Retail Expansion Pack

Content ships as a separate purchase that depends on the base game: new missions, units, buildings, regions or rules, usually made with the same tools by the same team. Save data often carries across. Pricing sits below a full release, and because the pack is built for people who finished the original, it can assume knowledge and open at a difficulty no standalone game would dare.

Origin Systems released Wing Commander: The Secret Missions in 1990, a set of new missions running on the existing engine, and it is commonly cited as the first true expansion pack. Earlier scenario and data disks for wargames and adventure games complicate that claim. Economics drove it either way, since the engine represented most of the development cost and reusing it converted a finished product into a second revenue event.

Games stopped being finished objects and became product lines, a shift that made long-lived franchises viable and gave studios work between releases. Fragmentation is one cost, as multiplayer populations split between owners and non-owners, and temptation is another, since content nearly complete at launch can always be held back. Every later model, from downloadable content to seasonal passes, argues with the precedent set here.