DLCs - the future of gaming?

During my weekly visit to Gamespot, I came across this video article talking about DLCs as the future of gaming. DLC, as most gamers are aware, refers to DownLoadable Content and this is a topic I (and many others, it would seem) have strong opinions on.
When I started playing games - which was pretty late, in my late teens - the additional stuff was always free; primarily because almost all of them were community content done by fans. Map packs, custom clothing/armor, total conversions, unofficial patches, new creatures, etc. All free.

Quake TC for Doom 3 - FREE!

I guess it was just a matter of time before someone in Corporate noticed the demand for these extras and decided that this was a good money-making opportunity. That's a perfectly good capitalist thought and it was a win-win scenario for both parties - more content, polished and with the official seal of compatibility for players and more revenue for the studios. The fallout of this model, at least in my eyes, is the death of the expansion pack. Games hardly have expansion packs nowadays - it's just more DLC to bridge the gap between sequels.

Civilization 4 - Fall from Heaven 2 - Better than most DLCs and free!

In the past couple of years though, the DLC scene has come to signify corporate greed and an utter lack of principles on the part of the publishers/studios. That's not to say all DLCs are bad - some rare ones are good but many of them don't justify the price tag. For example, the Bioshock 2 MP DLC - Sinclair Solutions - was already on the disk and the $5 price for the DLC was to get an unlock code. The reason behind the decision - players need to have exactly the same content to play online (btw, when has this ever been different?) and the DLC potentially is tied to engine updates and such that it had to be included in the disc. Then, there was the infamous Versus Mode DLC for RE5, a fiasco if ever there was one - a 1MB download for playing online, which made it so obvious the content was already there.

...and now, Dragon Age.
Admittedly, we know that the teams that do DLCs are separate from the 'main' development team. However, with the core development team concentrating on DA2 for quite some time now and the game and the toolset in desperate need of some patchwork, does it make sense to keep churning out additional DLCs? I swear the Feastday Gifts/Pranks was one of the worst ideas EVER - when players were still experiencing game-breaking glitches. And what do we get in the patch? Compatibility files for Awakening for the most part.
Why can't this DLC team work on fixing the bugs in the game? Most of these bugs are in the same category as content creation - they can be fixed with a toolset. Why can't some of these guys move over to DA2 development and free up one or two resources in the 'core' dev team to patch the toolset/engine? What's even more frustrating is that these bugs are acknowledged by Bioware. A couple of these (that I know of; maybe more), related to the chargen process, have even been fixed but apparently, there is no time to test and include the fixes in a build. Isn't that sad?

As I said, not all DLCs are bad. I am looking forward to The Witch Hunt for I know it will be good! Why? One word - Morrigan. Bioware knows that if they screwed up her story, it will be their worst debacle yet, bar none. I mean, they can't create a character such as Morrigan, give her the great build-up as in Origins and just let her fade away in a quick adventure, can they? I hope not.