MatthewTheDark said:
First of all, perhaps saying I was "pissed" may have been a wrong choice of words.
Kind of like how when you first responded to me, you went after me because you "never said you were pissed?"
EternallyBored said:
That's a good question, I don't know of any DLC that would merit a higher rating than the base game, so I don't know if it's unrated, or how they handle it.
Given that they seem to be pushing this release hoping for Awakening level sales, and its basically a first party title, if Nintendo really wanted to they could probably just implement an age gate for something like that. They launch enough updates it would be simple to make any TOS edits necessary before commercial release.
Dunno if they would really consider it worth it for something like that though, it is a part of the game, and the assets behind it aren't insignificant, but I'm not sure if they would consider it worth it to bother translating that stuff for a fraction of the people that buy the game and would want it re-implemented.
That last part is kind of the conundrum. Since it's their title, they could ostensibly do it. But it probably isn't worth it if it was controversial even in Japan.
Part of the reason I'm curious about this is that way back when Rock Band came out, it was the first music game to start having a really massive library of DLC, and so people started asking for unedited versions of songs. Which I would honestly prefer, if only because I hate when there are beeps, glitch sounds, etc in my music. And people were concerned it would impact the rating of the game. The ESRB confirmed that the "DLC not rated" thing was true, and that such profanity wouldn't bump the rating of the game. So they could, but they didn't.
I suspect that, even with a game that sold 8 million and was one of the highest grossing games of all time, it wasn't worth the money.
There are fewer logistical hurdles here, but we're still looking at a potentially unpopular feature at at least some financial cost. And while Nintendo has apparently said they haven't actually announced it, it still seems likely they'd cut an unpopular feature to avoid ratings issues and not add it back in to fulfill the desires of a niche market.
Like, from the response this has gotten, I suspect it will have about as much an impact on sales as Return of Kings estimated they did on Star Wars Episode VIII. Or the amount of damage that an ordinary human lying in the mud in his dressing gown would have on a large yellow bulldozer.
As such, while age-gated DLC might not be unreasonable, it does sseem like it might be impractical.