Gears of War 3 introduced what it called a “Season Pass” guaranteeing the first four content packs of DLC for a discount. It’s all part of Epic Games’ plans to mitigate damage from the used game industry.
“What people need to understand is that extra content is something that you have to plan,” said Epic Games’ director of production Rod Fergusson. “There are people who think that the first day of DLC development is the day after you launched. That’s not the way it works.”
“A lot of it is that you have to prepare and plan and manage your resources and your people and everything to allow for that. It’s less about shipping what’s left over,” he added. “It’s not about, ‘Oh, we had this map left over’. . . it’s keeping the disc in the tray. In a used game culture that you have to actively fight against, I think DLC is one of the ways that you do that.”
Source: GameInformer