Never mind the fact that Nintendo has slashed its profit forecasts in the wake of more losses. Never mind the fact that the add-on packs for New Super Mario Bros 2 have been well-received. Never mind that, by the company's president's own admission, paid-for DLC for Animal Crossing: New Leaf could be 'unbelievably profitable'. It's not going to happen.
And the reason it's not going to happen is because Nintendo still cares about how its customers feel about the content they buy. In an Investors' Meeting (of which Nintendo seems to be having many at the moment), Satoru Iwata explained:
"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."
Animal Crossing fans (which includes us) are undoubtedly going to be ecstatic about the news because its item-collecting/customisation-based gameplay is ludicrously addictive. The DS game was a daily ritual for most of the GamesRadar team back in 2006... until we tried to take screenshots of our town with the office grabber, unaware its internal clock was set to the default, effectively destroying our town and all our prized turnips. It was never the same after that. So you can imagine the thought of paying money to get more turnips filled us with dread, so we'll be sleeping very soundly tonight.
Animal Crossing: New Leaf is due out on Nintendo 3DS in Japan on November 8, with Western releases to follow early next year.
