - Downloadable Content - as being something akin to a bundle of things all in one big block. Some levels, some story, some missions, some items all in one package - that is DLC. What Ubisoft seem to be offering (although granted it's not yet clear if they're doing it like this yet) is individual items that you can buy separately.
And no matter how much Ubisoft try to paint it, that sounds an awful lot like what I tend to consider a 'microtransaction'.
The game will come to PC on March 8th anyway, so I guess we'll find out soon.