In Devil May Cry 5 you'll be able to collect red orbs and trade them in for upgrades but, as Gamespot noticed during a recent demo of the forthcoming game, there's also an option to pay for them with real money. They asked Hideaki Itsuno, director of Devil May Cry 5, for clarification.

"With giving people the ability to purchase Red Orbs, it’s something we want to give people as an option. If they want to save time and just want to get all the stuff at once, those people can do that. But on the other hand I don’t feel you have to get all the moves, " he said. "You should be able to play it the way you want to play it."

This isn't the first time a Devil May Cry game has had the option to pay for upgrades with cash. The special edition of Devil May Cry 4 released in 2015 added them as well, with options to pay for red orbs, blue orbs, and proud souls as DLC.

The difference there is that microtransactions were added to a game that had already been balanced to play without them, and was by most accounts pretty generous with its rewards. Devil May Cry 5 will have microtransactions baked in from the start, which will make it harder to give it the benefit of the doubt if it ever starts to feel stingy with those orbs.

Devil May Cry 5 is due on March 8, 2019.