Expansions: When is it an actual expansion, and when is it just hyped DLC?

With the news of Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3 being announced, and it being consider a "re-release" of MvC3 (or basically a release of the FINISHED MvC3), a lot of news about how Capcom and other devs like to leave out content for future release has been popping up.

Many gamers are continuing to show disdain and anger, and rightly so, to companies like Capcom for pulling stunts like this, and many are giving them a pass and actually funding these bad moves. I recently had a small discussion about Assassin's Creed Brotherhood and how I view it as being different than this kind of move from Capcom, as Ubisoft created an entirely new locale, new story, additional content, and gave Desmond more of a role in the game. I would view AC Brotherhood as more of an expansion, possibly its own game, than "DLC" to AC2, but there would be merit in calling it such for reasons I won't go into here.

But it got me thinking about games like Halo ODST, Super Street Fighter IV, and SSFIV Arcade Edition, and other such games.

And because of this, I wanted to ask you all, what do you consider an expansion, or just "hyped DLC."

Hyped DLC is a term I use to define a game that doesn't offer enough "additional content" to a game to be called an expansion, yet it gets its own "game disc" and is marketed as an expansion. It's also used to define content that could have easily been added to the original game without significant time or resources to warrant a delay or extension of the release date of the original game.

In my personal opinion, Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3 is hyped DLC. 12 characters with their stories and some probably tweaks to old characters and modes could have easily been added to the original MvC3 and made it a complete game. But as Crapcom are fond of doing, they release unfinished games so that they can gouge naive, gullible, ignorant, and foolish gamers into buying their "on disc" DLC or their "hyped DLC" expansion packs.

When Super Street Fighter 4 was announced, I had a friend who went "ape-sh*t" over it and couldn't stop talking about how he was going to spend the $40 for a few extra characters, and some online modes and tweaks. $40. Can you imagine? For what SSFIV offered, it could have easily been DLC priced at half that. But Crapcom got away with it because there are those who don't care and just need their fix. Then the Arcade Edition came out and I'm sure I'm not the only one who facepalmed disappointingly at that.

You look at games like the GOTY edition of Oblvion, which added all the expansion packs to the original game and priced it the same as the original game and you can see how that is reasonable. That's a lot of content added to an already large game. Same with LittleBigPlanet GOTY edition. A lot of content added to a game that's already packed with content.

Then you look at Capcom, and I'm sure I'm not the only one who can't help but just give a disappointed sigh at people who shovel up their crap and empty their wallets for unfinished products.

The ironic thing is that Capcom is old enough to have been around during the era of "unlockables" in the old-school gaming days. Days where if you met certain criteria in a game, certain content would be unlocked. Like "beat X in under X minutes and unlock him as a bonus character." And yet now they pull stunts like this.

So, is UMvC3 a legitimate expansion, or just overpriced and over-glorified DLC? What are your thoughts?