A string of recent cases where Nintendo has announced DLC well after a game’s launch has become a hot topic on 5ch’s hardware/industry (“Geha”) board. The thread centered on Fire Emblem: Banshi Senkou, where the main game and paid DLC are split apart, with posters arguing that Nintendo titles — once reliably complete in a single package — are drifting toward the same piecemeal sales tactics used by other publishers. On the other hand, data was presented showing that among titles releasing in 2026, more games actually lack DLC than have it, and pushback like “just don’t buy it” and “this isn’t worth getting worked up over now” kept opinion split.
What people said
1AnonymousOct 18, 2026 21:32
Nintendo deliberately splitting games into DLC just to shamelessly squeeze more money out of people is now just "normal."
3AnonymousOct 18, 2026 21:34
And on the flip side, games without DLC don't even get free extra content — stuff like Kirby Air Riders or Splatoon Raiders just gets left thin and shoddy, then abandoned for good.
5AnonymousOct 18, 2026 21:36
Replying to Re: #1 and Re: #3: to put it mildly, that's "KPD theory" at work — the same kind of oxygen-deprived (i.e., brain-dead) decision-making that tanked that Marvel exclusive-flagship-character game.
8AnonymousOct 18, 2026 21:39
The real problem to begin with is that it's just wrong for a game with 100+ hours of content to cost under 10,000 yen.
11AnonymousOct 18, 2026 21:45
Replying to Re: #8: Can't be helped — the player base got skewed way too far toward casual, general audiences. Broke people are basically the main customer base for games now.
17AnonymousOct 18, 2026 21:51
To begin with, isn't Nintendo's whole expected role in the industry to pull new players into the buy-once model? Every other camp has basically outsourced that job to Nintendo entirely — no other first party is out there making games aimed at kids and girls. To rope newcomers in, you obviously can't set some crazy price, so I get why DLC is on the table. But the real question is: can they even design a game that stays within a sane budget and price point to begin with?
20AnonymousOct 18, 2026 22:02
Replying to Re: #17: Well, Fire Emblem aside, the real question is what happens with Pokémon.
21AnonymousOct 18, 2026 22:09
You don't have to buy Nintendo's DLC — the base game's complete on its own, or so I thought… but apparently Fire Emblem is pretty bad about that.
24AnonymousOct 18, 2026 22:12
Replying to Re: #21: If they'd waited to release it fully finished, it would've slipped to next year and probably cost around 13,000 yen, so I kind of get it. Xenoblade might end up going the same way.
22AnonymousOct 18, 2026 22:10
Replying to Re: #1: I used to love Nintendo games back in the single-purchase, complete-in-one-box era — Zelda included. But even Zelda got this treatment: Breath of the Wild got amiibo tie-ins, then years later a Switch 2 version, then Zelda Notes on top of that. It's sad that ditching that "one complete package" ideal in favor of stretching things out over years has become the norm.
But honestly, I think the worst offender in Nintendo's whole lineup is Animal Crossing: New Horizons. That game clearly had features already finished, and they still drip-fed them out through endless post-launch updates.
I used to trust old Nintendo, but I just can't anymore. Everyone's fine with amiibo, but that's seriously a scummy sales tactic.
30AnonymousOct 18, 2026 22:23
Replying to Re: #22: So what are you playing these days?
34AnonymousOct 18, 2026 22:30
Replying to Re: #30: Elden Ring on PS4 was cheap, so I picked it up and I'm playing that. New releases just aren't worth the money, and Switch games never drop in price, so they feel overpriced. I did put a ton of hours into Breath of the Wild back in the day and still like it, but as someone from the old-school Zelda camp, there's a real sadness in realizing the Zelda series I knew is over. I've decided to give up on this series.
45AnonymousOct 18, 2026 22:39
Replying to Re: #34: Elden Ring has DLC too, you know — but that's fine, is it?
27AnonymousOct 18, 2026 22:16
Just don't buy it. amiibo is nothing more than a fan item, and complaining about even that just makes you sound like a hater at this point.
28AnonymousOct 18, 2026 22:19
So the DLC for Mario Tennis, Tomodachi Collection, Yoshi, Star Fox, Rhythm Heaven, and Splatoon Raiders — all released this year — got announced and nobody even noticed?
31AnonymousOct 18, 2026 22:26
Replying to Re: #28: Looking at this, it's actually pretty standard practice. And Fire Emblem's pricing isn't even an issue.
37AnonymousOct 18, 2026 22:33
Well, it's true that "just don't buy it" settles the matter. These days almost no game ships and is just done — everything assumes post-launch updates as a given.
38AnonymousOct 18, 2026 22:34
What exactly does everyone mean by "splitting the game up"? At the very least, Nintendo's base games have a complete story on their own.
40AnonymousOct 18, 2026 22:36
Replying to Re: #38: Fire Emblem, yeah, I'd call that split up. Though I do think the price is fair. There's also probably a decent chance they just didn't finish it in time.
