Animal Crossing DLC Continues The Outrage

Pokemon fans were shocked (and some were outraged) when Nintendo announced that Pokemon Sword and Pokemon Shield would be getting two new areas via DLC. Later expansions, updates, and DLCs aren't really Nintendo's thing, but if this rumor about Animal Crossing: New Horizons is true, it seems that Nintendo appears to be all about DLCs now.

This embrace of DLCs didn't start with Sword and Shield. Fire Emblem: Three Houses has been getting updates that have added in everything from maid costumes to petting cats. The Cindered Shadows DLC coming later this week will bring in a fourth new house with four new recruitable characters. Even Luigi's Mansion 3 has gotten the DLC treatment with a multiplayer pack DLC releasing later this year. 

Now it appears that Animal Crossing: New Horizons will follow suit. While Nintendo hasn't made any official announcements regarding Animal Crossing DLC, it's worth nothing that like Fire Emblem: Three Houses and Luigi's Mansion 3, New Horizons' ESRB rating mentions "in-game purchases." This seems to indicate that somewhere down the line, we'll be seeing paid DLC for New Horizons.

Will Animal Crossing: New Horizons have DLC? In the past, the only extra downloadable content for an Animal Crossing title was the occasional free item like seasonal shirts and furniture. But hey, the same could be said about Pokemon. Things change and Nintendo looks like it's moving toward a more contemporary style of game production, wherein content is slowly drip-fed to players in order to keep games alive long after release.

It's entirely possible that New Horizons will also see DLC down the line. A quick glance at Twitter shows that this possibility doesn't exactly sit well with fans, either.

"While I would definitely buy DLC for [Animal Crossing], I hate the idea," read one tweet. "DLC always feels like stuff purposely left out of main game just to make an extra buck. And Animal Crossing doesn't feel like a game that would need DLC tbh."

The worry centers around the idea that content will be left out of the main release of the game, put behind an unnecessary paywall that only comes becomes available much later. This is the same sentiment that riled Pokemon players had after Game Freak confirmed that many Pokemon missing from the base games would be added in the Pokemon Sword and Shield Expansion Pass.

Fans don't appear to be particularly keen on the idea of DLC in their good old fashioned Nintendo games, but Nintendo is modernizing. It's embraced the games as service model through subscription services in its mobile titles – why not expand that strategy to console?

Expect more expansions of Nintendo's work with DLC in the future.