Eiji Aonuma revealed that The Legend of Zelda: Tears of The Kingdom is likely not to ever have any DLC, and this is for good reason.
Eiji Aonuma was interviewed by Japanese newspaper Famitsu about the game. As translated by Video Games Chronicle, this is what he said:
“At this time, we are not planning to release additional content. We feel like we have already fully explored and exhausted the gameplay possibilities in this world.
Initially, the reason we decided to develop a sequel was because we believed there was still value in experiencing new gameplay within that particular Hyrule.
If in the future we find a compelling reason, we may revisit that world once again. Whether it’s another sequel or an entirely new title, I believe the next game will offer a completely new experience. I hope you’ll look forward to it.”
To put this in perspective, the website How Long To Beat rates The Legend of Zelda: Tears of The Kingdom main story playtime at 59 hours, only slight above The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild’s 50 hours. However, a completionist run of rates The Legend of Zelda: Tears of The Kingdom puts the game at 230 hours, considerably above The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild’s 190 hours.
If the reason The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild stopped at two DLC packs was for Nintendo to put their ideas over to the sequel The Legend of Zelda: Tears of The Kingdom, then it makes sense that Nintendo would no longer hold back and put in as many ideas as they had onto this second game.
Nintendo remains reticent to sell DLC. Their current strategy is to sell what they call expansion passes. These amount to a bundle of all the planned DLC for a single game, such as Splatoon 3 or Mario Kart 8. Said DLC is planned beforehand but not made in advance. They also are generally priced low relative to the amount of content, and Nintendo has yet to make even more content beyond what they have committed to expansion passes.
It is, of course, standard industry practice now to use DLC. In fact, Nintendo’s colleagues in the industry are well known for employing far more aggressive monetization practices. At least in this regard, Nintendo puts the integrity of the game above the projected profitability. For all the complaints fans have over Nintendo games barely lowering in price through the years, Nintendo does make the effort to make their games so valuable that they really do deserve to retain that value.
While it would be fun to play more The Legend of Zelda: Tears of The Kingdom, the argument that developers should spin off those DLC plans to full games does have merit. They would then be better able to realize those ideas to their fullest potential.