41AnonymousOct 18, 2026 22:36
Aren't games without DLC the minority these days anyway? Why's everyone suddenly kicking up a fuss about this now?
51AnonymousOct 18, 2026 22:44
Replying to Re: #41: Even looking at Nintendo's last two years, titles without DLC still outnumber the ones with it.
• With DLC:
Donkey Kong Bananza
Pokémon Legends: Z-A
Poko a Pokémon
Fire Emblem: Banshi Senkou
• Without DLC:
Mario Kart World
Nintendo Switch 2 Secrets Exhibition
Drag x Drive
Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment
Kirby Air Riders
Metroid Prime 4: Beyond
Mario Tennis Fever
Tomodachi Collection: Wakuwaku Life
Yoshi and the Mysterious Picture Book
Star Fox
Rhythm Heaven: Miracle Stars
Splatoon Raiders
42AnonymousOct 18, 2026 22:37
Replying to Re: #40: If you mean Banshi Senkou, the main story is properly complete on its own, though.
46AnonymousOct 18, 2026 22:39
Replying to Re: #42: The main story, sure… I want to say that, but playing it, it's obvious the other four characters got cut. That's a game that was originally 13,000 yen, trimmed down and sold as an 8,000 yen game.
43AnonymousOct 18, 2026 22:37
Just make the sticker price 15,000 yen already, honestly.
50AnonymousOct 18, 2026 22:41
Replying to Re: #43: Because the real sticker price would top 10,000 yen, so they just carve it up into base game, updates, and DLC — pure "three-in-the-morning-four-in-the-evening" sleight of hand (an old idiom for a trick that changes nothing but how it's dressed up), just to make it look cheaper than it is. And by selling the base game and DLC separately, the game design loses its consistency too — the base game alone feels half-finished, while the DLC ends up with its own bolted-on quirks that feel unnatural. The whole thing loses any sense of cohesion.
49AnonymousOct 18, 2026 22:41
Replying to Re: #46: The idea that they "cut" anything is a misunderstanding to begin with — people involved said in interviews they capped it at 4 characters because more would've made things too complicated.
52AnonymousOct 18, 2026 22:46
Replying to Re: #49: Honestly, I can't defend that part. Then explain to me why, right as Part 3 kicks off, there's a tutorial for the DLC characters joining as support units — they were hinting these characters had their own routes before the DLC was even announced.
57AnonymousOct 18, 2026 22:59
Forget not buying the DLC — I'm so sick of the problems DLC causes that I'm not even buying the base game anymore.
60AnonymousOct 18, 2026 23:00
Replying to Re: #57: Depends on the game.
64AnonymousOct 18, 2026 23:06
Poko a Pokémon's DLC was also announced after the fact, I think, but there wasn't a thread like this blowing up over it, was there?
65AnonymousOct 18, 2026 23:08
Replying to Re: #64: The problem with Fire Emblem is that it really does feel unfinished. Poko a Pokémon probably had its DLC planned from the start too, but its main story wrapped up pretty cleanly.
67AnonymousOct 18, 2026 23:10
Replying to Re: #64: People were trying their hardest to start threads nitpicking Poko a Pokémon's price as too expensive, but those didn't get much traction on Geha, so they seem to have given up.
71AnonymousOct 18, 2026 23:14
This feels like the kind of thing shouted by people who weren't going to buy it anyway.
76AnonymousOct 18, 2026 23:20
Replying to Re: #71: Isn't it natural to lose the urge to buy something once the price goes up?
83AnonymousOct 18, 2026 23:31
Back when Nintendo was late to the DLC game, people happily threw every insult in the book — "unfinished," "piecemeal cash grab" — at other publishers' games they hadn't even bought. Now that Nintendo's doing it, suddenly it's "not all DLC is bad" and "it's fine as long as the story's complete." Well, I guess that's just business as usual on Geha.
86AnonymousOct 18, 2026 23:34
Replying to Re: #83: If it were a trilogy padded out with minigames like the FF7 remake, it'd get slammed for it too.
Background and Key Points of This Debate
Nintendo has long built its reputation on “buy once, get the complete game,” and had a strong image of being resistant to DLC. In recent years, though, more titles have grown too large to fit within a single game’s budget, and the practice of releasing the main game first and then selling additional scenarios or characters as paid DLC later has spread. The sticking point in the thread was where to draw the line between “just selling off an unfinished part of the main game later” and “simple additional content” — and the more a title hinted at its DLC before launch, as Fire Emblem did, the harsher the criticism got. On the other hand, as post #51 in the thread pointed out, more 2026 Nintendo titles actually lack DLC than have it, a detail that’s easy to overlook given how much the thread treated this as the new “normal.” There was also the observation that Geha, which has long slammed other publishers for piecemeal sales tactics, tends to turn around and defend Nintendo for doing the same thing — a double-standard pattern common to these industry debates.
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