Want more flowers? £4.99, please

To some, Animal Crossing on 3DS sounds like the ideal opportunity to sell as much digital add-on content as possible, but Nintendo president Satoru Iwata has again stated the company's strong opposition to this model.

Iwata told investors Nintendo will stick to its ethos of not selling products that consumers would deem "incomplete", preserving its relationship with customers. He particularly spoke out against so-called "gacha-type" business models, which mimic the popular capsule toy machines by asking users to pay upfront without knowing which particular item will come through. In Animal Crossing parlance, imagine buying a chair without knowing which series it was from.

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Of course Iwata didn't say that Animal Crossing 3DS won't feature add-on content — both Wii and DS versions have received regular, free updates — but that Nintendo is sticking to its principles:

We will continue to make efforts to avoid such misunderstandings as, “the next ‘Animal Crossing’ might be a game which relies upon add-on content sales.”

As for a Western release date, Iwata said that information will be revealed "at a later date." The most recent schedule lists its release date outside Japan as "to be determined."

[source nintendo.co.jp]