Nintendo Has No Plans to Sell Animal Crossing DLC

A question-and-answer session between investors and Nintendo President Satoru Iwata has revealed that the company doesn’t intend on pursuing their newly established method of selling downloadable content for their upcoming 3DS title, Animal Crossing: New Leaf. Iwata acknowledges that selling Animal Crossing DLC would certainly be profitable, but that it wouldn’t be the right fit for that game. Of paramount importance, it seems, is marrying DLC with the games that would benefit the most from it.

Here’s what Iwata had to say on the subject in the session:

“…we do not intend to make downloadable or add-on content available for every type of game. We would like to supply consumers with only add-on or downloadable content which they are happy to pay for as compensation for creative work. For example, some might say that it would be unbelievably profitable to provide paid add-on content for Animal Crossing: New Leaf, but we were concerned that a game in which you enjoy yourself more by the power of money would not be suitable, and we decided to avoid such a feature after an intensive discussion with the development team. On the other hand, we are selling sets of new courses for New Super Mario Bros. 2 by download and obtaining a very good response from those who have actually bought and played them. We see vast potential in this sort of add-on content. In short, we would like to find the type of add-on content consumers will find enjoyable in each game. We intend to basically create add-on content with which we will be able to make long-term relationships with our consumers.”

Makes sense, right? I can appreciate Nintendo wanting to meticulously curate the gaming experience for their products. At the same time, if you know you’ll make money off of DLC because your customers want as much of your product as they can get (and I’d say that Animal Crossing does seem to fit that description for lots of Nintendo fanboys), why not go for it?

I like the integrity Nintendo with which tries to infuse all of its products. But sometimes it seems as though it can get in the way of a situation that can benefit both gamer and publisher alike.

Nintendo via Eurogamer