According to Bethesda VP Pete Hines, the upcoming Fallout 3 will get additional content that would really convince players that their money are well spent:

“The type is really–we want stuff that’s going to be several hours. Not just like a one-off thing, but something like where you can download it and play it for X number of hours. It’ll be similar to what we did with Knights of the Nine in Oblivion, where it’s like whole new quest lines, new stuff, that kind of thing.

We want to do stuff like that, where it’s adding hours of tangible stuff to the experience. And it plugs into your existing game, so whether you’re starting a new game, or you’re playing for 40 hours, you can go off and play this.”

Back in April 2006, Bethesda tried its luck by releasing some horse armor as pay-per-use DLC, an initiative which didn’t go quite well, to say the least. Fans got angry, the company was tarred and feathered on every Oblivion forum and, in the end, Bethesda had to come up with better DLC in the Knights on the Nine add-on.